One evening of December he was singing a little song that he said he
had heard from the green plover of the mountain, about the fair-haired
boys that had left Limerick, and that were wandering and going
astray in all parts of the world. There were a good many people in
the room that night, and two or three little lads that had crept in,
and sat on the floor near the fire, and were too busy with the
roasting of a potato in the ashes or some such thing to take much
notice of him; but they remembered long afterwards when his name had
gone up, the sound of his voice, and what way he had moved his hand,
and the look of him as he sat on the edge of the bed, with his shadow
falling on the whitewashed wall behind him, and as he moved going up
as high as the thatch. And they knew then that they had looked upon a
king of the poets of the Gael, and a maker of the dreams of men.
Of a sudden his singing stopped, and his eyes grew misty as if he was
looking at some far thing.
Mary Gillis was pouring whiskey into a mug that stood on a table
beside him, and she left off pouring and said, 'Is it of leaving us
you are thinking?'
Margaret Rooney heard what she said, and did not know why she said
it, and she took the words too much in earnest and came over to him,
and there was dread in her heart that she was going to lose so
wonderful a poet and so good a comrade, and a man that was thought so
much of, and that brought so many to her house.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36