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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.
 

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