Epilogue

Fair Una MacMahon, the yellow-haired bride

Of the Lord of Dunlica, sits lone by the tide;

The red eye is quench’d in the blue, sullen main,

And the night-mist hangs pale over stormy Moveen.

The waves, in a war-dance, are shouting below,

And tossing about their tiaras of snow,

Besieging the bounds of that cliff-guarded shore,

Which may challenge their might for five thousand years more.

But why sits fair Una alone on the verge

Of that desolate rock, by the roar of the surge?

The wave-spray is silvering the silk of her hair,

The darkness grows ’round her, and still she is there!

The sea-birds are shrieking, like ghosts, ’round the cliffs,

And the fishers have steer’d to the brown bay their skiffs,

For they know by the low dingy scud of the South,

That the fiend of the tempest to-night will be out.

And Una has watch’d, from the dusk to the dark,

For the breeze-swollen wings of her Ocean-Chief’s bark,

Which has gone in pursuit of some maritime prey,

Since morning put on the sun-splendors of day.

—from “The Pirate of Dunlica—A Legend of Corcovaskin,” in Lays and Legends of Thomond, by Michael Hogan, the Bard of Thomond