QUEST OF DEAD O’DONOVANS

“On Moyrus stands a pyramidal tomb
commemorates the O'Donovan family.”

He stood on the last ledge of rock
Where beats the cold monotonous wave
Of outer sea; the icy sun
Climbed down the wintry peak of heaven

From tier to tier of cloud and sank.
And seabirds fluttering home to rest
On the last islands passed from sight,
Merged in the rippling weft of grey.

As one afraid, he did not turn,
Nor take his last glimpse of the shore
In daylight, where the pyramid
Stood, hopeless as a blind man's brow.

“O,if these dead dream, their one thought
Is their own utter loneliness,
With no succession, by their God
Abandoned on an alien shore!”

Monotonously the long grey wave
Upon his deeper silence broke,
And seemed their voices ranked behind,
In ghostly inarticulate grief.

“But what of him who lives? Is he
The happier for the strife or peace,
Where the old crafty alien race
And craftier peasant fight it out?”

Beyond the surge the winter sea
Swayed as it were but from the core,
And darkening, seemed one long low swell
Of mute revolt from west to east.

“Frustration is no man's complaint,
'Tis but a dream the dead must share
Who ask, and hear a speech unknown
Fall on the night, not answering them.”

The waves said, washing to his feet,
“It was not we who climbed the cliffs,
It was not we who sacked the towers,
Who broke the crosses, stilled the bells!”

“'Tis but one man's grief, this, to know
What their great verse can bring to mind
When waking—in some old-world town
In Flanders, and the moon is up!”

“We have no thought,” they cried, “no more
Than wind or rain what path we take:
We are the desert where you dwell,
And what you dream us!”—and were still.

“Has earth a bitterer death than theirs,
For whom the light that lost souls dream
Beyond their darkness breaks to-day
As they had dreamed it, yet goes out?”

He waited, and the gradual sound
Of wave on wave prolonged within
His ear was voiceless, for the night
Forbade him that cold company.

Beside their tomb his choice was made,
And many a time unmade before
The loneliness of these, his kin,
Took up its dwelling in his mind.

He stood on the last ledge of rock,
And did not turn, as though he feared
The desolation, or knew not
Which side lay Ireland, which the sea.

Frank O'Connor

Irish Statesman, 1927-02-05
[under title 'On Moyrus'. The title has
been changed to agree with the poem title published
in  “Three Old Brothers and other Poems”,
London, 1936]