Glen Wyllin

The lovely glens of this green isle

Were one-time avenues of delight,

Where Nature at her work could smile

Before man cast his mortal blight.

Can artificial waterfalls

And lakes that lie in man’s design

And rustic work and concrete walls

Enhance the beauty of a chine?

I know a vale that fronts the sea,

A gracious winding verdant lane

That leads from moorlands wide and free

To wide sand and the trackless main.

Time was – I see it with an eye

Back-gazing into other years –

That pools untamed laughed to the sky,

And grass was ignorant of shears:

No surfaced road led to the beach

The coach-loads of indifferent hosts;

This heaven was beyond their reach,

Hidden amid deserted coasts.

No careful plots of tended flowers

That rigidly as soldiers stand,

No quasi-rustic summer bowers

Were there to scar the virgin land.

No shed with corrugated roof

Betrayed where man’s true self was found;

No sad amusements their reproof

Cast o’er the worn and vanquished ground.

But when night falls, her soft dark gown

Restores what other years have known.

 

Mona’s Herald     2.10.62