Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Padraic Colum (1881–1972). Anthology of Irish Verse. 1922.

By William A. Byrne

82. The Bog Lands

THE purple heather is the cloak

God gave the bogland brown,

But man has made a pall o’ smoke

To hide the distant town.

Our lights are long and rich in change,

Unscreened by hill or spire,

From primrose dawn, a lovely range,

To sunset’s farewell fire.

No morning bells have we to wake

Us with their monotone,

But windy calls of quail and crake

Unto our beds are blown.

The lark’s wild flourish summons us

To work before the sun;

At eve the heart’s lone Angelus

Blesses our labour done.

We cleave the sodden, shelving bank

In sunshine and in rain,

That men by winter-fires may thank

The wielders of the slane.

Our lot is laid beyond the crime

That sullies idle hands;

So hear we through the silent time

God speaking sweet commands.

Brave joys we have and calm delight—

For which tired wealth may sigh—

The freedom of the fields of light,

The gladness of the sky.

And we have music, oh, so quaint!

The curlew and the plover,

To tease the mind with pipings faint

No memory can recover;

The reeds that pine about the pools

In wind and windless weather;

The bees that have no singing-rules

Except to buzz together.

And prayer is here to give us sight

To see the purest ends;

Each evening through the brown-turf light

The Rosary ascends.

And all night long the cricket sings

The drowsy minutes fall,—

The only pendulum that swings

Across the crannied wall.

Then we have rest, so sweet, so good,

The quiet rest you crave;

The long, deep bogland solitude

That fits a forest’s grave;

The long, strange stillness, wide and deep,

Beneath God’s loving hand,

Where, wondering at the grace of sleep,

The Guardian Angels stand.