Dunluce Castle* To-day from all thy ruined walls
The flowers wave flags of truce;
For Time has proved thy conqueror,
And tamed thy strength, Dunluce!Lords of the Skerries' cruel rocks,*
Masters of sea and shore.
Marauders in their clanking mail
Ride from thy gates no more.Thy dungeons are untenanted.
Thy captives are set free;
The daisy, with sweet childish face,
Keeps watch across the sea.Thy halls are open to the sky.
Thy revelry has ceased;
The echoes of thy mirth have died
With fires that lit the feast.What keepers of thy secrets old
Flit through the wind and rain!
What stern-faced ghosts have come by night
To visit thee again!Grim fortress of the Northern sea.
Lost are thy power and pride;
Within thy undefended walls
The folded sheep abide.NOTES
"Dunluce Castle" first appeared in Harper's Magazine (67:924) November 1883. An altered version of the first 3 stanzas appeared under this title in Verses, 1916. The illustration is by Charles Graham (1852-1911), sketch artist, illustrator and painter. He was western illustrator for Harper's (1877-1892) and official artist for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893. (Source: Who Was Who in American Art, 1999).
Dunluce Castle: near Ballycastle, County Antrim, in Ireland. This 14th-century castle is "situated on a rock separated from the mainland by a chasm, which is spanned by a footbridge." (Source: Britannica Online). Jewett visited Ireland in the summer of 1882.
Skerries: "A rugged insulated sea-rock or stretch of rocks, covered by the sea at high water or in stormy weather; a reef." (Source: Oxford English Dictionary).
Edited and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College.