I am the mountainy singer--
The voice of the peasant's dream,
The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
The leap of the fish in the stream.
Quiet and love I sing--
The carn on the mountain crest,
The _cailin_ in her lover's arms,
The child at its mother's breast.
Beauty and peace I sing--
The fire on the open hearth,
The _cailleach_ spinning at her wheel,
The plough in the broken earth.
Travail and pain I sing--
The bride on the childing bed,
The dark man laboring at his rhymes,
The eye in the lambing shed.
Sorrow and death I sing--
The canker come on the corn,
The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
The cry at the mouth of morn.
No other life I sing,
For I am sprung of the stock
That broke the hilly land for bread,
And built the nest in the rock!