Michael Robartes and the Dancer/Under Saturn
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UNDER SATURN
Do not because this day I have grown saturnine
Imagine that some lost love, unassailable
Being a portion of my youth, can make me pine
And so forget the comfort that no words can tell
Your coming brought; though I acknowledge I have gone
On a fantastic ride, my horses flanks were spurred:
By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,
And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,
And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died
Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.
You heard that labouring man
who had served my people. He said
Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay—
No, no, not said, but cried it out—“You have come again
And surely after twenty years it was time to come.”
I am thinking of a child’s vow sworn in vain
Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.
Imagine that some lost love, unassailable
Being a portion of my youth, can make me pine
And so forget the comfort that no words can tell
Your coming brought; though I acknowledge I have gone
On a fantastic ride, my horses flanks were spurred:
By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,
And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,
And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died
Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.
You heard that labouring man
who had served my people. He said
Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay—
No, no, not said, but cried it out—“You have come again
And surely after twenty years it was time to come.”
I am thinking of a child’s vow sworn in vain
Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.
November, 1919.