| |
| WHERE those green mounds o’erlook the mingling Erne | |
| And salt Atlantic, clay that walked as Man | |
| A thousand years ago, Oster or Kerne, | |
| May still repose: and thither, if ye can, | |
| I pray ye, friends, to see my ashes borne | 5 |
| When I have measured out this mortal span; | |
| After so many centuries have rolled, | |
| Adding one brother to the sleepers old. | |
| |
| The silver salmon shooting up the fall, | |
| Itself at once the arrow and the bow; | 10 |
| The shadow of the old quay’s weedy wall | |
| Cast on the shining turbulence below; | |
| The water-voice which ever seemed to call | |
| Far off out of my childhood’s long-ago; | |
| The gentle washing of the harbor wave;— | 15 |
| Be these the sounds and sights around my grave. | |
| |
| Soothed also with thy friendly beck, my town, | |
| And near the square gray tower, within whose shade | |
| I might not with my fathers lay me down: | |
| Whilst, by the wide heavens changefully arrayed, | 20 |
| The purple mountains its horizon crown; | |
| And westward ’tween low hummocks is displayed | |
| In lightsome hours, the level pale blue sea, | |
| With sails upon it, creeping silently: | |
| |
| Or, other time, beyond that tawny sand, | 25 |
| And ocean glooming underneath the shroud | |
| Drawn thick athwart it by tempestuous hand; | |
| When like a mighty fire the bar roars loud, | |
| As though the whole sea came to whelm the land,— | |
| The gull flies white against the stormy cloud, | 30 |
| And in the weather-gleam the breakers mark | |
| A ghastly line upon the waters dark. | |
| |
| A green, unfading quilt above be spread, | |
| And freely round let all the breezes blow; | |
| May children play beside the breathless bed, | 35 |
| Holiday lasses by the cliff-edge go; | |
| And manly sports upon the sward be sped, | |
| And cheerful boats beneath the headland row. | |
| And be the thought, if any rise, of me, | |
| What happy soul might choose that thought to be. | 40 |
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