Dirge for Aoine and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

It's far away in London I am dwelling now;
I hear no more the wind that blows the green leaves on the bough.
My cup is strange and bitter with the homeless tears I shed,
And bitter in my mouth is the stranger's bread.

But about the well I dipped from, in the fields where I played,
There cries a voice so like my voice my own folk are afraid—
A voice of tears and laughter, a voice that climbs and thrills
In the hazel boughs and on the distant hills.

'Tis nothing but my body that dwells in London here,
And walks among the endless streets, with neither hope nor fear
To quicken listless feet or kindle sullen face
With longing for the ended race.

We care not much who win or lose, not shining is our goal;
It's bread to eat is all our quest. If hungry goes the soul,

xxxii

The body's hunger keener is, and in the city street
Pale women strive beside the men for bread to eat.

Above our heads the chimneys reek, and if the wet wind blow
No labour stops, no eyes look up to watch the rainbow grow.
The river turns from gray to black; the stars come out and fade;
Beneath the flaring gas-lamps we ply our trade.

'Tis nothing but my body that is so weary now,
And eats and drinks and sleeps in spite of hopes that tempt and cow;
'Tis nothing but my body that earns the wage you dole,
But far away in Ireland is my free soul.

Far away in Ireland, and would that I were there,
To feel the wet wind blowing the grayness from my hair,
To hear the kind sea calling the gulls that rockward go,
And the men to their drowning with its “hush, hush O!”

Far away in Ireland, my soul is far away
From these your streets that roar by night as restless as by day;

xxxiii

It is my lonely body that on the bed I made
Lies down to rest, and does not rest, and dreams that it is dead
And buried deep in Irish earth with a grey stone overhead.