Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.
The Burning of Kilcoleman
By Robert Dwyer Joyce (18301883)
N
From glen or tree or brake,
Save the bittern’s hollow booming
Up from the reedy lake;
The golden light of sunset
Was swallowed in the deep,
And the night came down with a sullen frown,
On Houra’s craggy steep.
But hark, that trumpet blast!
It fills the forest boundless,
Rings round the summits vast;
’T is answered by another
From the crest of Corrin Mór,
And hark again the pipe’s wild strain
By Bregoge’s caverned shore!
The trumpet’s golden thrill,
Grand ’neath the starry heaven
The pibroch wild and shrill!
Yet all were pale with terror,
The fearful and the bold,
Who heard its tone that twilight lone
In the Poet’s frowning hold!
For up the mountain pass,
By lake and river meeting,
Came kern and galloglass,
Breathing vengeance deadly,
Under the forest tree,
To the wizard man who cast the ban
On the minstrels bold and free!
Round still they came, and on,
Door, wall, and rampart scorning,—
They knew not he was gone!
Gone fast and far that even,
All secret as the wind,
His treasures all in that castle tall,
And his infant son behind!
Their pipes and horns were still,
While gazed they through the forest,
Up glen and northern hill;
Till from the Brehon circle,
On Corrin’s crest of stone,
A sheet of fire like an Indian pyre
Up to the clouds was thrown.
They answered—to the sky;
It dazzled their own gazing,
So bright it rolled and high;
The castle of the Poet—
The man of endless fame—
Soon hid its head in a mantle red
Of fierce and rushing flame.
For mercy as they sped,—
“Where was their master staying,
Where was the Poet fled?”
But hark! that thrilling screaming,
Over the crackling din,—
’T is the Poet’s child in its terror wild,
The blazing tower within!
Amid the listening throng,
He looked with face defiant
On the flames so wild and strong,
Then rushed into the castle,
And up the rocky stair,
But alas! alas! he could not pass
To the burning infant there!
And the flame was whirring round,
The wall went down in thunder,
And dashed him to the ground;
Up in the burning chamber
Forever died that scream,
And the fire sprang out with a wilder shout
And a fiercer, ghastlier gleam!
Up many a rocky bar,
From ancient Kilnamulla
To Darra’s Peak afar;
Then it heaved into the darkness
With a final roar amain,
And sank in gloom with a whirring boom,
And all was dark again!
And kerns, all still again,
Through Houra’s lonely passes,
Wild, fierce, and reckless men.
But such the Saxon made them,
Poor sons of war and woe;
So they venged their strife with flame and knife
On his head long, long ago!