BALLINTUBBERT HOUSE, CO. LAOIS Here is the unremembered gate, Two asses, a grey and a black, Have ambled across from the rough lawn As if they'd been told to greet The revenant. Trees draw graciously back As I follow the drive, to unveil For this drifty wraith, composed and real The house where he was born. Nothing is changed from that sixty-year-old Photograph, except My father's young face has been brushed away. On the steps down which he strolled With me in his arms, the living are grouped, And it is my son, Sean Who stands upon the dishevelled lawn To photograph us today. I walk through the unremembered house, Note on the walls each stain Of damp; then up the spacious stair As if I would now retrace My self to the room where it began. Dust on fine furnishings, A scent of wood ash -- the whole house sings With an elegiac air. Its owner is not at home -- nor I Who have no title to it And no drowned memories to chime Through its hush. Can piety Or a long-lost innocence explain it? By what prodigious spell, Sad elegant house, you have made me feel A ghost before my time? -- Anglo-Irish C. DAY-LEWIS, Poet Laureate, England Note -- Cecil DAY-LEWIS was born in Ballintubbert House, Ballintober, Queen's (now Co. Laois) Ireland, the son of Frank & Kathleen DAY-LEWIS, his father a Protestant clergyman. Although they moved to England within the next two years, C. DAY-LEWIS never forgot his Irish roots. He began writing poetry at the age of six, attended Oxford, wrote mystery novels under a pseudonym, taught for seven years, was a visiting professor at Harvard in 1964-65. C. DAY-LEWIS received the honor of being chosen Poet Laureate of England in 1968. Much of his poetry has been published in the USA.