This week I picked number 65 from the top 100 Irish poems list. It is a wonderful and warm poem about friendship and nature by Thomas Moore.
While this is a poem on the text it is actually written as a famous Irish Melody. The poem was written as text but transformed into one of the most famous and touching Irish songs.
At the Meeting of the Waters, the Avonmore and beg rivers come together to form the Avoca River in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. You can see more pictures of this incredible spot on the Visit Wicklow website here.
I have shared the poem below but found this wonderful video showing the exact spot where Thomas Moore would have created this melody. He explains a bit of the backstory and does a wonderful job singing it. It is sung by Noel O’Grady.
The Meeting Of The Waters
by Thomas Moore
There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As the vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet,
Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.
Yet it was not that Nature had shed o’er the scene
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green
‘Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill
Oh! no, it was something more exquisite still.
Oh! no, it was something more exquisite still
‘Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom were near
Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear
And who felt how the best charms of Nature improve
When we see them reflected from looks that we love.
When we see them reflected from looks that we love.
Sweet Vale of Avoca! how calm I could rest,
In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.