There’s a wrought and ornate gate,
Through a cut and dressed stone wall,
To a churchyard on a hill in West Tyrone.
Splendid beech trees touch the sky,
And luxuriant yews are lined,
Giving shelter to a church in West Tyrone.
Gothic windows stained and long,
Let light and song pass through,
Those walls raised up high in West Tyrone.
Decorated tombstones cut and chased,
Stand within that chosen place,
Of consecrated ground in West Tyrone.
There’s a soldier’s simple marker,
Among that crowded throng,
On this hillside overlooking West Tyrone.
Beside yonder grave a woman kneels,
Thinking of the child she bore,
The son she loved and lost in West Tyrone.
Death came not in glorious daring dash,
For him who wore the ‘Harp and Crown’,
Now ‘neath a sacred sod in West Tyrone.
Unseen was the assassin and the foe,
Of him who now rests there,
In the shadow of that church in West Tyrone.
The morning light across the land,
Illuminates that crested stone,
At a churchyard facing East in West Tyrone.
Monty Alexander 11.5.98