Black Oxen Passing By

Abstract

Home he [Sean] came from America,¹ very tired and strangely thrilled, to sit and think and recover by an electric fire in a new home formed from a flat in Battersea. There one day a letter came to him from W. B. Yeats. He recognised the writing: from the poet, right enough, the great Yeats. He was bade to come to take dinner with the poet in his lodgings at Lancaster Gate.² At last, Yeats had stretched out a hand of friendship; and the heart within Sean rejoiced greatly. Then here’s a hand, me trusty frien’, an’ gi’e’s a hand o’ thine! Seas between us braid ha’e roared sin’ auld lang syne.

Extracted from Rose and Crown (London: Macmillan, I952).