Sprays of Shamrock

Excerpt

[p 3]

MUCKROSS

tnight there came unto MacCarthy MoreA hooded vision with a voice that said,“Go thou straightway and raise a house to GodUpon the spot where stands the Rock of Song!”So with the golden lifting of the dawnUpsprang the chieftain and loud called his kerns,And bade them seek the Rock. For many a dayThey roved the sweeping meads and fens and fellsIn fruitless search, and ever forth againRelentlessly he drove them from his holdBeside the dimpling waters of Lough Leane.“The Rock!” he cried, “find ye the Rock of Song!”And still they found it not. Then the gaunt chief,His long locks hoary with the frost of years,Girded himself, and turned his tottering stepsAbroad in the soft lengthening of the duskAthwart a woodland close, and saw and heardA little maid, her pitcher held at poise,Singing an old lament in minors clear[p4]
And plaintive as the twilight, words that voicedThe poignant, passionate yearning of the soul.“A sign!” the spent man whispered low, “a sign!”And on the spot he raised a house to God.

I

Thisis the hill of Maeve, the queen,A mighty bulwark of gray-green
Whereon was set, by hands unknown,A rugged monument of stone.
The great winds mourn, and sobs the waveBeneath the lichened cairn of Maeve.From many a rocky Leitrim heightO’er Lough Gill’s waters, blue and bright,
From wherefronts the foam,And sees the Sligo ships put home,
Maeve’s hill is like a pharos flame,As is eternally her name!

III

’Neath azure tides of morning airRipple the waves of Ballysadare
[p6]
Under where frowning KnocknareaLooks o’er the Rosses far to sea,—
Looks far to sea, rememberingMaeve’s loveliness, a vanished thing.The cromlechs, gray with eld, below,Recall the dreams of long ago,—
The dreams of kern and king, both slaveTo beauty, and the white Queen Maeve;
And though she slumbers, deep, so deep,Her golden memory may not sleep!

[p 7]
AT KILLYBEGS

AtKillybegs above the cragsThe gray gulls pipe with voices thinned,And all the green trees are like flagsThat wave and waver in the wind.
At Killybegs about the dunesRustle the crispy grass and whin,And low the long tide croons and croonsAs it creeps out, as it creeps in.
At Killybegs the white sails raceWhen the blue sea is like a floor;Like doubt night falls with haggard face;Sometimes the ships return no more.
The brown bee drains the cottage flowersOf honey to their crimson dregs,And love hath many happy hours’Twixt birth and death at Killybegs!I havedreams of the outer islands,Firths and forths of the Far-Away;I have dreams of the heathery highlandsUnder the golden day.
I have dreams of a sliding river—Shannon—under the stars and sun;I have dreams how the oar-blades quiver,And the silvery salmon run.
I have dreams of a blithe lad stridingOut through the streets of Limerick-town;I have dreams of a sweet maid bidingUnder a thatch of brown.
But here I lie all huddled and hidden,(Oh, the eternity it seems!)Brooding desolate and bed-ridden,Living only in dreams!

[p 9]
AN EXILE

I canremember the plaint of the wind on the moor,Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day,And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour,And the sound of the surge as it breaks on the beach of the bay.
I can remember the thatch of the cot and the byre,And the green of the garth just under the dip of the fells,And the low of the kine, and the settle that stood by the fire,And the reek of the peat, and the redolent heathery smells.
And I long for it all though the roses around me are red,And the arch of the sky overhead has bright blue for a lure,And glad were the heart of me, glad, if my feet could but treadThe path, as of old, that led upward and over the moor...!