contemplativeinquiry

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The golden hill where long-forgotten kings

Keep lonely watch upon their feasting-floor

Is silent now, – the Dagda’s harp no more

Makes sun and moon move to its murmurous strings;

And never in the leafy star-led Springs

Will Caer and Angus haunt the river shore,

For deep beneath an ogham-carven door

Dust dulls the dew-white wonder of their wings.

Yet one may linger loving the lost dream –

The magic of the heart that cannot die;

Although the Rood destroy the quicken-rods;

To him through earth and air and hollow stream

Wild music whines, as two swans wheeling cry

Above the cromlech of the vanished gods.

New Grange is one of Six Celtic Sonnets written by Thomas Samuel Jones and included in From the Isles of Dream: Visionary Stories and Poems of the Celtic Renaissance, selected by John Matthews and with a foreword by Robin Williamson (Floris Books, 1993).

Thomas Samuel Jones (1882-1932) came from Welsh and Irish stock and was born in Oneida County, New York State, near the Adirondack Mountains. Each of the six sonnets reflects a facet of Celtic tradition. They were originally published in 1930 as part of the collection Aknahton and Other Sonnets. For those of us who resonate with Druid and Celtic spirituality, they are part of our modern cultural ancestry.