Before you leave my hands' abuses <br />To lie where many odd things meet you, <br />Neglected darkling of the Muses, <br />I, the last of singers, greet you. <br /> <br />Snug in some white wing they found you, <br />On the Common bleak and muddy, <br />Noisy goslings gobbling round you . <br />In the pools of sunset, ruddy. <br /> <br />Have you sighed in wings untravelled <br />For the heights where others view the <br />Bluer widths of heaven, and marvelled <br />At the utmost top of Beauty ? <br /> <br />No ! it cannot be ; the soul you <br />Sigh with craves nor begs of us. <br />From such heights a poet stole you <br />From a wing of Pegasus. <br /> <br />You have been where gods were sleeping <br />In the dawn of new creations, <br />Ere they woke to woman's weeping <br />At the broken thrones of nations. <br /> <br />You have seen this old world shattered <br />By old gods it disappointed, <br />Lying up in darkness, battered <br />By wild comets, unanointed. <br /> <br /> <br />But for Beauty unmolested <br />Have you still the sighing olden ? <br />I know mountains heather-crested, <br />Waters white, and waters golden. <br /> <br />There I'd keep you, in the lowly <br />Beauty-haunts of bird and poet, <br />Sailing in a wing, the holy <br />Silences of lakes below it. <br /> <br />But I leave you by where no man <br />Finds you, when I too be gone <br />From the puddles on this common <br />Over the dark Rubicon.<br /><br />Francis Ledwidge<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-an-old-quill-of-lord-dunsany-s/
