| Although I can see him still, |
| The freckled man who goes |
| To a grey place on a hill |
| In grey Connemara
clothes |
| At dawn to cast his flies, |
| It’s long since I began |
| To call up to the eyes |
| This wise and simple
man. |
| All day I’d looked in the face |
| What I had hoped ’twould be |
| To write for my own race |
| And the reality; |
| The living men that I hate, |
| The dead man that I loved, |
| The craven man in his seat, |
| The insolent unreproved, |
| And no knave brought to book |
| Who has won a drunken cheer, |
| The witty man and his joke |
| Aimed at the
commonest ear, |
| The clever man who cries |
| The catch-cries of the clown, |
| The beating down of the wise |
| And great Art beaten down. |
|
|
|
|
| Maybe a twelvemonth since |
| Suddenly I began, |
| In scorn of this audience, |
| Imagining a man, |
| And his sun-freckled face, |
| And grey Connemara cloth, |
| Climbing up to a place |
| Where
stone is dark under froth, |
| And the down-turn of his wrist |
| When the flies drop in the stream; |
| A man who
does not exist, |
| A man who is but a dream; |
| And cried, ‘Before I am old |
| I shall have written him one |
| Poem
maybe as cold |
| And passionate as the dawn.’ |