Poetry
Meath Men
WREN soft grass gives the udders comeliness, Before late milking-time in Meath and Carlow, Come, Macnamara, in whiskey let us bless The pastured royalties of Tara.
This is our land ; and here no summer mocks The stony crops we've known in Arran Islands, Where seas break silence and strip the yellow rocks Of rich top-dressing for lean highlands.
What of those lips, where Connemara sups The poteen Connacht drips from yeast and barley, While, Macnamara, we crown our royal cups With whiskey from the wheats of Tara.
Here, drowned within their dewy deeps of June, The fields, for graziers, gather evening silver ; And while each isle becomes a bush in tune, The Boyne flows into airy stillness.
Yet by the weirs, that shiver with dark eels, Dusk breaks in leaps of light ; and salmon-snarers Are nightly sharing fish in salley creels, That merely seem a dream to Clare-men,
Now in this half-way house my song is set, So shut your mouth and let me kiss the barmaid ; For, Brinsley Macnamara, you dare not forget The poets and their privileges in Tara.
F. R. IIIGGINs.
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