Poem by John Frazer

The Bog of Clondallagh

ARE the orchards of Scurragh
  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!

Fair Birr of the fountains,
  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!

How sweet was my dreaming
  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!

If, whole days of a childhood
  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!

There the wild duck and plover
  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!

Yea, simply to measure
  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!

But alas! in the season
  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!

On the form with her seated,
  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!

When the altar had risen,
  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!

From the toils of the city
  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!

1. Brosna’s Banks

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