The Bog of Clondallagh

John Frazer

ARE the orchards of Scurragh

  With apples still bending?

Are the wheat-ridge and furrow

  On Cappaghneale blending?

Let them bend,—let them blend!

  Be they fruitful or fallow,

A far dearer old friend

  Is the bog of Clondallagh!

 

Fair Birr of the fountains,

  Thy forest and river

And miniature mountains

  Seemed round me forever;

But they cast from the past

  No home memories, to hallow

My heart to the last,—

  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!

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

  More mournful than merry,

I sought through the wildwood

  Young bird or ripe berry,

Some odd sprite or quaint knight,

  Some Sindbad or Abdallah,

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,

  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!

 

Yea, simply to measure

  The moss with a soundless

Quick step was a pleasure

  Strange, stirring, and boundless;

For its spring seemed to fling

  Up my foot, and to hallow

My spirit with wing,

  O’er the sward of Clondallagh!

 

But alas! in the season

  Of blossoming gladness,

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

  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!

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,

  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,

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

  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!