Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, Irish
The low greenhouses are still there, under whose glass roofs grew great
purple grapes, and where row on row of exotic flowers grew and delicate
ferns whose names are unknown to me, so much closer are men and horses
to me than flowers and ferns. Ivy is on the walls, soft-looking as
velvet, and the winds and rains have been kind to the lodge and the
stables. The walls are still white and a little moss is on the slates
of them, and a soft and gentle grass is between the cobbled stones.
And the deep well is there. And everywhere are birds and bees. The
bees are wild now, who once lived in skips of yellow straw, and their
nests are in the long grass, and there, too, is the meadowlark, and
under the eaves the swallows flit. And here the robin is safe with his
impudent eye, and the blackbird of the yellow bill. And everywhere the
throaty murmur of the wood-pigeons, the thrum of their wings.
Eh! There it is all still, at the foot of the soft and purple
mountains--the Sugarloaves, the Big Sugarloaf and the Little, and the
hill called Kitty Gallagher's, and the Scalp with its slender tower and
the sweet shoulder of Three Rock Mountain. And below--one could pitch
a stone nearly--is Dublin, the abiding city. There the Liffey,
rippling gently to the sea. And one can almost see St. Patrick's,
where great Swift was Dean, and Trinity, where poor Goldsmith and
fearless Burke were students. The broad streets, the princely squares.
And there Robert Emmet was hanged for treason against our Sovereign
Lord the King, His Crown and Majesty, and Lord Edward, the rebel
Geraldine, was stabbed. And there is Clontarf, where Brian the High
King fought the red Danes, fought and died, but fought and conquered.
And there Howth, where Iseult, the Dublin princess, sailed to marry
Mark in rugged Cornwall, sailed with Tristram....
Eh! There from Mount Kyteler one can see it all--the soft dreaming
mountains, the sad weeping city. And here where was once the laughter
of young women, the barking of dogs, the neighing of horses, the
shouting of lads--here is silence, but for the husky note of the
wood-pigeon, the little thunder of his wings, and the droning of the
seeking bees. All, all are dead, but here is no desolation. There is
the sweet gentleness of remembered twilights, and the copper beech
rustles, and the rowan nods, and the apple-trees murmur with their
antique boughs: "Is it yourself is in it, Ronnie? Is it yourself, long
lad? And it is long you've stayed away from us in foreign lands and
bitter seas. And it's Lady Margery you 're looking for? And Paddy the
Pipes? You mind him, do you so? And Jacky Sullivan--ah, the great
lad! Sure, they 've just left this minute, laughing fellow. Gone to
see the old earl, they have. Sure, you'll be following them, and
seeing them all soon. Over the mountains they went, a wee ways. You
'll see them all soon, very soon, a wheen of years...."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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