Nature and Scenic Poetry


Arran

Arran of the many stags, the sea reaches to its shoulder; island where companies were fed, ridge where blue spears are reddened.

Wanton deer upon its peaks, mellow blaeberries on its heaths, cold water in its streams, riuts upon its brown oaks.

Hunting-dogs there, and hounds, blackberries and sloes of the dark blackthorn, dense thorn-bushes in its woods, stags astray among its oak-groves.

Gleaning of purple lichen on its rocks, grass without blemish on its slopes, a sheltering cloak over its crags; gambolling of fawns, trout leaping.

Smooth is its lowland, fat its swine, pleasant its fields, a tale you may believe; its nuts on the tips of its hazel-wood, sailing of long galleys past it.

It is delightful for them when fine weather comes, trout under the banks of its rivers, seagulls answer each other round its white cliff; delightful at all times is Arran.


The Hill of Howth

Delightful to be on the Hill of Howth, very sweet to be above its white sea; the perfect fertile hill, home of ships, the vine-grown pleasant warlike peak.

The peak where Finn and the Fianna used to be, the peak where were drinking-horns and cups, the peak where bold O'Duinn brought Grainne one day in stress of pursuit.

The peak bright-knolled beyond all hills, with its hill-top round and green, and rugged; the hill full of swordsmen, full of wild garlic and trees, the many-coloured peak, full of beasts, wooded.

The peak that is loveliest throughout the land of Ireland, the bright peak above the sea of gulls, it is a hard step for me to leave it, lovely Hill of delightful Howth.


To the Den