| |
| MY grief! that they have laid you in the town | |
| Within the moidher of its thousand wheels | |
| And busy feet that travel up and down. | |
| |
| They had a right to choose a better bed | |
| Far off among the hills where silence steals | 5 |
| In on the soul with comfort-bringing tread. | |
| |
| The curlew would have keened for you all day, | |
| The wind across the heather cried Ochone | |
| For sorrow of his brother gone away. | |
| |
| In Glenmalure, far off from town-bred men, | 10 |
| Why would they not have left your sleep alone | |
| At peace there in the shadow of the glen? | |
| |
| To tend your grave you should have had the sun, | |
| The fraughan and the moss, the heather brown | |
| And gorse turned gold for joy of Spring begun | 15 |
| |
| You should have had your brothers, wind and rain, | |
| And in the dark the stars all looking down | |
| To ask, “When will he take the road again?” | |
| |
| The herdsmen of the lone back hills, that drive | |
| The mountain ewes to some far distant fair, | 20 |
| Would stand and say, “We knew him well alive, | |
| |
| That God may rest his soul!” then they would pass | |
| Into the silence brooding everywhere, | |
| And leave you to your sleep below the grass. | |
| |
| But now among these alien city graves, | 25 |
| What way are you without the rough wind’s breath | |
| You free-born son of mountains and wild waves? | |
| |
| Ah! God knows better—here you’ve no abode, | |
| So long ago you had the laugh at death, | |
| And rose and took the windswept mountain road. | 30 |
| |
