New Year's Day tradition: An Old Woman of the Roads

An Old Woman of the Roads

O, to have a little house! 
To own the hearth and stool and all! 
The heaped up sods against the fire, 
The pile of turf against the wall! 
To have a clock with weights and chains 
And pendulum swinging up and down! 
A dresser filled with shining delph, 
Speckled and white and blue and brown! 
I could be busy all the day 
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor, 
And fixing on their shelf again 
My white and blue and speckled store! 
I could be quiet there at night 
Beside the fire and by myself, 
Sure of a bed and loth to leave 
The ticking clock and the shining delph! 
Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark, 
And roads where there's never a house nor bush, 
And tired I am of bog and road, 
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush! 
And I am praying to God on high, 
And I am praying Him night and day, 
For a little house - a house of my own 
Out of the wind's and the rain's way. 

--Padraic Colum

Comments

[Melanie B]

I love Padriac Colum. What a lovely little vision of house and home, a cozy cottage. So very like you, Alice.

[Alice Gunther]

Thank you so much, Melanie. I love it--it was one of my first posts to this blog (perhaps even the first, I can't recall). It always reminds me to be grateful, even for the tasks of homemaking. "I could be busy all the day, clearing and sweeping the hearth and floor"--so touching.