Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.
The Bog of Clondallagh
By John Frazer (1809–1849)A
With apples still bending?
Are the wheat-ridge and furrow
On Cappaghneale blending?
Let them bend,—let them blend!
Be they fruitful or fallow,
A far dearer old friend
Is the bog of Clondallagh!
Thy forest and river
And miniature mountains
Seemed round me forever;
But they cast from the past
No home memories, to hallow
My heart to the last,—
Like the bog of Clondallagh!
By Brosna’s bright water,
While it dashed away, seeming
A mountain’s young daughter!
Yet to roam with its foam,
By the deep reach, or shallow,
Made but brighter at home
The turf fires from Clondallagh!
More mournful than merry,
I sought through the wildwood
Young bird or ripe berry,
Some odd sprite or quaint knight,
Some Sindbad or Abdallah,
Was my chase by the light
Of bog fir from Clondallagh!
Have felt me a prowler
On their thin rushy cover,
More fatal than fowler;
And regret sways me yet
For the crash on the callow,
When the matched hurlers met
On the plains of Clondallagh!
The moss with a soundless
Quick step was a pleasure
Strange, stirring, and boundless;
For its spring seemed to fling
Up my foot, and to hallow
My spirit with wing,
O’er the sward of Clondallagh!
Of blossoming gladness,
May be strewed over reason
Rank seeds of vain sadness!
While a wild, wayward child,
With my young heart all callow,
It was warmed and beguiled
By dear Jane of Clondallagh!
No urchin dare press on
My place, while she cheated
Me into my lesson!
But soon came a fond claim
From a lover to hallow
His hearth with a dame—
In my Jane of Clondallagh!
From Jane to divide me,
I seemed in a prison,
Though she still was beside me;
And I knew more the true
From the love false or shallow,
The farther I flew
From that bride and Clondallagh!
My fancy long bore me,
To sue her to pity
The fate she brought o’er me!
And the dream, wood and stream,
The green fields, and the fallow,
Still return, like a beam,
From dear Jane of Clondallagh!