May Day / Thomas MacDonagh

May Day

I wish I were to-day on the hill behind the wood,–
My eyes on the brown bog there and the Shannon river,–
Behind the wood at home, a quickened solitude
When the winds from Slieve Bloom set the branches there a-quiver.

The winds are there now and the green of May
On every feathery tree-bough, tender on every hedge:
Over the bog-fields there larks carol to-day,
And a cuckoo is mocking them out of the woodland's edge.

Here a country warmth is quiet on the rocks
That alone make never a change when the May is duly come;
Here sings no lark, and to-day no cuckoo mocks:
Over the wide hill a hawk floats, and the leaves are dumb.

~~
Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916)
from Poetical Works, 1916

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Thomas MacDonagh biography

Oliver Dixon, River Shannon at Bellantra Bridge, May 2008. 

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.