WHY should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher’s wris
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once

FATHER AND CHILD
SHE hears me strike the board and
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man

Sang old Tom the lunatic
That sleeps under the canopy:
‘What change has put my thoughts a
And eyes that had so keen a sight?
What has turned to smoking wick

HERE is fresh matter, poet,
Matter for old age meet;
Might of the Church and the State
Their mobs put under their feet.
O but heart’s wine shall run pure,

WHAT woman hugs her infant there
Another star has shot an ear.
What made the drapery glisten so?
Not a man but Delacroix.
What made the ceiling waterproof?

‘O WORDS are lightly spoken,’
Said Pearse to Connolly,
‘Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows

I dreamed that I stood in a valle
For happy lovers passed two by two
And I dreamed my lost love came s
With her cloud-pale eyelids fallin
I cried in my dream ‘O women bid

Epilogue to 'A Vision’
MIDNIGHT has come, and the gre
And may a lesser bell sound throug
And it is All Souls’ Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with

I have old women’s secrets now
That had those of the young;
Madge tells me what I dared not t
When my blood was strong,
And what had drowned a lover once

Through winter-time we call on spr
And through the spring on summer c
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter’s best of all;
And after that there’s nothing goo