A Reverie of Poor Piers

On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

For the threshing mill was set-up I knew
In O'Donovan's haggard last night,
And we owed him a day at the threshing
Since last year. Oh it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And loving and talk in kind
With some work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind….

(27 September 1943)

§ This poem is repeated in Tarry Flynn
and in Collected Poems;
it is also in the National Library MS, No. 38.