Kilkelly, and he refused him absolution because he was too much after
women and drink. And that night he made up his "Repentance"; and the
next day he went again, and Father Pat Burke, the curate, was with
Father Bartley, and he said: "Well, Raftery, what have you composed of
late?" and he said: "This is what I composed," and he said the
Repentance. And then Father Bartley said to the curate: "You may give
him absolution, where he has his repentance made before the world."'

It is one of the finest of his poems. It begins:--

'O King, who art in heaven, ... I scream to Thee again and again
aloud, For it is Thy grace I am hoping for.

'I am in age, and my shape is withered; many a day I have been
going astray.... When I was young, my deeds were evil; I delighted
greatly in quarrels and rows. I liked much better to be playing or
drinking on a Sunday morning than to be going to Mass.... I was
given to great oaths, and I did not let lust or drunkenness pass me
by.... The day has stolen away, and I have not raised the hedge
until the crop in which Thou didst take delight is destroyed.... I
am a worthless stake in a corner of a hedge, or I am like a boat
that has lost its rudder, that would he broken against a rock in
the sea, and that would be drowned in the cold waves.'

But in spite of this self-denunciation, people who knew him say 'there
was no harm in him'; though it it is added: 'but as to a drop of drink,
he was fond of that to the end.' And in another mood, in his 'Argument
with Whisky,' he claims, as an excuse for this weakness, the desire for
companionship felt by a wanderer. 'And the world knows it's not for love
of what I drink, but for love of the people that do be near me.' And he