Clondalkin

Soft rain beating with the soughing breeze
as evening falls on the long-grassed park:
the echoing half-empty house
grows more dark—
never was sadder place of decay than
this Irish house in the lowering trees.

But we are more than a match for gloom
when we talked away the severing years,
lighting in friendship's rediscovery
a fire that cheers,
and Pentecostal flames were burning
strange and bright in the startled room.

2 August 1946