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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.

Connaught

A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century

By James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849)

I WALKED entranced

Through a land of morn;

The sun, with wondrous excess of light,

Shone down and glanced

Over seas of corn

And lustrous gardens aleft and right.

Even in the clime

Of resplendent Spain

Beams no such sun upon such a land;

But it was the time,

’T was in the reign,

Of Cáhal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.

Anon stood nigh

By my side a man

Of princely aspect and port sublime.

Him queried I,

“O my Lord and Khan,

What clime is this, and what golden time?”

When he,—“The clime

Is a clime to praise,

The clime is Erin’s, the green and bland;

And it is the time,

These be the days,

Of Cáhal Mór of the Wine-red Hand!”

Then saw I thrones

And circling fires,

And a dome rose near me, as by a spell,

Whence flowed the tones

Of silver lyres,

And many voices in wreathéd swell;

And their thrilling chime

Fell on mine ears

As the heavenly hymn of an angel-band,—

“It is now the time,

These be the years,

Of Cáhal Mór of the Wine-red Hand!”

I sought the hall,

And, behold! a change

From light to darkness, from joy to woe!

King, nobles, all,

Looked aghast and strange;

The minstrel-group sate in dumbest show!

Had some great crime

Wrought this dread amaze,

This terror? None seemed to understand!

’T was then the time,

We were in the days,

Of Cáhal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.

I again walked forth;

But lo! the sky

Showed fleckt with blood, and an alien sun

Glared from the north,

And there stood on high,

Amid his shorn beams, a skeleton!

It was by the stream

Of the castled Main,

One autumn eve, in the Teuton’s land,

That I dreamed this dream

Of the time and reign

Of Cáhal Mór of the Wine-red Hand!