"Memorial I would have
... a constant presence
with those that love me"
DEDICATION SONNET
TO MY WIFE
"Not the sea, only, wrecks the hopes of men,
Look deeper, there is shipwreck everywhere,"
So mourned the exquisite Roman's rich despair,
Too high in death for that ignoble pen.
Nero, his wrecker, is amply wrecked since then,
And all that Rome's a whiff of charnel air;
But to subdue Petronius' mal-de-mer
Have we found drugs? I pray you, What? and When?
Shipwreck, one grieves to say, retains its vogue:
Or let the keel win on in stouter fashion,
And look! your golden lie of Tir-na-n'Og
Is sunset and waste waters, chill and ashen--
Faith lasts? Nay, since I knew your yielded eyes,
I am content with sight .... of Paradise.
TO MY DAUGHTER BETTY,
THE GIFT OF GOD
(ELIZABETH DOROTHY)
In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown
To beauty proud as was your mother's prime,
In that desired, delayed, incredible time,
You'll ask why I abandoned you, my own,
And the dear heart that was your baby throne,
To dice with death. And oh! they'll give you rhyme
And reason: some will call the thing sublime,
And some decry it in a knowing tone.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,
But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.
the field, before Guillemont, Somme,
September 4, 1916.
ON LEAVING IRELAND
(JULY 14, 1916)
The pathos of departure is indubitable.