Voyager (verse)
Dalton, Power
332 THE COMMONWEAL July 3I, 19z9 He was marching to unite his army with Ormond's. But at this time he knew that he was dying." "Dyingl Of what?" "Tuberculosis or Bright's disease--I...
...But frustration in our own history--I have heard too much of that...
...Your cousin told it all to me this morning...
...And thinking on these journeys I went on the lakeshore with my friend...
...And if we did there would be more talk about the place, and I should have more reason than ever for being an anti-archaeologist...
...Whoever had built them had taken into account the wood and the lake water and the remoteness of neighborhood, and had put here cottages that had some relation to the scene...
...You're going to read me poems about frustrations...
...The islet was just beside us now...
...The hope that was in this seventeenth-century poem --James Stephens has translated it--died on this islet, and nothing afterward happened on it...
...Of course that church was made over into a Protestant one...
...The one that we go into is built of concrete into which big pebbles, round and oval, are set...
...Two rivers have their rise in Cavan--the Erne and the great Shannon...
...And others stood watching our coming...
...And eight thousand welltrained men made a considerable army in those days...
...About eight thousand...
...Three walls stood up...
...We pulled back in the rain...
...I suppose you'll tell me that O'Neill's grave is on the islet...
...How did you get to know all this...
...It is the only thing I have heard about him that interests me...
...Look long, Fill, fill your heart: from your final quay Will rise a lovely song...
...there was something baleful and fateful about them as they watched with sloping heads and beaks...
...The bones of Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill were flung aside to make room for one of a family of newcomers...
...The Erne flows north and west...
...Carry the leadership for me, Writ in this letter, o'er the sea To great O'Neill...
...We sat upon bits of fallen walls and read poems about defeats and frustrations...
...The islet is just wide enough to hold the walls of the keep: the builders left no room for an enemy to land in force...
...Their necks were up and their looks were on us...
...And then we landed...
...on their tops, at each corner, a bird was standing like a sentinel...
...Or I could go along the winding course of the river to where it enters the sea at Ballyshannon in Donegal...
...And so, having avoided hearing it from him, I have to hear it from you now...
...In front are wooden columns, whitewashed...
...It takes him out of the stiff mythological folds that all Irish leaders seem to have been put into...
...Yes...
...Much more so than the swans that drifted along by the islet...
...Even thatch, now weather-browned, covers the roof, and before the columns red hollyhocks are growing...
...The Shannon flows south...
...The romance of the rivers came to me, and I thought that I might cross the country to where the Shannon rose, and follow the river to the south after or before I had followed the Erne's course...
...No...
...The ivy covered the broken walls, big-leaved, dark green, with bunches of buds coming out of its growth...
...How many in the army...
...We don't know where the bones of the best and most chivalrous of Irish soldiers were put...
...Woyager Fill your eyes with the flung fields, Rippled and foamed with dover, Breathe the spray the white mist yields, And tree spars bending over Straining to reach that farthest sea, The cloud-foamed sky...
...We saluted the images of the cormorants that we had in our memories--the cormorants as they stood on the walls of the keep, superbly aloof from our interests and history, their beaks and necks lifted to the sky...
...You're not pulling very well...
...If poesy have truth at all, If some great lion of the Gael Shall rule the lovely land of F~il...
...The army marched past its leader and its maker, giving the victor of Benburb the last salute...
...332 THE COMMONWEAL July 3I, 19z9 He was marching to unite his army with Ormond's...
...We landed beside two cottages that were the nicest I have ever seen in any part of Ireland...
...I thought they were herons...
...the keep would have to be reduced before a landing was made...
...I realized that I was on one of the chief water systems in Ireland...
...One, then another, then a third dashed down from the high place when they made sure we were bound for the islet...
...The fact that Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill had a disease as usual as tuberculosis or Bright's disease makes him a sympathetic character for me...
...Tuberculosis or Bright's disease--I don't believe it is known which...
...But they looked at us in a wilder way...
...Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill was buried in the chancel of the Franciscan church in Cavan...
...The little space held a little wUdernesswthorn bushes with bunches of red haws on them, elder bushes with clusters of dark berries, hollies and clumps of ivies...
...Someone who had an idea of giving character and charm to the cottages that he had a chance of building, built these two...
...The River Erne flowed through this lake...
...Well, he took leave of his army in a place nearby...
...POWER DALTON...
...O yellow mast and roaring sail...
...It is a pity that his idea did not spread...
...He handed the command over to his nephew, young Hugh O'Neill...
...They disappeared in an instant...
...If we went on (but we should have to go in a motor boat) we should come to Enniskillen, and from Enniskillen I might turn toward East Ulster...
...Cormorants l Very proper to the scene were these quick-eyed, baleful watchers...
...The other cottage is made in the same style and with the same material, but it has tiles on its roof...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 13
