| |
| CLEAR as air, the western waters | |
| evermore their sweet, unchanging song | |
| Murmur in their stony channels | |
| round O’Conor’s sepulchre in Cong. | |
| |
| Crownless, hopeless, here he lingered; | 5 |
| year on year went by him like a dream, | |
| While the far-off roar of conquest | |
| murmured faintly like the singing stream. | |
| |
| Here he died, and here they tombed him | |
| men of Fechin, chanting round his grave. | 10 |
| Did they know, ah! did they know it, | |
| what they buried by the babbling wave? | |
| |
| Now above the sleep of Rury | |
| holy things and great have passed away; | |
| Stone by stone the stately Abbey | 15 |
| falls and fades in passionless decay. | |
| |
| Darkly grows the quiet ivy, | |
| pale the broken arches glimmer through; | |
| Dark upon the cloister-garden | |
| dreams the shadow of the ancient yew. | 20 |
| |
| Through the roofless aisles the verdure | |
| flows, the meadow-sweet and fox-glove bloom. | |
| Earth, the mother and consoler, | |
| winds soft arms about the lonely tomb. | |
| |
| Peace and holy gloom possess him, | 25 |
| last of Gaelic monarchs of the Gael, | |
| Slumbering by the young, eternal | |
| river-voices of the western vale. | |
