Page:The Land of Heart's Desire, Yeats, 1894.djvu/19

Rh .

She would not mind the griddle, milk the cow,

Or even lay the knives and spread the cloth.

.

I never saw her read a book before:

What may it be?

.

I do not rightly know:

It has been in the thatch for fifty years.

My father told me my grandfather wrote it,

Killed a red heifer and bound it with the hide.

But draw your chair this way—supper is spread;

And little good he got out of the book,

Because it filled his house with roaming bards,

And roaming ballad-makers and the like,

And wasted all his goods.—Here is the wine;

The griddle bread's beside you, Father Hart.

Colleen, what have you got there in the book

That you must leave the bread to cool? Had I,

Or had my father, read or written books

There were no stocking full of silver and gold

To come, when I am dead, to Shawn and you.