Quotes about bracken, page 5
The Right Sort
We have hustled that litter in Heatherlie Whin,
Two crouch in the bracken, two dodge in the corn,
But the fifth one as swift as the shadow of sin
Was away when he heard the first note of the horn.
He skimmed the broad meadow in front of us all
With his brush in the air and his mask to the moor,
Looking back with a grin from the top of the wall
Ere he dropped to the heather cool, safe, and secure.
His brothers and sisters will fall by the way;
They'll be harried and headed and chopped in a ride;
But this one will live for a galloping day
And lead us and pound us and scatter us wide.
Let him travel! – a good one. We’ll meet him again
When the fields in the dusk of December are dressed;
We shall need all our courage to follow him then,
When he steals o’er the open, a fox of the best.
poem by William Henry Ogilvie
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The Seeker
I sought for my happiness over the world,
Oh, eager and far was my quest;
I sought it on mountain and desert and sea,
I asked it of east and of west.
I sought it in beautiful cities of men,
On shores that were sunny and blue,
And laughter and lyric and pleasure were mine
In palaces wondrous to view;
Oh, the world gave me much to my plea and my prayer
But never I found aught of happiness there!
Then I took my way back to a valley of old
And a little brown house by a rill,
Where the winds piped all day in the sentinel firs
That guarded the crest of the hill;
I went by the path that my childhood had known
Through the bracken and up by the glen,
And I paused at the gate of the garden to drink
The scent of sweet-briar again;
The homelight shone out through the dusk as of yore
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poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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Playmates
SUMMER fervors slacken;
Sumac torches dim;
There's bronze upon the bracken;
September has a whim
For carmine, pearl and amber
Touches on her green;
Busy squirrels clamber;
Restless birds convene.
Where Indian pipe still blanches,
Where hoary lichen flakes
Forest trunks and branches,
The golden foxglove makes
A mimic wood that tosses
Warning to the trees,
Then droops upon the mosses,
Heavy with bloom and bees.
What rumbelow of revel
Deep in those honey-jars!
A saffron moth, with level
And languid motion, stars
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Beechwoods at Knole
How do I love you, beech-trees, in the autumn,
Your stone-grey columns a cathedral nave
Processional above the earth's brown glory!
I was a child, and I loved the knurly tangle
Of roots that coiled above a scarp like serpents,
Where I might hide my treasure with the squirrels.
I was a child, and splashed my way in laughter
Through drifts of leaves, where underfoot the beech-nuts
Split with crisp crackle to my great rejoicing.
Red are the beechen slopes below Shock Tavern,
Red is the bracken on the sandy Furze-field,
Red are the stags and hinds by Bo-Pit Meadows,
The rutting stags that nightly through the beechwoods
Bell out their challenge, carrying their antlers
Proudly beneath the antlered autumn branches.
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poem by Victoria Sackville-West
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I fancy I Can See You Old Duhallow
I fancy I can see you old Duhallow
The swallows o'er your fields wing to and fro
And cows from wintering houses out on pasture
And birds are whistling on the green hedgerow.
I lay upon the bracken slopes of Clara
I see the Kerry hills beyond Rathmore
A skylark sing above the silent mountain
His song bring back to me the joys of yore.
You wear your green cloak of the Spring Duhallow
And your beauty from the mountain side I see
From Millstreet to Kanturk on towards Newmarket
Kiskeam to Cullen and up to Knocknagree.
I often think about you green Duhallow
You were the first great love I ever knew
But many others loved you better than I
And they feel quite content to live with you.
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poem by Francis Duggan
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The Brothers (For Arnold and Donald Fletcher)
One called from Salonika and his call
Rang to his brother;
Forded wide rivers, climbed the mountain wall,
Seeking the other.
Are you asleep, Arnold, or do you wake?
Our way's together!
The day's before us and the path we take
Over the heather.
As oft before, breasting the Wicklow hills,
Light-foot and leaping
Over the bog-pools and the singing rills,
Side by side keeping.
We have known all the best that life can give,
Tasted the sweetest;
Shall we grow old, lag heavy-foot and grieve,
We, who were fleetest?
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poem by Katharine Tynan
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This Year
This year
mixes spring and summer here,
a sharp wind chasing baking heat.
Hawthorn hangs like snow in clusters
with gorse and last year’s bracken at its feet,
turning the whole cliff into an in-between season.
Beyond the hills
lie great fields of daffodils
balancing organic gold against a leaden sky.
These the farmers grow
instead of food.
This they are paid to do
to keep abundance low
and prices high.
Below the cliff at Tregantle
another kind of fruit appears at low tide;
mines sown half a century ago,
relics of an earlier generation’s
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poem by Brian Taylor
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Ninetieth Birthday
You go up the long track
That will take a car, but is best walked
On slow foot, noting the lichen
That writes history on the page
Of the grey rock. Trees are about you
At first, but yield to the green bracken,
The nightjars house: you can hear it spin
On warm evenings; it is still now
In the noonday heat, only the lesser
Voices sound, blue-fly and gnat
And the stream's whisper. As the road climbs,
You will pause for breath and the far sea's
Signal will flash, till you turn again
To the steep track, buttressed with cloud.
And there at the top that old woman,
Born almost a century back
In that stone farm, awaits your coming;
Waits for the news of the lost village
She thinks she knows, a place that exists
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poem by Ronald Stuart Thomas
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To the West
The Midland Great Western is doing its best,
And the circular ticket is safe in my vest;
But I know that my holiday never begins
Till I'm in Connemara among the Twelve Pins.
The Bank has no fortune of mine to invest
But there's money enough for the ones I love best;
All the gold that I want I shall find on the whins
When I'm in Connemara among the Twelve Pins.
Down by the Lough I shall wander once more'
Where the wavelets lap lap round the stones on the shore:
And the mountainy goats will be wagging their chins
As they pull at the bracken among the Twelve Pins.
And its welcome I'll be, for no longer I'll meet
The hard pallid faces I find in the street;
The girl with blue eyes, and the boy with brown shins,
Will stand for their pictures among the twelve Pins.
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poem by William Percy French
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Back There In Millstreet County Cork
Back there in Millstreet County Cork the frosted fields are gray
And old Clara wears his hat of snow on this cold January day
And cattle in the farmyard shed are bellowing for hay
Back there in Millstreet County Cork far north and far away.
Through old fields west of Millstreet Town the Finnow bank high flow
Through Inchaleigh, Coomlogane and Claragahatlea by many a bare hedgerow
Robins, blackbirds and sparrows by back door eat crumbs of bread
Before the Spring for them some hard and hungry times ahead.
Back there through Millstreet County Cork harsh winds of January blow
The days and nights are wet and cold quite cold enough to snow
In Duhallow I was born and raised though far from there I may die
And that I still feel nostalgia for the place of that why should I lie.
Back there in Millstreet County Cork the wintery winds blow chill
Across the bleak unsheltered face of Clara's bracken hill
And on the high fields by the hill beneath a darkened sky
The hungry fox out hunting utters forth a wild shrill cry.
poem by Francis Duggan
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