Bog-land Studies :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thin t' other: ‘Mind you, there's many that's new to this place,’ sez he,
‘Comes axin' the same as yourself. But considher the way it 'ud be.
For whin wanst we downed wid the wall, an' nothin' was left to pervint
The poor folks yonder beholdin' the grandeur we've here fornint,
An' nearer a dale, belike, than they'd ever ha' thought or believed,
Who are the fools that 'ud stay any more where they're throubled an' grieved,
An' wouldn't be off wid thim here? Why, now, whin there's nought but a vast
O' shadow an' blackness afore him who looks to his death an' past

Why, even so, there's a few comes in that life wid its weary work
Has dhruv intirely mad, till they lept to their ends in the dark.

‘An’ in Ireland, sure, this instant, there's crowds o' thim sailin' bound
Off to the States an' 'Sthralia, that's half o' the whole world round,
Miles an' miles thro' the waves an' storms, an' whin they've got there, bedad,
No such won'erful lands, but just where their livin's aisier had.
An' it's mostly the young folks go, so the ould do be frettin' sore,
For thim that are gone they doubt 'ill come home in their time no more;
An' dhreary as e'er the long winther's night is the lonesome summer's day,
Whin there's never a stir in the house, an' the childher are over the say.

‘And, arrah now, wouldn't it be the worst day that ould Ireland has known,
Whin she'd waken an' find all the people had quitted an' left her alone?
Never a voice to be heard, or a hover o' smoke to be spied,
An' sorra a sowl to set fut on the green o' the grass far an' wide,
Till the roads ran lone thro' the lan' as the sthrame that most desolit flows,
An' the bastes, sthrayed away in the fields, grew as wild as the kites an' the crows,
An' no wan to care what became o' the counthry left starin' an' stark—
But that's how 'twould happen if ever we let thim look clear thro' the dark.’