IRELAND
Are against you and what you undertake.
Perhaps you will be warned, but I think not.
In this, as in other things, it happens
That there is no royal goad to learning,
But only rote and toil, tears and lean years.
Seldom unto as dim eyes as yours arose
Indemnifying faith and further sight
Immediately. Yet do not doubt
That to your darkened towns and drowsy fields
Day will return, day with a lovelier face,
And voices, children's children's voices, will
Rejoice in the dew-washed and discharged air
Of tears. 0 let their laughter be your care,
.And light will be the load you carry then.
IRELAND
0 these lakes and all gills that live in them,
These acres and all legs that walk on them,
These tall winds and all wings that cling to them,
Are part and parcel of me, bit and bundle,
Thumb and thimble. Then I am, but none more
Than the mountains of Mourne that tum and trundle
Roundly like slow coils of oil along the shore
Of Down and on inland. When I begin
To draw my memory's nets and outlines in,
Then through its measured mesh escapes the fuss
Of trivial places, all finicalness.
Of the Mournes I remember most the mist,
The grey granite goose-fleshed, the minute
And blazing parachutes of fuchsia, and us
Listening to the tiny clustered clinks
Of little chisels tinkling tirelessly
On stone, like a drip of birds' beaks picking
Rapidly at scattered grain. I think of those
Wet sodden days when we, for miles and miles,
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