To an Old Quill of Lord Dunsany's

Before you leave my hands' abusesTo 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 youIn the pools of sunset, ruddy.

Have you sighed in wings untravelledFor the heights where others view theBluer widths of heaven, and marvelledAt the utmost top of Beauty?

No! it cannot be; the soul youSigh with craves nor begs of us.From such heights a poet stole youFrom a wing of Pegasus.

You have been where gods were sleepingIn the dawn of new creations,Ere they woke to woman's weepingAt the broken thrones of nations.

You have seen this old world shatteredBy old gods it disappointed,Lying up in darkness, batteredBy wild comets, unanointed.

But for Beauty unmolestedHave you still the sighing olden?I know mountains heather-crested,Waters white, and waters golden.

There I'd keep you, in the lowlyBeauty-haunts of bird and poet,Sailing in a wing, the holySilences of lakes below it.

But I leave you by where no manFinds you, when I too be goneFrom the puddles on this commonOver the dark Rubicon.

Londonderry,September 18th, 1916.