Classic Poem

In Donegal, where old romance yet blows
O'er hill and hearth, the children in the blast
Of storm hear cries and clashing arms of those
Whose dreams were deeds, in Eire's living past.

And looking on the fields with clover spread
They never stop to pick the wind-stirred bloom;
Those flowers might be the blood their fathers shed
Now come to ruddy blossom on their tomb.

They look upon the lifted sea that flows
In mountains shoreward, breaks, and piles again;
The winds, they say, thus heap a cairn for those
Who have God's acre in the unmarked main.

Inever saw the fields those children see,
The fog-scarfed mountains, nor the hilly deep,
But share their every dream and memory, —
Only the age-long hates I can not keep.

For there they lie, my fathers and their foes,
As in one grave they wait the trumpet call;
O'er some the foam, o'er some the clover blows,
The while they're sleeping long in Donegal.