Poem by Cale Young Rice

The Song of the Homesick Gael

(In the characteristic minor 
of a recent literary movement)

I long to see the solan-goose
  Wing over Ailsa crag
At dusk again--or Girvan gulls at dawn;
To see the osprey grayly glide
  The winds of Kamasaig:
For grayness now my heart is set upon.

The grayness of sea-spaces where
  There's loneliness alone,
Save for the wings that sweep it with unrest,
Save for the hunger-cries that sound
  And die into a moan,
Save for the moaning hunger in my breast.

For grayness is the hue of all
  In life that is not lies.
A thousand years of tears are in my heart;
And only in their mystery
  Can I be truly wise:
From light and laughter follies only start.

I long to see the mists again
  Above the tumbling tide
Of Ailsa, at the coming of the night.
There's weariness and emptiness
  And soul unsatisfied
Forever in the places of delight.

1. Off the Irish Coast
2. Finitude
3. Cosmism
4. I Know Your Heart, O Sea!
5. To a Firefly by the Sea

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