A Gaelic bard they praise who in fourteen adjectives <br />Named the one indivisible soul of his glen; <br />For what are the bens and the glens but manifold qualities, <br />Immeasurable complexities of soul? <br />What are these isles but a song sung by island voices? <br />The herdsman sings ancestral memories <br />And the song makes the singer wise, <br />But only while he sings <br />Songs that were old when the old themselves were young, <br />Songs of these hills only, and of no isles but these. <br />For other hills and isles this language has no words. <br /> <br />The mountains are like manna, for one day given, <br />To each his own: <br />Strangers have crossed the sound, but not the sound of the dark oarsmen <br />Or the golden-haired sons of kings, <br />Strangers whose thought is not formed to the cadence of waves, <br />Rhythm of the sickle, oar and milking pail, <br />Whose words make loved things strange and small, <br />Emptied of all that made them heart-felt or bright. <br />Our words keep no faith with the soul of the world.<br /><br />Kathleen Jessie Raine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ancient-speech/
