And dreaming of Inisfáil, I was raised on Bolivar Pond.
Sheltered in my wake, I’d coo as the dewy’d morning dove
And fern in my bed, I rose to greet
The song-splayed sounds of light
And work, I made it dropping slow
Bright in the summers swoon, I was adorned in forest eves
By rings that rang from tree to rook, and flung the wingèd down,
Brambled in bay, garland in violet
When blades could ***** and not make bleed,
And I was brindled by the moon’d many shades, that liken
To a brook, and mottled in my main, noted among moss
In that glow, once knighted we must serve
Wood, let me comb in peace!
Colored in the mantled cloth of leaves
And bonny and red, I was the brave and the boon, the deer-
Ants learned me, and herons stood muck, on stands spearing all mite
And the vernal song sang lowly
Swaddled in azure’s unfolding dream.
At each turn was a season, nascent life charming in marsh
Forays that brimmed the hollow rood, in clover yards, I saw
The lilt of bees, sallied in clearings
Brown as the yellowed beech
Colored in sounds that beat the heart.
And forth into the field I sprang unto that shedded loam
And high was the sail that bellowed the raft that raked my pond,
Bullied by the har-umph of frogs
I rippled, rowing cat o’nine tailed tunes.
Windy and free in the hollowed bark round the ****** bay
I trailed the bear sniffing ****, heard the hoo of a swooping vowel
And wild in hare, dug the fox-hole up!
Damp fires hailed the rising
Moon, as fire-flies dinted the troutling pools
And nothing I saw in my drowning sun could nettle or thorn
My piney ways, nothing could rot my wood-craving ears
For the kestrel’s qweet-a-quee rang holy
In the skunk-flowered fields of Bolivar Pond.
Inisfáil (Inish-fall) ] Gaelic word meaning: Isle of destiny, island of the fall, Ireland.
