| Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain |
| Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end, |
| Old Dublin merchant ‘free of the ten and four’ |
| Or trading out
of Galway into Spain; |
| Old country scholar, Robert Emmet’s friend, |
| A hundred-year-old memory to the
poor; |
| Merchant and scholar who have left me blood |
| That has not passed through any huckster’s loin, |
| Soldiers that gave, whatever die was cast: |
| A Butler or an Armstrong that withstood |
| Beside the brackish
waters of the Boyne |
| James and his Irish when the Dutchman crossed; |
| Old merchant skipper that leaped
overboard |
| After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay; |
| You most of all, silent and fierce old man, |
| Because the
daily spectacle that stirred |
| My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say, |
| ‘Only the wasteful virtues earn the
sun’; |
| Pardon that for a barren passion’s sake, |
| Although I have come close on forty-nine, |
| I have no child,
I have nothing but a book, |
| Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine. |
| January 1914 |