The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge/Last Songs/To an Old Quill of Lord Dunsany's
TO AN OLD QUILL OF LORD DUNSANY'S
Before you leave my hands' abuses
To lie where many odd things meet you,
Neglected darkling of the Muses,
I, the last of singers, greet you.
Snug in some white wing they found you,
On the Common bleak and muddy,
Noisy goslings gobbling round you
In the pools of sunset, ruddy.
Have you sighed in wings untravelled
For the heights where others view the
Bluer widths of heaven, and marvelled
At the utmost top of Beauty?
No! it cannot be; the soul you
Sigh with craves nor begs of us.
From such heights a poet stole you
From a wing of Pegasus.
You have been where gods were sleeping
In the dawn of new creations,
Ere they woke to woman's weeping
At the broken thrones of nations.
You have seen this old world shattered
By old gods it disappointed,
Lying up in darkness, battered
By wild comets, unanointed.
But for Beauty unmolested
Have you still the sighing olden?
I know mountains heather-crested,
Waters white, and waters golden.
There I'd keep you, in the lowly
Beauty-haunts of bird and poet,
Sailing in a wing, the holy
Silences of lakes below it.
But I leave you by where no man
Finds you, when I too be gone
From the puddles on this common
Over the dark Rubicon.
Londonderry,
September 18th, 1916.