Skim-Milk

A small part only of my grief I write;             And if I do not give you all the tale         It is because my gloom gets some respite             By just a small bewailing: I bewail         That I with sly and stupid folk must bide         Who steal my food and ruin my inside.         Once I had books, each book beyond compare,             But now no book at all is left to me,         And I am spied and peeped on everywhere,             And my old head, stuffed with latinity,         And with the poet's load of grave and gay         Will not get me skim-milk for half a day.         Wild horse or quiet, not a horse have I,             But to the forest every day I go         Bending beneath a load of wood, that high!             Which raises on my back a sorry row         Of raw, red blisters; so I cry, alack,         The rider that rides me will break my back.         Ossian, when he was old and near his end,             Met Patrick by good luck, and he was stayed;         I am a poet too and seek a friend,             A prop, a staff, a comforter, an aid,         A Patrick who will lift me from despair,         In Cormac Uasal Mac Donagh of the golden hair.