The Cry Of The Curlews Poem by Sheehan Patrick Augustine

A lonely whitewashed cottage
Under a sandy cliff;
I, a child, and my cradle
The thwarts of the fisher's skiff.
Dark was the night without,
The winds swept over the lea
The cry of the curlews calling,
And the weary wash of the sea.

Sea-swallows nested above us
Silent; but all night long
Sleepless the cold waves gathered.
Pouring to night their song.
They sang alone in the darkness,
Like hooded monks in choir,
And the long, lone beach was lighted
With flames of the white sea-fire.

I heard the fret of the shingle
Teased by the wanton wave,
And the deep, low boom of the thunder
In the dripping ocean-cave.
But I heeded not fret nor thunder,
Nor the crack of the wild wind's whips,
For the mother's face bent o'er me,
And the warmth of a sister's lips.

Years have sped since my childhood,
And all the visions of yore
Passed like the spirits of dreamland
Haunting a ghostly shore.
Yet in the night or twilight
Cometh a sound to me
The cry of the curlews calling,
And the weary wash of the sea.


Yestreen I watched in my manhood
There where the cottage stood,
Under the nests of the swallows
Beside the ocean flood.
Gone is the whitewashed cabin,
And the fisher's humble skiff,
And a low mound, weedy and grass-grown,
Is all of the stately cliff.

And there in the twilight of fancy
Did I trace my love's eclipse,
The vision that bent above me,
The thrill of a sister's lips.
God! Thou art just, and somewhere
In Thy myriad mansions blest,
Mother and sister are watching
The face they once caressed.

For death is only a shadow
Cast by Thy holy love,
As the nest of her young is darkened
By the wings of the hov'ring dove.
Swifter and swifter downwards
Thy Spirit swoops to us,
Couched in the warmth of His shadow,
Winged multitudinous.

Yestreen I watched in my manhood,
To-day my hair is white;
I hear the eternal surges
Beat in the nearing night.
But even in Heaven I'll summon
From the cells of memory
The cry of the curlews calling,
And the weary wash of the sea.