I found a field of beauty on a mountain –
One lone green field, ‘mid wastes of heather brown;
And long-beaked curlews, pert and pretty peewits
Went strutting up and down.
The sun was beaming down upon the green grass,
And on a host of daisies smiling up,
And on a wealth of dandelion blossoms,
And many a buttercup.
The cooling bog-breeze passing o’er these beauties
Set them a-nodding gently to and fro;
They all seemed waltzing to some fairy music,
Mysterious and low.
The lark seemed loth to leave this field of beauty,
It took, indeed, its giddy upward track –
But soon the glory of the heav’n below it
Compelled it to come back.
Days passed. I sought again this field of beauty;
But all the dandelion blooms were gone;
And lonely looked the buttercups and daisies
That still kept smiling on.
The bloom has gone – it saddened me to think it –
The fairest flowers may bow to Fate’s decree.
The bloom has gone – but Beauty’s memory lingers
Within the soul of me.
–
Michael Mullin
‘The Bard of Foremass’
Foremass Lower, Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone.