dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Ode to the Hill of Howth

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.

Howth, the Hill

Ode to the Hill of Howth

By William Hamilton Drummond (1778–1865)

HOW sweet from proud Ben-Edir’s height,

To see the ocean roll in light;

And fleets swift-bounding in the gale,

With warriors clothed in shining mail!

Fair hill, on thee great Finn of old

Was wont his counsels sage to hold;

On thee rich bowls the Fenians crowned,

And passed the foaming beverage round.

’T was thine within a sea-washed cave

To hide and shelter Duivne brave,

When, snared by Grace’s charms divine,

He bore her o’er the raging brine.

Fair hill, thy slopes are ever seen

Bedecked with flowers or robed in green;

Thy nut-groves rustle o’er the deep,

And forests crown thy cliff-girt steep.

High from thy russet peaks ’t is sweet

To see the embattled war-ships meet;

To hear the crash, the shout, the roar

Of cannon, through the caverned shore.

Most beauteous hill, around whose head

Ten thousand sea-birds’ pinions spread,

May joy thy lord’s true bosom thrill,

Chief of the Fenians’ happy hill!