THE BOGLANDS OF IRELAND
By Danny Hughes

‘Tis here within this beauteous world of isolation

Where a million years is but a second span of time

Where the idyllic of earth and sky and mountain

look out upon a world that rushes by.

To hear the awakening music of the wild birds at the

crack of dawn ride sweet and clear upon the willowing wind

And charms this world with its tufted grass and

gracefully swaying reeds and flowering whins.

‘Tis here the poets and the painter can find substance

for their heartfelt thoughts and romantic dreams,

As they latch themselves to a moonbeam or broken twig

that rides upon a mountain stream.

The opium smelling fermenting peat that matures

with passing years like priceless bonded wine,

fantasises this special world so near to heaven

with its kaleidoscope of colours so sublime.

To see the bogmen between the fading light of the

night’s bright stars and the warming light of morn

as they treck their way up the mountain pass with

their donkey carts and their mumbling tuneless songs.

To hear the skylark’s clarion call

echo over the enchanted world of unhurried ease,

So unlike the world of fantasies that forever hides behind the

rainbow and the far off distant seas.

And then a shimmering sunlight of the morning shines

down on the bogland’s silvery pools

A blackbird on a high perched branch of a Lon bush

pipes his lustful mating tune

And a lazy wind in a willow tree breathes its gentle melody upon

the boglands perfumed air.

How akin to heaven is this world of isolation,

so like a maiden, so gentle and so fair.

And then when the hours of daylight are embraced

by the shadows of the setting sun,

And the bogmen track their way down the mountain

craggy, precipitous paths when their work is done.

And the slumbering shadows of the night

like magic veils of angel’s breaths

enshrining this world of a million lullabies in its