Reverie

Amid the city’s bustle, haste and noise

In lecture room alone I sit, with hands

Upon my brow, and turn my thoughts to joys

Of old remembrances and distant lands.

 

My island home is pictured ‘fore mine eyes

With leaping brooks and trees, with house and lawn ;

And sea-gulls wheeling white with piercing cries

All ruddy-hued with crimson from the dawn.

 

I see the roofs of Castletown where rears

The ancient Castle Rushen, grim and grey ;

A staunch old veteran of a thousand years,

The silent witness of another day.

 

The Sound and Kitterland, the Calf of Man ;

The limestone cliffs, the black and shining walls,

With narrow inlets no more than a span,

The booming of the waves in rocky halls.

 

I see the red sails of the drifters fill,

Each fisher’s family to provide with bread,

Tossed on the stormy seas below the hill

Where lies the city Peel with castle red.

 

And so I dream, and wander through the glen

To where the mountains stand against the sky ;

And once again I see as I saw then

The old grey roofs and gables – and I sigh.

 

Hushed is the uproar of the busy street,

Vanished the walls that girdle me around :

I run in fancy on my boyhood feet

Over the Ballamooar’s hallowed ground.

 

Mona’s Herald     29.10.63