Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.
The Gorsy Glen
By Robert Leighton (18221869)B
From Derry’s famous walls a little way,
There dreams a gorsy glen, in whose lone heart
I mused a Sabbath day.
That hides the sparkle of a trotting burn,
Save where in dimpling pools it stays its force,
Or takes a rocky turn.
Poured in the burn its tiny melodies.
The air was honey-laden, and the glen
All murmurous with bees.
Might start an echo with its rusty croak;
But all around the quiet Sabbath lay,
Hushed from the week-day yoke.
No foot into my sanctuary stole;
I wandered with my shadow in the glen,—
The only living soul.
I heard, or thought I heard, their whispered words,
And knew ’t was not the bees, the babbling stream,
Or carol of the birds.
There passed a light intenser than the gleam,—
A living soul without its grosser clay?
Or but my waking dream?
A verity to-morrow. Things have been
Forever with us in our daily round,
Though now but newly seen.
The veil that keeps the inward from our ken,
No lonely fellowship had then been mine
Within the gorsy glen.