I have written a keen for you which follows. I am sorry your cheeks are not up to the description I have written of them, but you will smoke and read all night-At any rate here it is: A Lament for a Foster Son, and He going to the War Against the King of Foreign.
"Ochone He is gone from me the son of my mind And he in his golden youth like Angus Oge Angus of the bright birds And his mind strong and subtle like the mind of Cuchulin on Muirtheme.
Awirra sthrue His brow is as white as the milk of the cows of Maeve And his cheeks like the cherries of the tree And it bending down to Mary and she feeding the Son of God.
Aveelia Vrone His hair is like the golden collar of the Kings at Tara And his eyes like the four gray seas of Erin. And they swept with the mists of rain.
Mavrone go Gudyo He to be in the joyful and red battle Amongst the chieftains and they doing great deeds of valor His life to go from him It is the chords of my own soul would be loosed.
A Vich Deelish My heart is in the heart of my son And my life is in his life surely A man can be twice young In the life of his sons only.
Jia du Vaha Alanav May the Son of God be above him and beneath him, before him and behind him May the King of the elements cast a mist over the eyes of the King of Foreign, May the Queen of the Graces lead him by the hand the way he can go through the midst of his enemies and they not seeing him May Patrick of the Gael and Collumb of the Churches and the five thousand Saints of Erin be better than a shield to him And he got into the fight. Och Ochone."
Amory--Amory--I feel, somehow, that this is all; one or both of us is not going to last out this war.... I've been trying to tell you how much this reincarnation of myself in you has meant in the last few years... curiously alike we are... curiously unlike.
Good-by, dear boy, and God be with you.
THAYER DARCY.
*****
EMBARKING AT NIGHT
Amory moved forward on the deck until he found a stool under an electric light. He searched in his pocket for note-book and pencil and then began to write, slowly, laboriously: "We leave to-night... Silent, we filled the still, deserted street, A column of dim gray, And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat Along the moonless way; The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet That turned from night and day.