THREE OLD BROTHERS While some go dancing reels and some Go stuttering love in ditches The three old brothers rise from bed, And moan, and pin their breeches; And one says, "I can sleep no more, I'd liefer far go weeping, For how should honest men lie still When brats can spoil their sleeping?" And blind Tom says, that's eighty years, "If I was ten years younger I'd take a stick and welt their rumps And gall their gamest runner!" But James the youngest cries, "Praise God, We have outlived our passion!" And by their fire of roots all three Praise God after a fashion. Says James, "I loved when I was young A lass of one and twenty That had the grace of all the queens And broke men's hearts in plenty, But now the girl's a gammy crone With no soft sides or boosom, And all the lads she kist's abed Where the fat worm chews 'em; And though she had no kiss for me, And though myself is older, And though my thighs are cold to-night, Their thighs I think are colder!" And Blind Tom says, "I knew a man A girl refused for lover Worked in America forty years And heaped copper on copper, And came back all across the foam, Dressed in his silks and satins, And watched for her from dawn to dark And when she passed him in her shawl He cracked his sides for laughing. And went back happy to the west And heeded no man's scoffing, And Christ!" moans Tom, "if I'd his luck I'd not mind cold nor coughing!" Says Patcheen then, "My lot's a lot All men on earth might envy, That saw the girl I could not get Nurse an untimely baby!" And all three say, "Dear heart! Dear heart!" And James the youngest mutters, "Praise God we have outlived our griefs And not fell foul like others, Like Paris and the Grecian chiefs And the three Ulster brothers!" -- Frank O'Connor (born 1903)