'Life is not a thing that you get a lease of; there will be stones
and a sod over you yet. Your ears that were so quick to hear
everything will be closed, deaf, without sound, without hearing;
your tongue that was so sweet to make verses will be without a word
in the same way.... Whatever store of money or wealth you have, and
the great coat up about your ears, death will snap you away from
the middle of it.'
And the poem ends at last with the story of the Passion and a prayer for
mercy.
He was always ready to confess his sins with the passionate exaggeration
of St. Paul or of Bunyan. In his 'Talk with the Bush,' when a flood is
threatened, he says:--
'I was thinking, and no blame to me, that my lease of life wouldn't
be long, and that it was bad work my hands had left after them; to
be committing sins since I was a child, swearing big oaths and
blaspheming. I never think to go to Mass. Confession at Christmas I
wouldn't ask to go to. I would laugh at my neighbour's downfall,
and I'd make nothing of breaking the Ten Commandments. Gambling and
drinking and all sorts of pleasures that would come across me, I'd
have my hand in them.'
The poem known as his 'Repentance' is in the same strain. It is said to
have been composed 'one time he went to confession to Father Bartley
Kilkelly, and he refused him absolution because he was too much after
women and drink. And that night he made up his "Repentance"; and the
next day he went again, and Father Pat Burke, the curate, was with
Father Bartley, and he said: "Well, Raftery, what have you composed of
late?" and he said: "This is what I composed," and he said the
Repentance. And then Father Bartley said to the curate: "You may give
him absolution, where he has his repentance made before the world."'