Butter sunk under

More than a hundred years

Was recovered salty and white.

………………………

They’ll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks

Of great firs, soft as pulp.

Our pioneers keep striking

Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip

Seems camped on before.

The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

The wet centre is bottomless.

—Seamus Heaney, “Bogland,” 1969

The tempest rag’d with ceaseless din—

A wilder tempest rag’d within

The bosom of that wretched man;

(Upon whose visage pale and wan,

The hues of death were quickly stealing,

The fever, famine’s work, revealing;—)

For he had done a fearful thing,

In presence of the famishing.

—C. A. Rawlins, “The Famine in Ireland: A Poem,” 1847