The poem
You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play, Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart; In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay, When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.
The herring are not in the tides as they were of old; My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the-cart That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold, When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.
And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when his oar Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart, Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore, When Iwas a boy with never a crack in my heart.
a nice poem to read out loud, especially near a fishing village. The repetition works, chant-like. Transports the reader into the mind-set of the aging fishman. His thought are not of squalls, rough waters...but of the charms of fisherman's life.