Introductory Rhymes

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain     Somewhere in ear-shot for the storys end,     Old Dublin merchant free of ten and four     Or trading out of Galway into Spain;     And country scholar, Robert Emmets friend,     A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;     Traders or soldiers who have left me blood     That has not passed through any huxters loin,     Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,     Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood     Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne     Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;     You merchant skipper that leaped overboard     After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,     You most of all, silent and fierce old man     Because you were the spectacle that stirred     My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say     Only the wastful virtues earn the sun;     Pardon that for a barren passions sake,     Although I have come close on forty-nine     I have no child, I have nothing but a book,     Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.