ALTHOUGH I can see him still, | |
The freckled man who goes | |
To a grey place on a hill | |
In grey Connemara clothes | |
At dawn to cast his flies, | 5 |
Its long since I began | |
To call up to the eyes | |
This wise and simple man. | |
All day Id looked in the face | |
What I had hoped twould be | 10 |
To write for my own race | |
And the reality; | |
The living men that I hate, | |
The dead man that I loved, | |
The craven man in his seat, | 15 |
The insolent unreproved, | |
And no knave brought to book | |
Who has won a drunken cheer, | |
The witty man and his joke | |
Aimed at the commonest ear, | 20 |
The clever man who cries | |
The catch-cries of the clown, | |
The beating down of the wise | |
And great Art beaten down. | |
|
Maybe a twelvemonth since | 25 |
Suddenly I began, | |
In scorn of this audience, | |
Imagining a man | |
And his sun-freckled face, | |
And grey Connemara cloth, | 30 |
Climbing up to a place | |
Where stone is dark under froth, | |
And the down turn of his wrist | |
When the flies drop in the stream: | |
A man who does not exist, | 35 |
A man who is but a dream; | |
And cried, Before I am old | |
I shall have written him one | |
Poem maybe as cold | |
And passionate as the dawn. | 40 |