After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics.
With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green:
The Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine,
Is Crashaw’s niche, that honey-lipped divine.
And so when all my little work is done
They’ll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,
And died in Dublin…. What year will they write
For my poor passage to the stall of Night?
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Poems and Translations | Churchtown, Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1898