Classic Poem

You, Farrell O'Reilly, I feared as a boy
With your thin riding legs and your turned-in toes;
I feared the sharp, gimlet-like look in your eye,
Your rumbling brown beard and your pocketed nose.
Old friend of my Father what brings you back now?
You died fifty-nine years or sixty ago.

They say, when a man is about to be drowned,
His youth flashes back and he sees his life clear;
So, maybe, because I am nearing the ground
The days of my youth and my childhood are here.
If so, they are welcome if they compensate
For days that are yearly increasing in weight.

My Father no sooner would talk of Kilbeg
And carefully measure the charge for each cartridge,
Than I saw myself strutting behind with the bag
And heard the men talk as they walked up the partridge.
The conveys were scarce, and the cause of the trouble
Was “Farrell O'Reilly's too proud to have stubble.”

O thick-sodded fields that have fattened the herds
From the days of the kings in the dawn of our time,
O fields of Moynalty, The Plain of the Birds,
None ever drew plough through your land on the lime!
King Leary of Tara just over the way
Knew more about Meath than the men of to-day.

My young eyes were good and rejoiced at the sight
Of a drake with the sun all a blaze on his green
That flew on a sudden from left to the right:
What banging! But only a feather was seen.
When each man exclaimed to the other, “Bad luck!”
I could not help thinking 'twas good for the duck.

Remote as the days in an old mezzotint
When Farrell O'Reilly would lean to his gun
Top-hatted; and aim with a vigilant squint,
(If he missed, it was due to the wind or the sun)
My Father stands clear; but I see clearer Farrell
His left eye shut tight and his hand up the barrel.

In spite of their failure, I gaped at the men,
Their failures were feats to me looking for wonder.
How little I doubted Authority then!
Authority added distinction to blunder.
They could not do wrong, though they played ducks and drakes,
For great men can lend a prestige to mistakes.

“Now hand me that bag, for you can't lift a leg.”
I said, “It's so light I can carry it farther”—
A thousand wide acres surrounded Kilbeg—
And Farrell said nothing, but looked at my Father;
Then carried me home; and I found, for a truth,
There's sometimes great kindness behind the uncouth.

The little pine wood with its floor of dense laurels;
The river slow-moving with bulrushes rimmed;
The well-house, the lis—all the things that were Farrell's,
Though half were forbidden, are shining undimmed:
The harness room filled with bits, saddles and bridles,
A room where the dairy maid gossips and idles.

I feel the lull now that came over the men,
And I see the groom wafting his smoke with his hand,
Intent as his polishing started again;
“The Master!” A hint that they all understand;
The dairy maid holding her blouse at her throat,
As he enters the yard in his cut-away coat.

Like everyone else who was in his employ,
Alert, lest, surprised, I be taken in error,
In spite of foreboding, I snatched at my joy,
For joy is a pleasance surrounded by terror.
Wood, river and well—to maid and to man
Sharp Farrell O'Reilly appeared as god Pan.

Wood, river and well—the wild things of the fields;
The lis with its lonely and wind-twisted thorn,
Enchanted me early; now everything yields
To the breath I drew first from the winds of my morn:
So, Farrell O'Reilly, in token from me,
Accept this wild leaf from your own twisted tree.