The Mournes.... by Helen Waddell

This poet grew up near the Mourne Montains in Northern Ireland. This is one of my all time favourite poems - I love her description of the sea, the fact that she couldn't leave in spring, and the way she describes the winter in which she would consent to die. As someone who loves the bleakness of winter, I can smell the cold and the fog when I read this. I also am touched by the fact that there is someone she loves waiting for her, or so she hopes, and that she would go 'tonight' to take her favourite road and to be with whoever that someone was.

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I shall not go to heaven when I die.
But if they let me be
I think I'll take a road I used to know
That goes by Slieve-na-garagh and the sea.
And all day breasting me the wind will blow,
And I'll hear nothing but the peewit's cry
And the sea talking in the caves below.
I think it will be winter when I die
(For no one from the North could die in spring)
And all the heather will be dead and grey,
And the bog-cotton will have blown away,
And there will be no yellow on the wind.
But I shall smell the peat,
And when it's almost dark I'll set my feet
Where a white track goes glimmering to the hills,
And see, far up, a light--
Would you think Heaven could be so small a thing
As a lit window on the hills at night?--
And come in stumbling from the gloom,
Half-blind, into a firelit room.
Turn, and see you,
And there abide.

If it were true,
And if I thought that they would let me be,
I almost wish it were tonight I died.