Poetry Pleases: The Seed
The narrator in Arthur Gilliland's powerful poem longs to touch and smell the land he only sees in books and dreams.
It stirs so deep, so deep within my heart;
The seed, which beckons, calls, insists and grows.
It was, I know, placed there before my birth,
By fathers long since gone; who walked, and loved
The land I only see in books and dreams.
I long to know - to touch - to smell - that land.
My gossamer fathers, those who sowed that seed,
Are ghosts who haunt me still from distant past.
They nurture even now the living seed
So deep within my heart, my soul, my mind,
With hope that I should know the tales they tell,
That were their lives, and lives of those they loved;
For whom they cared; for whom they sometimes died.
For Erin's grieving, bloody, land I yearn.
