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III
IRISH IVY

(AT KILCOLMAN CASTLE, COUNTY CORK)

Desmond's lost tower, the ruined kilu, as one
Equal it holds in green oblivion.
It breathes perennial grace o'er long decay,
And gives antiquity to yesterday.
 

There are many of these ruined kilus of stone, overgrown and heavily draped with ivy, in the south of Ireland. The one here mentioned was a few rods behind Edmund Spenser's Castle, the Birthplace of “The Faerie Queene.”