A Dead Girl To Her Lover Poem by Nora Jane Hopper Chesson

I hear the hill-winds. I hear them calling
The long gray twilights and white morns through.
The tides are rising, the tides are falling,
And how will I answer or come to you?
For over my head the waves are brawling,
And I shall never come back to you!


Dark water's flowing my dark head over,
And where's the charm that shall bid it back?
Wild merrows sing, and strange fishes hover
Above my bed o' the pale sea-wrack,
And Achill sands have not kept for my lover
The fading print of my footsteps' track.


Under the sea all my nights are lonely,
Wanting a song that I used to hear.
I dream and I wake and I listen only
For the sound of your footfall kind and dear.
Avourneen deelish, your Moirin's lonely,
And is the day of our meeting near?


The hill-winds coming, the hill-winds going,
I send my voice on their wings to you,-
To you, mo bouchal, whose boat is blowing
Out where the green sea meets the blue.
Come down to me now, for there 's no knowing
But the bed I lie in might yet hold two!