| Do not because this day I have grown saturnine |
| Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought |
| Because I have no other youth, can make me pine; |
| For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought, |
| The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone |
| On a fantastic ride, my horse’s flanks are
spurred |
| By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen, |
| And of a Middleton, whose name you never
heard, |
| And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died |
| Before my time, seem like a vivid memory. |
| You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said |
| Upon the open road, near to the
Sligo quay— |
| No, no, not said, but cried it out—‘You have come again, |
| And surely after twenty years
it was time to come.’ |
| I am thinking of a child’s vow sworn in vain |
| Never to leave that valley his fathers
called their home. |
| November 1919 |