Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Composite volume > Ballad poetry of Ireland

148 BALLAD POETRY
Till they come to where the rowan trees in lonely beauty
grow
Beside the Fairy Hawthorn grey.
The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim,
Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her
knee;
The rowan berries cluster o'er her low head grey and
dim
In ruddy kisses sweet to see.
The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row,
Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem.
And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds they go,
Oh, never carolled bird like them !
But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze
That drinks away their voices in echoless repose.
And dreamily the evening has stilled the haunted braes,
And dreamier the gloaming grows.
And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky
When the falcon's shadow saileth across the open shaw,
Are hushed the maiden's voices, as cowering down tliey
lie
In the flutter of their sudden awe.
For, from the air above, and the grassy ground beneath,
And from the mountain-ashes and the old Whitethorn
between,
A power of faint enchantment doth through their beings
breathe,
And they sink down together on the green.