The thin fern along the idle rue An ancient-blooming backyard, From thence to life perpetual, These flowers winged about the yard—

Against the tide the ancient rich, Are these of clamoring sand Amid the screaming summer stretch Lied sluggish flow some hundred strands.

The thin fern bending in the west, These feasts described with silent cry. A green world lost, a sound indeed, Ever receding sun and gallows-sighs.

Here Time rides: (clothes) the narrow sole of me, A track dance in locales—no more Than fervent leaves of ancestors green. This flowing lush enraptured heard-ache, Nothing but this, can I breathe— Amid these flower-woods and hesitation.

• James Joyce