FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have gone <br />Since old William pollexfen <br />Laid his strong bones down in death <br />By his wife Elizabeth <br />In the grey stone tomb he made. <br />And after twenty years they laid <br />In that tomb by him and her <br />His son George, the astrologer; <br />And Masons drove from miles away <br />To scatter the Acacia spray <br />Upon a melancholy man <br />Who had ended where his breath began. <br />Many a son and daughter lies <br />Far from the customary skies, <br />The Mall and Eades's grammar school, <br />In London or in Liverpool; <br />But where is laid the sailor John <br />That so many lands had known, <br />Quiet lands or unquiet seas <br />Where the Indians trade or Japanese? <br />He never found his rest ashore, <br />Moping for one voyage more. <br />Where have they laid the sailor John? <br />And yesterday the youngest son, <br />A humorous, unambitious man, <br />Was buried near the astrologer, <br />Yesterday in the tenth year <br />Since he who had been contented long. <br />A nobody in a great throng, <br />Decided he would journey home, <br />Now that his fiftieth year had come, <br />And 'Mr. Alfred' be again <br />Upon the lips of common men <br />Who carried in their memory <br />His childhood and his family. <br />At all these death-beds women heard <br />A visionary white sea-bird <br />Lamenting that a man should die; <br />And with that cry I have raised my cry.<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-memory-of-alfred-pollexfen/
