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- RESPONSIBILITIES
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- i{Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
- Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,
- Old Dublin merchant "free of the ten and four"
- Or trading out of Galway into Spain;
- Old country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,
- A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;
- Merchant and scholar who have left me blood
- That has not passed through any huckster's loin,
- Soldiers that gave, whatever die was cast:
- A Butler or an Armstrong that withstood
- Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne
- James and his Irish when the Dutchman crossed;
- Old merchant skipper that leaped overboard
- After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay;
- You most of all, silent and fierce old man,
- Because the daily spectacle that stirred
- My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say,
- "Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun";
- Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,
- Although I have come close on forty-nine,
- I have no child, I have nothing but a book,
- Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.}
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