‘ALTHOUGH I’d lie lapped up in… A deal I’d sweat and little earn If I should live as live the neig… Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne; ‘Stretch bones till the daylight c…

A MOST astonishing thing— Seventy years have I lived; (Hurrah for the flowers of Spring… For Spring is here again.) Seventy years have I lived

WHAT need you, being come to sen… But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, un… You have dried the marrow from the…

THE moments passed as at a play; I had the wisdom love brings forth… I had my share of mother-wit, And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for i…

PICTURE and book remain, An acre of green grass For air and exercise, Now strength of body goes; Midnight, an old house

I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. ‘Those breasts are flat and fallen… Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion,

A storm beaten old watch-tower, A blind hermit rings the hour. All-destroying sword-blade still Carried by the wandering fool. Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade,

‘CALL down the hawk from the air… Let him be hooded or caged Till the yellow eye has grown mild… For larder and spit are bare, The old cook enraged,

HIS chosen comrades thought at sc… He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by r… All his twenties crammed with toil… ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost.…

O women, kneeling by your altar-ra… When songs I wove for my beloved… And smoke from this dead heart dri… And covers away the smoke of myrrh… Bend down and pray for all that si…

Endure what life God gives and as… Cease to remember the delights of… Delight becomes death-longing if a… Even from that delight memory trea… Death, despair, division of famili…

I HAVE heard the pigeons of the… Make their faint thunder, and the… Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and… The unavailing outcries and the ol… That empty the heart. I have forg…