Before you leave my hands'
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
For the heights where others view
Bluer widths of heaven, and
At the utmost top of Beauty ?
No ! it cannot be ; the soul
Sigh with craves nor begs of us.
From such heights a poet stole
From a wing of Pegasus.
You have been where gods were
In the dawn of new creations,
Ere they woke to woman's
At the broken thrones of nations.
You have seen this old world
By old gods it disappointed,
Lying up in darkness,
By wild comets, unanointed.
But for Beauty
Have you still the sighing olden ?
I know mountains heather-crested,
Waters white, and waters golden.
There I'd keep you, in the
Beauty-haunts of bird and poet,
Sailing in a wing, the
Silences of lakes below it.
But I leave you by where no
Finds you, when I too be
From the puddles on this
Over the dark Rubicon.
This poem taken from "Last Songs" by Francis Ledwidge,
Published by Herbert Jenkins,
London 1918 [page 15-17]Poem Dated:
Londonderry,
September 18th, 1916.
Lord Dunsany wrote the introduction to this,
Ledwidge's final book of poetry.
Words and spelling verified JS
