Clear as air, the western waters
evermore their sweet unchanging song
Murmur in their stony channels
round O’Conor’s sepulchre in Cong.
Crownless, hopeless, here he lingered;
felt the years go by him like a dream,
Heard the far-off roar of conquest
murmur faintly like the singing stream.
Here he died, and here they tomb’d him,
men of Fechin, chanting round his grave.
Did they know, ah, did they know it,
what they buried by the babbling wave?
Now above the sleep of Rury
holy things and great have passed away;
Stone by stone the stately Abbey
falls and fades in passionless decay.
Darkly grows the quiet ivy,
pale the broken arches glimmer through;
Dark upon the cloister-garden
dreams the shadow of the ancient yew.
Through the roofless aisles the verdure
flows, the meadow-sweet and foxglove bloom;
Earth, the mother and consoler,
winds soft arms about the lonely tomb.
Peace and holy gloom possess him,
last of Gaelic monarchs of the Gael,
Slumbering by the young, eternal
river-voices of the western vale.
Ruraidh O’Conchobhar, last High King of Ireland, spent the closing fifteen years of his life in the monastery of St. Fechin at Cong, Co. Mayo. His grave is still shown in that most beautiful and pathetic of Irish ruins. Some accounts have it that his remains were afterwards transferred to Clonmacnois by the Shannon.