“Lookin’ Back”

Wathers O’Moyle an’ the white gulls flyin’,

Since I was near ye what have I seen?

Deep great seas, an’ a sthrong wind sighin’

Night an’ day where the waves are green.

Struth na Moyle, the wind goes sighin’

Over a waste o’ wathers green.

Slemish an’ Trostan, dark wi’ heather,

High are the Rockies, airy-blue;

Sure ye have snows in the winter weather

Here they’re lyin’ the long year through.

Snows are fair in the summer weather,

Och, and the shadows between are blue!

 

Lone Glen Dun an’ the wild glen flowers,

Little ye know if the prairie is sweet,

Roses for miles, an’ redder than ours

Spring here under the horses’ feet,

Ay, an’ the black-eyed sunflowers—

Not as the glen flowers small an’ sweet.

Wathers o’ Moyle, I hear ye callin’

Clearer for half o’ the world between,

Antrim hills an’ the wet rain fallin’

Whiles ye are nearer than snow-tops keen:

Dream o’ the night an’ a night wind callin’—

What is the half o’ the world between?

-       Moira O’Nell[1]

---

[1] Moira O’Neill (the citation misspells the surname) was the pen name of Agnes Shakespeare Higginson Skrine. Born in County Antrim, Ireland, she began writing poetry young. Her works illustrate an intense love of her native county. She wrote dialect poems about country people, but came in fact from a big house, Anglo-Irish background. Agnes married Walter Claremont Skrine in 1895, an Englishman who was a successful rancher in Canada. She went to Alberta with him, settling in on the Bar S Ranch, 24 miles southwest of High River, Canada. Walter built a new, two-story home for his bride, the lumber freighted from Calgary by teams of horses. The Skrines lived there for six years, before returning to Ireland, where Agnes, as Moira O’Neill, wrote two books of poetry on the Glens of Antrim. Her poetry was so successful that John Masefield, poet laureate (see footnote 128), wrote a tribute to her when she died in 1955. The Skrines had five children; the third, Molly, became a well-known novelist. (Sources: An Anarchy in the Mind and in the Heart: Narrating Anglo-Ireland by Ellen M. Wolff; Wikipedia; Alberta Settlement – abheritage.ca)