Monday morning from the mountain lane ( Images and a Poem by : Douglas Fraser – 1968 )
Monday morning and what better way to start a new week than a walk through the hills above the town of Clonmel , county Tipperary.
This old walk goes over the foot hills just below the Comeragh mountains and into county Waterford and offers some of the best views in the South of Ireland, I share some of it here with one of my most loved Mountain Poems by Douglas Fraser, written in 1968.
Freedom of the Hills
By: Douglas Fraser – 1968
Mine is the freedom of the tranquil hills
When vagrant breezes bend the sinewy grass,
While sunshine on the widespread landscape spills
And light as down the fleet cloud-shadowed pass.
Mine, still, that freedom when the storm-clouds race,
Cracking their whips against defiant crags
And mists swirl boiling up from inky space
To vanish on the instant, torn to rags.
Snow and mist in the Mountains.
When winter grips the mountains in a vice,
Silently stifling with its pall of snow,
Checking the streams, draping the rocks in ice,
Still to their mantled summits I would go.
Sun-drenched, I sense the message they impart;
Storm-lashed, I hear it sing through every vein;
Among the snows it whispers to my heart
“Here is your freedom. Taste – and come again.”
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