I

 Around me the images of thirty years:
 An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
 Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
 Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;
 Kevin O'Higgins' countenance that wears
 A gentle questioning look that cannot hide
 A soul incapable of remorse or rest;
 A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed;


 II

 An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
 Blessing the Tricolour.  "This is not,' I say,
 "The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
 The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.'
 Before a woman's portrait suddenly I stand,
 Beautiful and gentle in her Venetian way.
 I met her all but fifty years ago
 For twenty minutes in some studio.

 
 III

 Heart-smitten with emotion I Sink down,
 My heart recovering with covered eyes;
 Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
 My permanent or impermanent images:
 Augusta Gregory's son; her sister's son,
 Hugh Lane, "onlie begetter' of all these;
 Hazel Lavery living and dying, that tale
 As though some ballad-singer had sung it all;


 IV

 Mancini's portrait of Augusta Gregory,
 "Greatest since Rembrandt,' according to John Synge;
 A great ebullient portrait certainly;
 But where is the brush that could show anything
 Of all that pride and that humility?
 And I am in despair that time may bring
 Approved patterns of women or of men
 But not that selfsame excellence again.


 V

 My mediaeval knees lack health until they bend,
 But in that woman, in that household where
 Honour had lived so long, all lacking found.
 Childless I thought, "My children may find here
 Deep-rooted things,' but never foresaw its end,
 And now that end has come I have not wept;
 No fox can foul the lair the badger swept -
 

 VI

 (An image out of Spenser and the common tongue).
 John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought
 All that we did, all that we said or sang
 Must come from contact with the soil, from that
 Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.
 We three alone in modern times had brought
 Everything down to that sole test again,
 Dream of the noble and the beggar-man.

 
 VII

 And here's John Synge himself, that rooted man,
 "Forgetting human words,' a grave deep face.
 You that would judge me, do not judge alone
 This book or that, come to this hallowed place
 Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;
 Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;
 Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
 And say my glory was I had such friends.