O, to have a little house!
To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods upon the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!
To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delph,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!
I could be busy all the day
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!
I could be quiet there at night
Beside the fire and by myself,
Sure of a bed and loth to leave
The ticking clock and the shining delph!
Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house--a house of my own--
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.
_Joseph Campbell_
(_Seosamh MacCathmhaoil_)
Joseph Campbell was born in Belfast in 1881, and is not only a poet
but an artist; he made all the illustrations for _The Rushlight_
(1906), a volume of his own poems. Writing under the Gaelic form of
his name, he has published half a dozen books of verse, the most
striking of which is _The Mountainy Singer_, first published in Dublin
in 1909.