While they, like fishers when the tunnies swarm

Within some narrow inlet, slew amain

With aught that hand could seize—with shivered oars,

Fragments of wreck, they stabb’d, they stunn’d, they clove;

And out beyond the channel shrieks and wails

And panic fear possessed the open sea.

Gods! could I speak, nor cease for ten full days,

I had not told how thick disasters came!

Know this, that never since the world began

Perished in one day such a host of men!

[47]

[47]

 THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOIS

From the Irish of Angus O’Gillan

In a quiet-water’d land, a land of roses,

Stands Saint Kieran’s city fair,

And the warriors of Erinn in their famous generations

Slumber there.

There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest

Of the Clan of Conn,

 Prev. P 39/61 next