Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LONGINGS (BURNS MODEL LODGING-HOUSE) by PATRICK MACGILL

First Line: THERE IS CLATTER ON THE PAVEMENT, THERE IS HURRY / IN THE STREET
Last Line: MY FATHER'S HOMELY COTTAGE IN KILCAR.
Subject(s): CHILDHOOD MEMORIES; DEATH; FIRE; HEAVEN; DEAD, THE; PARADISE;
THERE is clatter on the pavement, there is hurry in the street,
The curtains of the night are dropping down,
The heart-throbs of the city clang with dull insistent beat,
The gas lights glimmer faintly thro' the town —
The ten-hour shift is laboured, and the gaffer's voice is still,
And my thoughts go o'er the ocean surge afar,
To the meadow and the river and the boreen and the hill,
And the little lime-washed cottage in Kilcar.

I have seen the crimson dawning of a Spanish morning glow,
I have cowered before the menace of the wild,
I have seen the sapphire sunlight tint the everlasting snow
Where December's virgin granaries are piled,
I have heard the mountain torrents hurtle riotous in wrath,
I have tramped the roads to London and to Rome,
But I'd rather have my childhood and the narrow moorland path,
The path that leads to happiness and home.
I am sitting by the hot-plate and my comrades talk about
The things they've done and which they shouldn't do,

I have been their pal in sinning, and I've got to grin it out,
And the harvest of my oats is overdue —
'T is not so much the slaving in the sewerage of life,
'T is not so much the toiling and the wet,
'T is not so much the curbing of my hatred of the strife,
But the shattered dreams I never can forget.

The shrines the world has broken were the shrines at which I knelt,
And the faith I cherished so it laughed to shame,
But God alone in Heaven knows the sufferings I felt,
When I sold my youth's ideals for a name,
And pawned my simple virtues for a meed of evil praise,
Ah, I pledged them where I never could redeem,
Tho' to many it was merely just a love of newer ways,
To me it was the waking from a dream.

They are rough and rugged fellows, my companions sworn and true,
And maybe I am rough and rude as they —
But oh, heavens! how they'd mock me, if by chance they ever knew
That I hankered for a cabin miles away —
Where it stands above the shingle that the waters whirl upon,
As they race across the sandhill and the bar —
That I long for it by night, dreaming by the hot-plate bright,
My father's homely cottage in Kilcar.



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