| |
| ARE the orchards of Scurragh | |
| With apples still bending? | |
| Are the wheat-ridge and furrow | |
| On Cappaghneale blending? | |
| Let them bend,—let them blend! | 5 |
| Be they fruitful or fallow, | |
| A far dearer old friend | |
| Is the bog of Clondallagh! | |
| |
| Fair Birr of the fountains, | |
| Thy forest and river | 10 |
| And miniature mountains | |
| Seemed round me forever; | |
| But they cast from the past | |
| No home memories, to hallow | |
| My heart to the last,— | 15 |
| Like the bog of Clondallagh! | |
| |
| How sweet was my dreaming | |
| By Brosna’s bright water, | |
| While it dashed away, seeming | |
| A mountain’s young daughter! | 20 |
| Yet to roam with its foam, | |
| By the deep reach, or shallow, | |
| Made but brighter at home | |
| The turf fires from Clondallagh! | |
| |
| If, whole days of a childhood | 25 |
| More mournful than merry, | |
| I sought through the wildwood | |
| Young bird or ripe berry, | |
| Some odd sprite or quaint knight, | |
| Some Sindbad or Abdallah, | 30 |
| Was my chase by the light | |
| Of bog fir from Clondallagh! | |
| |
| There the wild duck and plover | |
| Have felt me a prowler | |
| On their thin rushy cover, | 35 |
| More fatal than fowler; | |
| And regret sways me yet | |
| For the crash on the callow, | |
| When the matched hurlers met | |
| On the plains of Clondallagh! | 40 |
| |
| Yea, simply to measure | |
| The moss with a soundless | |
| Quick step was a pleasure | |
| Strange, stirring, and boundless; | |
| For its spring seemed to fling | 45 |
| Up my foot, and to hallow | |
| My spirit with wing, | |
| O’er the sward of Clondallagh! | |
| |
| But alas! in the season | |
| Of blossoming gladness, | 50 |
| May be strewed over reason | |
| Rank seeds of vain sadness! | |
| While a wild, wayward child, | |
| With my young heart all callow, | |
| It was warmed and beguiled | 55 |
| By dear Jane of Clondallagh! | |
| |
| On the form with her seated, | |
| No urchin dare press on | |
| My place, while she cheated | |
| Me into my lesson! | 60 |
| But soon came a fond claim | |
| From a lover to hallow | |
| His hearth with a dame— | |
| In my Jane of Clondallagh! | |
| |
| When the altar had risen, | 65 |
| From Jane to divide me, | |
| I seemed in a prison, | |
| Though she still was beside me; | |
| And I knew more the true | |
| From the love false or shallow, | 70 |
| The farther I flew | |
| From that bride and Clondallagh! | |
| |
| From the toils of the city | |
| My fancy long bore me, | |
| To sue her to pity | 75 |
| The fate she brought o’er me! | |
| And the dream, wood and stream, | |
| The green fields, and the fallow, | |
| Still return, like a beam, | |
| From dear Jane of Clondallagh! | 80 |
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