Here you will find thePoemTo An Old Quill Of Lord Dunsany'sof poet Francis Ledwidge
Before you leave my hands' abuses To 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 you . In the pools of sunset, ruddy. Have you sighed in wings untravelled For the heights where others view the Bluer widths of heaven, and marvelled At the utmost top of Beauty ? No ! it cannot be ; the soul you Sigh with craves nor begs of us. From such heights a poet stole you From a wing of Pegasus. You have been where gods were sleeping In the dawn of new creations, Ere they woke to woman's weeping At the broken thrones of nations. You have seen this old world shattered By old gods it disappointed, Lying up in darkness, battered By wild comets, unanointed. But for Beauty unmolested Have you still the sighing olden ? I know mountains heather-crested, Waters white, and waters golden. There I'd keep you, in the lowly Beauty-haunts of bird and poet, Sailing in a wing, the holy Silences of lakes below it. But I leave you by where no man Finds you, when I too be gone From the puddles on this common Over the dark Rubicon.
