September 1913
By William Butler Yeats
What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Irelands dead and gone,
Its with OLeary in the grave.
Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangmans rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Irelands dead and gone,
Its with OLeary in the grave.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Irelands dead and gone,
Its with OLeary in the grave.
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were,
In all their loneliness and pain
Youd cry Some womans yellow hair
Has maddened every mothers son:
They weighed so lightly what they gave,
But let them be, theyre dead and gone,
Theyre with OLeary in the grave.