What need you, being come to sense, <br />But fumble in a greasy till <br />And add the halfpence to the pence <br />And prayer to shivering prayer, until <br />You have dried the marrow from the bone? <br />For men were born to pray and save: <br />Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, <br />It's with O'Leary in the grave. <br /> <br />Yet they were of a different kind, <br />The names that stilled your childish play, <br />They have gone about the world like wind, <br />But little time had they to pray <br />For whom the hangman's rope was spun, <br />And what, God help us, could they save? <br />Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, <br />It's with O'Leary in the grave. <br /> <br />Was it for this the wild geese spread <br />The grey wing upon every tide; <br />For this that all that blood was shed, <br />For this Edward Fitzgerald died, <br />And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, <br />All that delirium of the brave? <br />Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, <br />It's with O'Leary in the grave. <br /> <br />Yet could we turn the years again, <br />And call those exiles as they were <br />In all their loneliness and pain, <br />You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair <br />Has maddened every mother's son': <br />They weighed so lightly what they gave. <br />But let them be, they're dead and gone, <br />They're with O'Leary in the grave.<br /><br />William Butler Yeats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/september-1913/
