ON MOYRUS

(1)

Your defeat is so great
That all you can hope for,
Since black Cromwell's soldiers
  Battered your wall,
Is that one of your race,
As I do, should turn homeward,
And see the straw heaped
  For the kine in your hall.

All you can wish for
Is the song that I make you—
Scented vessels laden
  With, white wine from Spain
Dropped anchor in your haven.
But all that I leave you
Is a song where defeat
  Makes no sweet of its pain.


(2)

My only comfort is in dreaming,
  When I see the broken stair
And know I cannot climb the turret,
  That some young girl climbed up there;
Seeing from it as I would see,
  Her body looped before the gale,
The woods turn deep and deeper blue
  Along a sound without a sail.

In dreaming that she had her fill
  Before she went down to her bed
To tease her fancy for the face
  Of some young man who'd turned her head;
That she had swum the bay that morn,
  And climbed in sport the highest tree,
And earned her rest on Moyrus Island
  Between Glandore and the great sea.

FRANK O'CONNOR

The Irish Statesman, 1927-08-20, p.564 as
Quest of Dead O'Donovans. [The title has
been changed to be in agreement with
the book "Three Old Brothers and other Poems",
London, 1936.]