Classic Poem

Did you ever feel that lonesome like that nothing could content you,
 With your heart all swollen, rolling like a river-tide at flood,
Till the weëst things that happened would that fidget and torment you
 The sight of them you fed and clothed would poison all your blood?
I felt like that last year in March one evening after quetting ,
 'Twas the seventeenth of Ireland coming set me thinking long,
A hen on a hot griddle never equalled me for fretting
 So I took a dander after dark to clear up what was wrong.

The stars were bright—so clear and bright—I couldn't look below them,
 And I never felt the frost-wind blowing bitter through my coat,
For they every one kept shining down and asking did I know them,
 Did I mind at Ballymena on the fairy-forayed Moat?
Did I mind them? Could I think of any other mortal notion,
 With nothing changed about them but the boy that saw them shine;
If the Hebrews turned their noses up at Canaan after Goshen
 Sure an Irish heart may hanker for the home ayont the brine?

I was homesick, that's the long-come-short, and five good miles and farder
 I travelled up and down before I got a bit of peace.
For a man that has a wife and wean to shift for takes it harder
 When his feelings turn and gabble at him like a flock of geese.
And still one great big star kept shining, shining clear and glorious,
 And a voice it had kept asking with a tongue that wouldn't tire,
I could hear it still and quiet though the night-wind blew uproarious—
 “Do you think your mother's happy by her lonely kitchen-fire?”

My heart rose like a boat upon a surging crest of sorrow
 And sank away to nothing in a trough of sore despair;
I had no use to live at all; I'd give the Lord's tomorrow
 To be just a wee wee boy again beside my mother's chair.
The glow of later summers touches childhood with such gilding
 That all the gold of life between looks dark and dull and dim;
And manhood's chant, and labour's lay, the songs of fortune-building,
 Sound harsh to ears that hear again the far-off children's hymn.

I was back again in Lorimerstown, a barefoot wean of seven,
 Winding bobbins, dropping praties, dibbling plants, or mixing swill,
Or free by law or license to get one whole day from heaven,
 Going wading, catching spricklies at the foot of Church's hill.
Or chasing things with picture wings in spite of regulations
 Through clover-fields and corn-fields, pulling cress at Vincent's well,
Or finding nests and scaring rabbits over Young's plantations,
 And clodding stones and climbing, doing things I durstn't tell.

And coming home worn out at last, with clothes in want of mending,
 And meeting mother, shamefaced for the clabber on them thick;
And seeing father weaving as I left him, only bending
 A little more above the heddles, looking white and sick;
And eating fadge and soda-bread, and washing in the bucket,
 And sleeping somewhere, soon and snug, with mother singing low—
We get the balance seldom but that night the star-shine struck it,
 And my heart was wrenched to learn the price a man must pay to grow.

Yet life is well worth living and I hurried home to Pollie,
 And she wasn't vexed a bit because I left her feeling blue;
She's sense and comfort always when I feel a twinge of folly,
 And life's a great investment when your wife has wit for two.
I told her all I thought and how I wanted baby's grannie
 To come across in summer-time and stay with us awhile;
How proud she'd be to get the chance to nurse our own wee mannie,
 Nor ever interfering in the husband's mother's style.

And Pollie said she didn't want to go back home this long time,
 But she'd dearly love to see a face just fresh from old Belfast,
When the year had spread to spring-time, grown to flower-time, turned to song-time,
 She would like to look in Irish eyes and talk about the past,
And that's how mother's visit in the summer-time was settled,
 She made no bones about it when we wrote for her to come;
True love goes round the world, she said, and mother's love's high mettled,
 And the older still the abler, and the Lord puts down the sum.