Irish Songs and Poems By William Allingham: Second Edition: With Nine Airs for Voice and Pianoforte, and a Permanent Photograph of the Waterfall of Asaroe |
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OUR MOUNTAIN. |
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 | Irish Songs and Poems |  |
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OUR MOUNTAIN.
I
All hail to our Mountain! form well-known!His skirts of heath, and his scalp of stone;
Guardian of streams in their fitful youth,
Let them leap in spate or linger in drouth,
Who sets o'er the clouds an Olympian seat,
Where thunder is roll'd beneath our feet,
Where storm and lightning
And sunshine bright'ning
Solemnly girdle our steep retreat!
II
A day on the Hills!—true king am I,In my solitude, public to earth and sky.
Men have not tainted this atmosphere,
Wing'd thoughts only can follow here,
Folly and falsehood and babble stay
In the ground-smoke somewhere, far away.
Let them greet and cheat
In the narrow street,—
Who cares what all the city-folk say?
III
Oh, the tyrant eagle's palace to share,And the loneliest haunts of the shy brown hare!
The fields like a map, the lakes a-shine,
Hamlets and towns, and the ocean line,
Beechen valley and bilberry dell,
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With heaps and bosses
Of plume-ferns and mosses,
Scarlet rowan and slight blue-bell!
IV
Plume-ferns grow by the Waterfall,Wide in the shimmering spray and tall,
Where the ash-twigs tremble, one and all,
And cool air murmurs, and wild birds call,
And the glowing crag lifts a dizzy wall
To the blue, through green leaves' coronal,
And foam-bells twinkle
Where sunlights sprinkle
The deep dark pool of the waterfall.
V
By a great cliff's foot, on the heather-flower,I sit with the Shepherd Boy an hour,
Simple of life as his nibbling sheep,
Dotted far down the verdant steep;
I climb the path which sometimes fails
A peasant bound to more distant vales,
When Night, descending,
The world is blending,
Or fog, or the rushing blast, assails.
VI
My feast on a marble block is spread,I dip my cup in a cold well-head.
The poet's page is strong and fine,
I read a new volume in one old line,
Leap up for joy, and kiss the book;
Then gaze far forth from my lofty nook,
With fresh surprise,
And yearning eyes
To drink the whole beauty in one deep look.
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VII
From these towers the first gray dawn is spied,They watch the last glimmer of eventide,
Wear shadows at noon, or vapoury shrouds,
And meet in council with mighty clouds;
And at dusk the ascending stars appear
On their pinnacle crags, or the chill moon-sphere,
Whitening only
Summits lonely,
Circled with gulfs of blackest fear.
VIII
When ripe and dry is the heathery husk,Some eve, like a judgment-flame through the dusk
It burns the dim line of a huger dome
Than is clad in the paschal blaze of Rome,
And to valley, river, and larch-grove spires,
Signals with creeping scarlet fires,
Keen o'erpowering
Embers cowering
Low where the western flush retires.
IX
But the stern dark days with mutter and moanGather, like foes round a hated throne;
Terror is peal'd in the trumpet gale,
Crash'd on the cymbals of the hail,
Vapours move in a turbulent host,
Caves hold secret daggers of frost;
And silently white
In some morning's light
Stands the alter'd Mountain—a wintry ghost.
X
Till pack'd in hollows the round clouds lie,And wild geese flow changing down the sky
To the salt sea-fringe; then milder rains
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That sweeping March left wasted and weak;
And the gray old Presence, dim and bleak,
With sudden rally,
O'er mound and valley,
Laughs with green light to his topmost peak!
XI
Thy soft blue greeting through distant airIs home's first smile to the traveller,—
Mountain, from thee, home's last farewell.
In alien lands there are tales to tell
Of thy haunted lake, and elvish ring,
And carn of an old Milesian king,
And the crumbling turrets
Where miser spirits
Batlike in vaults of treasure cling.
XII
Giant! of mystical, friendly brow,Protector of childhood's landscape thou,
Long golden seasons with thee abide,
And the joy of song, and history's pride.
Of all earth's hills I love thee best,
Reckon from thee mine east and west;
Fondly praying,
Wherever straying,
To leave in thy shadow my bones at rest.
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