Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain

      Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,

      Old Dublin merchant 'free of ten and four'

      Or trading out of Galway into Spain;

      And country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,

      A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;

      Traders or soldiers who have left me blood

      That has not passed through any huxter's loin,

      Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,

      Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood

      Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne

      Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;

      You merchant skipper that leaped overboard

      After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,

      You most of all, silent and fierce old man

      Because you were the 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.

      Poets with whom I learned my trade,

      Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,

      Here's an old story I've re-made,

      Imagining 'twould better please

      Your ears than stories now in fashion,

      Though you may think I waste my breath

      Pretending that there can be passion

      That has more life in it than death,

      And though at bottling of your wine

      The bow-legged Goban had no say;

      The moral's yours because it's mine.

      When cups went round at close of day —

      Is not that how good stories run? —

      Somewhere within some hollow hill,

      If books speak truth in Slievenamon,

      But let that be, the gods were still

      And sleepy, having had their meal,

      And smoky torches made a glare

      On painted pillars, on a deal

      Of fiddles and of flutes hung there

      By the ancient holy hands that brought them

      From murmuring Murias, on cups —

      Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,

      And put his pattern round their tops

      To hold the wine they buy of him.

      But from the juice that made them wise

      All those had lifted up the dim

      Imaginations of their eyes,

      For one that was like woman made

      Before their sleepy eyelids ran

      And trembling with her passion said,

      'Come out and dig for a dead man,

      Who's burrowing somewhere in the ground,

      And mock him to his face and then

      Hollo him on with horse and hound,

      For he is the worst of all dead men.'

      We should be dazed and terror struck,

      If we but saw in dreams that room,

      Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck

      That emptied all our days to come.

      I knew a woman none could please,

      Because she dreamed when but a child

      Of men and women made like these;

      And after, when her blood ran wild,

      Had ravelled her own story out,

      And said, 'In two or in three years

      I need must marry some poor lout,'

      And having said it burst in tears.

      Since, tavern comrades, you have died,

      Maybe your images have stood,

      Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,

      Before that roomful or as good.

      You had to face your ends when young —

      'Twas wine or women, or some curse —

      But never made a poorer song

      That you might have a heavier purse,

      Nor gave loud service to a cause

      That you might have a troop of friends.

      You kept the Muses' sterner laws,

      And unrepenting faced your ends,

      And therefore earned the right – and yet

      Dowson and Johnson most I praise —

      To troop with those the world's forgot,

      And copy their proud steady gaze.

      'The Danish troop was driven out

      Between the dawn and dusk,' she said;

      'Although the event was long in doubt,

      Although the King of Ireland's dead

      And half the kings, before sundown

      All was accomplished.'

      'When this day

      Murrough, the King of Ireland's son,

      Foot after foot was giving way,

      He and his best troops back to back

      Had perished there, but the Danes ran,

      Stricken with panic from the attack,

      The shouting of an unseen man;

      And being thankful Murrough found,

      Led by a footsole dipped in blood

      That had made prints upon the ground,

      Where by old thorn trees that man stood;

      And though when he gazed here and there,

      He had but gazed on thorn trees, spoke,

      "Who is the friend that seems but air

      And yet could give so fine a stroke?"

      Thereon a young man met his eye,

      Who said, "Because she held me in

      Her love, and would not have me die,

      Rock-nurtured Aoife took a