The Dark Breed

THE DARK BREED
by F. R. Higgins

WITH those bawneen men I'm one,
   In the grey dusk-fall,
Watching the Galway land
   Sink down in distress-
With dark men, talking of grass,
   By a loose stone wall,
In murmurs drifting and drifting
   To loneliness.

Over this loneliness,
   Wild riders gather their fill
Of talking on beasts and on fields
   Too lean for a plough,
Until, more grey than the grey air,
   Song drips from a still,
Through poteen, reeling the dancing-
   Ebbing the grief now!

Just, bred from the cold lean rock,
   Those fellows have grown;
And only in that grey fire
   Their lonely days pass
To dreams of far clovers
   And cream-gathering heifers, alone
Under the hazels of moon-lighters,
   Clearing the grass.

Again in the darkness,
   Dull knives we may secretly grease,
And talk of blown horns on clovers
   Where graziers have lain;
But there rolls the mist,
   With sails pulling wind from the seas-
No bullion can brighten that mist,
   O brood of lost Spain.

So we, with the last dark men,
   Left on the rock grass,
May brazen grey loneliness
   Over a poteen still
Or crowd on the bare chapel floor
   Hearing late Mass,
To loosen that hunger
   Broken land never can fill.