228 LIFE IN IRELAND 



welcomed you to the prison. He did, said Brian, and 

 made me pay my footing twice over : suppose we make 

 him give us a song of his own making, or an extempore 

 one. Let us ask him up stairs ; he will amuse us at 

 breakfast ; Blake beckoned Poet Rafferty\ and he 

 followed, nothing loath. 



MoONEY had got a good breakfast on table, to which 

 the party, including the Poet, did great justice. Now^, 

 Sir, said Captain Blake^ my friend here is an admirer 

 of the MuseSj and wishes to hear a specimen of your 

 talents. 



Faith and that he shall, in Epic^ Elegiac^ Pindaric^ 

 Homeric^ Prosaic^ Doric, or Teutonic Verses^ which ever 

 he likes best. I never heard of the two latter styles, 

 said Brian, but always thought they were orders in 

 architecture. 'Tis all one and the selfsame thing, said 

 the Bard, architecture and poetry are twin brothers, and 

 I, the first poet in all Ireland, enclosed in this piece of 

 architecture so snug, that nothing but the effusions of 

 my genius can get out, and this very bit of architecture 

 makes me a poet, because I live by my rhymes ; would 

 to Jasus I were out again bogtrotting, as Mr. Shlenopos 

 Bole Boy, over the Bog of Allen, and then I shouldn't 

 be here. 



The man reasons so well in prose, said Brian, I take 

 it he has both rhyme and reason in his poetry, so in 

 God's name give us it in the shape of a song. 



GOOD NEWS FOR IRELAND 



THE SONG OF PADDY o'rAFFERTY, A PRISON POET 



'Twas lately in the afternoon, 

 As I sat in my easy chair, 



