To An Old Quill Of Lord Dunsany's

Before you leave my hands' abuses

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 untravelled

For the heights where others view the

Bluer widths of heaven, and marvelled

At the utmost top of Beauty ?

No ! it cannot be ; the soul you

Sigh with craves nor begs of us.

From such heights a poet stole you

From a wing of Pegasus.

You have been where gods were sleeping

In the dawn of new creations,

Ere they woke to woman's weeping

At the broken thrones of nations.

You have seen this old world shattered

By old gods it disappointed,

Lying up in darkness, battered

By wild comets, unanointed.

But for Beauty unmolested

Have you still the sighing olden ?

I know mountains heather-crested,

Waters white, and waters golden.

There I'd keep you, in the lowly

Beauty-haunts of bird and poet,

Sailing in a wing, the holy

Silences of lakes below it.

But I leave you by where no man

Finds you, when I too be gone

From the puddles on this common

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