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.