Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.
Abbey Assaroe
By William Allingham (1824–1889)G
It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down;
The carven stones lie scattered in brier and nettle bed;
The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.
A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,
Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;
The boor-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,
And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.
It hears the voice of Erna’s fall,—Atlantic breakers too;
High ships go sailing past it; the sturdy clank of oars
Brings in the salmon-boat to haul a net upon the shores;
And this way to his home-creek, when the summer day is done,
The weary fisher sculls his punt across the setting sun;
While green with corn is Sheegus Hill, his cottage white below;—
But gray at every season is Abbey Assaroe.
He heard no running rivulet, he saw no mountain-ridge;
He turned his back on Sheegus Hill, and viewed with misty sight
The abbey walls, the burial-ground with crosses ghostly white;
Under a weary weight of years he bowed upon his staff,
Perusing in the present time the former’s epitaph;
For, gray and wasted like the walls, a figure full of woe,
This man was of the blood of them who founded Assaroe.
Herdsmen and spearmen, bards and wine, and holy abbots’ prayers,
With chanting always in the house which they had builded high
To God and to Saint Bernard,—whereto they came to die.
At least, no workhouse grave for him! the ruins of his race
Shall rest among the ruined stones of this their saintly place.
The fond old man was weeping; and tremulous and slow
Along the rough and crooked lane he crept from Assaroe.