By Arthur M. Forrester. (1890)
Embroidered with shamrocks and
spangled with daisies,
Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the
way,
The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its
mazes,
The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous
spray;
The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,
The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of
green.
Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my
eyes,
For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!
It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and
gladness,
Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;
It laughed with my joy— in my moments of
sadness
What solace I found in its pitying shade.
When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my
capture,
My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,
What draught from his chalice, in mansion or
palace,
So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?
But green fields were blighted and fair skies
beclouded,
Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor
peasant’s toil,
Ere they burst into blossom the buds were
enshrouded,
The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless
soil;
Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less
kindly,
Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death
sentence” keen;
The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more
unfeeling,
Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.
A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was
pealing,
The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with
a sigh,
As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod
kneeling,
I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;
And vowed that should ever my patient
endeavor
The grains of success from life’s harvest-field
glean,
Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties
bound me,
My eyes should be closed in the dear old
boreen.
Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel
With sickness and want I have earned only
scars;
Life’s twilight is nearing— its day disappearing
—
My weary soul sighs to escape through its
bars; But ere fields elysian shall dazzle
its vision,
Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged
through the scene
Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my
childhood,
The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!
Ireland's Lore and Tales 