IF you have revisited the town, thin Shade, Whether to look upon your monument (I wonder if the builder has been paid) Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent To drink of that salt breath out of the sea When grey gulls flit about instead of men, And the gaunt houses put on majesty: Let these content you and be gone again; For they are at their old tricks yet. A man Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought In his full hands what, had they only known, Had given their children's children loftier thought, Sweeter emotion, working in their veins Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place, And insult heaped upon him for his pains, And for his open-handedness, disgrace; Your enemy, an old foul mouth, had set The pack upon him. Go, unquiet wanderer, And gather the Glasnevin coverlet About your head till the dust stops your ear, The time for you to taste of that salt breath And listen at the corners has not come; You had enough of sorrow before death -- Away, away! You are safer in the tomb. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHRISMUS IS A-COMIN' by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR TO MR. GAY, WHO WROTE HIM A CONGRATULATORY LETTER ON FINISHING HOUSE by ALEXANDER POPE THE WET MONTH by HENRY BATAILLE IF WE HAD THE TIME by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON VERSES ON PREACHING EXTEMPORE by JOHN BYROM OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: 16. TROCHAIC VERSE: THE TWELFTH EPIGRAM by THOMAS CAMPION |