Under Saturn

Do not because this day I have grown saturnine Imagine that some lost love, unassailable Being a portion of my youth, can make me pine And so forget the comfort that no words can tell Your coming brought; though I acknowledge I have gone On a fantastic ride, my horses flanks were spurred By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen, And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard, And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died Before my time, seem like a vivid memory. You heard that labouring man who had served my people. He said Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay-- No, no, not said, but cried it out--“You have come again And surely after twenty years it was time to come.” I am thinking of a child’s vow sworn in vain Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.

November, 1919.