Chapter VIII

But I mind wan Sathurday’s night, whin we just were starved wid the could,
Me mother, she that we keep, an’ that’s growin’ terrible ould,
All of a heap she was crouched be the hearth that was black as your grave,
For clane gone out was the fire; and her ould head never ’ud lave
Thrimblin’ on like a dhrop o’ rain that’s ready to fall from the row,
The faster it thrimbles an’ thrimbles the sooner it is to go.
And her poor ould hands were thrimblin’ as she sthretched thim out for the hate,
For she’d gone too blind to see that there wasn’t a spark in the grate;
Nor bit nor sup she’d had but a crust o’ dhry bread that day,
’Cause our praties had rotted on us, an’ we’d had to throw thim away;
An’ I knowed she was vexed, for, sure, it’s but doatin’ she is afther all,
And ’ill fret like a child whin she feels that her slice is cut skimpy an’ small;
But other whiles she’d be grievin’ that we’d not got quit of her yet,
An’ misdoubtin’ we grudged away from the childher each morsel she’d get.
An’ watchin’ her sittin’ there, an’ rememb’rin’ the life she’d led,
For me father dhrank, an’ she’d throuble enough to keep the pack of us fed,
An’ never the comfort she’d now, an’ she grown feeble an’ blind--
I couldn’t but think ’twas a cruel bad job for such as she if behind
The blackness over beyant there was nought but could for the could,
An’ dark for the dark--no new world at all to make amends for the ould.
Tho’ in troth it ’ud have to be the quarest world ye could name
That ’ud make it worth wan’s while to ha’ lived in the likes o’ this same.

IX

But the dhrame I dhreamt that night was as sthrange as sthrange, for thin
I thought I had come to a place whose aquil I never was in,
An’ nobody’d tould me ’twas out o’ this world, yet as soon as I came
Just o’ meself I knew it, as people will in a dhrame.
An’ it looked an iligant counthry, an’ all in a glimmerin’ green,
The colour o’ leaves in the spring, wid a thrimble o’ mist between;
An’ the smell o’ the spring was in it, but the light that sthramed over all
Was liker the shine of a sunset whin leaves are beginnin’ to fall.