Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.
Funcheon Woods
By Bartholomew Simmons (1804–1850)D
The rugged paths of duty,
Though lost to me the vesper star
Now trembling o’er your beauty,
Still vividly I see your glades,
The deep and emerald-hearted,
As when from their luxuriant shades
My lingering steps departed.
Can haunted thought remember
How came in gusts o’er Corrin-fell
The roar of dark September,
When I through that same woodland path
To endless exile hasted,
Where many an hour my lavish youth
The gold of evening wasted.
—Say, reckless heart, how is it
There ’s still so many a cliff to climb,
And well-known nook to visit?
The Filea’s spring is gurgling near,
And may I not, delaying,
One moment watch the glittering sand
Beneath its crystal playing?
“From all thy heart rejoices!”
And loud my childhood’s ancient trees
Then lifted up their voices,
As though they felt and mourned the loss
(With heads bowed down and hoary)
Of him who, seated at their feet,
First sang their summer glory.
From whose embrace I wended,
In vain the pine-trees’ shapely troop
Their graceful arms extended;
And vainly fast as sisters’ tears
The pallid birch was weeping,
While woke, like cousins’ sad blue eyes,
The winkle’s flower from sleeping.
The heart can trust in leaving,
Untroubled by the primal curse,
The dread of your deceiving.
I shall not see at least your fall,
And so, when wronged and wounded,
Still feel secure of peace at last,
By you, old friends! surrounded.
Or beautiful or tender,
He who invests them with a light
That sanctifies their splendor,
Finding no one abiding-place;
Be his the deep reliance
That he for holier worlds received
The bard’s immortal science.
Heaved wide as tossing ocean
When my last glance that autumn morn
Turned from their billowy motion,—
Turned where the willow’s tresses streamed
Above the river stooping,
Dark as your own bright lady’s-hair
Magnificently drooping.
When heaven with earth seemed warring,
And swept the tempest’s demon-power,
The landscape’s lustre marring,
One gentle spirit (haply then
Of Funcheon’s beauty thinking),
A fading girl, like a tired child,
On Death’s calm breast was sinking.
The haunts she prized so dearly;
O, place no marble o’er its turf,
For there shall flourish yearly
Such flowers as in her Bible’s leaves
She loved to fold and cherish,—
Pansies and early primroses,
That, as they blossom, perish.
Ye nevermore shall stir her;
And ye, fair woods, now vanishing
From memory’s darkened mirror,
Farewell; what meeter time for thought,
The lost and loved recalling,
Than in this solemn evening hour
When autumn-leaves are falling!