A Lament for Moira McCavendish
Through the midlands of Ireland I journeyed by diesel
And bright in the sun shone the emerald plain;
Though loud sang the birds on the thorn-bush and teasel
They could not be heard for the sound of the train.
The roll of the railway made musing creative:
I thought of the colleen I soon was to see
With her wiry black hair and grey eyes of the native,
Sweet Moira McCavendish, acushla machree.
Her brother’s wee cabin stands distant from Tallow
A league and a half, where the Blackwater flows,
And the musk and potato, the mint and the mallow
Do grow there in beauty, along with the rose.
’Twas smoothly we raced through the open expansion
Of rush-covered levels and gate-lodge and gate
And the ruined demesne and the windowless mansion
Where once the oppressor had revelled in state.
At Castletownroche, as the prospect grew hillier,
I saw the far mountains to Moira long-known
Till I came to the valley and townland familiar
With the Protestant church standing locked and alone.
O vein of my heart! upon Tallow Road Station
No face was to greet me, so freckled and white;
As the diesel slid out, leaving still desolation,
The McCavendish ass-cart was nowhere in sight.
For a league and a half to the Blackwater river
I tramped with my bundle her cabin to see
And herself by the fuchsias, her young lips a-quiver
Half-smiling, half-weeping a welcome to me.
Och Moira McCavendish! the fangs of the creeper
Have struck at the thatch and thrust open the door;
The couch in the garden grows ranker and deeper
Than musk and potato which bloomed there before.
Flow on, you remorseless and salmon-full waters!
What care I for prospects so silvery fair?
The heart in me’s dead, like your sweetest of daughters,
And I would that my spirit were lost on the air.