Classic Poem

Over the stony fields
That sharpen the hook in Connaught,
Alone with the drenching sky
Through cloudish grass, I ran
By the waters of black swimming,
Until the trees began:
I came under a wood
To water green as rye,
I heard in a place that was good for harps,
Where the sun dripped with the rain,
Carpenters in a green workshop
Elbowing the plane.

I wakened a land so quiet
The glens were herded by a horn,
But I followed far into the south
The bird-lakes of the morning:
I was awhile on an island
In a sunning mile of the Shannon
And in the golden sedge of corn
The men were rowing about
And women brought the blue-veined milk
For they turn the butter out.

Gold was wrecked against Kerry
On a day of wild fishing and oars
Gave the hags that curl the tide-tops
Wet money from the netting,
I rowed with the sail to one side
When light was salting from the harbour:
At the board of the Earl I would get
A share of the dish and the barrel
By swearing the fishermen spied
Where the shoal of mackerel ran
Sunward, beyond a black skerry,
The goldskin sails of Bran.

Last night in the house of Red Hugh
I tumbled, I juggled, I danced,
To-day on a fife I was stopping the music
For women in Skye and soon after
I talked with poor men in Cantyre.
I sprawl in blue rags and bad shoes
By the fire of a small king in Leinster,
I will play for his ease or I won't,
I will do what I will as my mind is pleasing
And if I am gone, I am here,
But when the tide whitens, I flame upon the seas
For I am the Son of Lir.