April Dusk by Patrick Kavanagh

It is tragic to be a poet now
And not a lover
Paradised under the mutest bough.

I look through my window and see
The ghost of life flitting bat-winged.
O I am as old as a sage can even be,
O I am as lonely as the first fool kinged.

The horse in his stall turns away
From the hay-filled manger, dreaming of grass
Soft and cool in hollows. Does he neigh
Jealousy-words for John MacGuigan's ass
That never was civilised in stall or trace.

An unmusical ploughboy whistles down the lane
Not worried at all about the fate of Europe.
While I sit here feeling the subtle pain
Of one whose Tree of God has been uprooted. 
Note: I have just discovered the poetry of a native Irishman, Patrick Kavanagh.  He was a farmer for many years and a self-taught poet.  In the last years of his life he taught at University College Dublin.  He died in 1967.  His poetry has an unmistakeable lyric quality which I love.