At The Well Of Branchy Trees Poem by Anna Johnston MacManus

At the Well of the Branchy Trees, I lay awhile to rest,
Then God's hand shook the trouble down upon my breast,
For the girl I had never seen except in dreams came by,
And now my nights are sleepless grief, my days a sigh.

She is Mary of the Curls–the swan-white modest maid,
Grey pools of quiet are her eyes, like waters in the shade,
She moves as softly through the world as any whispered prayer,
And where she steps, the blossoms rise, and song haunts the air.

O Heartbreaker, will you come where my hut stands lone?
I will build you of my true love a jewelled throne,
I will rear for you a palace of fancies fine,
And my dreams shall weave a crown for you, when you are mine.

O Heartbreaker, I have neither red gold nor lands!
My only wealth is youth and strength, and willing hands.
But you would find a shelter from every hurting ill,
Beneath the roof I call my own in Lissadill.

It is there the curlew cries on a circling wring,
The heather-bleat croons wistfully, the brown larks sing,
The mournful restless peewit has a constant fear,
And the lake-water laps at the sedge's spear.

The honeysuckle twists with the tangle briar,
The gorse sweeps across the moor in floods of fire,
And the little snowy blossoms of the ceanabhan a-blow
Wave welcome from the bog-land along the ways I go.

I am as a shivering rush in the wind of your scorn
You shed sweet pity on the sad, yet leave me forlorn,
My woe! for the peace I knew, the careless ease,
Ere God gave me sorrow under the Branchy Trees.