The speaker remembers a rocky hillside called Crocknaharna from far away. On a bright May morning, he once heard a young Irish girl singing among the brown rocks and grey stones, and she seemed like the jewel of the place. But the memory darkens: he also pictures a cold November evening, when he heard a woman weeping in that same landscape. The repeated name “Crocknaharna” sounds like a homesick chant, and the phrase “twenty hundred miles away” tells us he is exiled or far from home. The poem creates a mood of deep longing and quiet grief, where beauty and loss are tangled together. The place itself hardly changes, but the speaker’s feeling does—from youthful joy and love to adult sorrow and distance.
Crocknaharna — Summary
On the heights of Crocknaharna, (Oh, the lure of Crocknaharna) On a morning fair and early Of a dear remembered May, There I heard a colleen singing In the brown rocks and the grey. She, the pearl of Crocknaharna, Crocknaharna, Crocknaharna, Wild with girls is Crocknaharna Twenty hundred miles away.
On the heights of Crocknaharna, (Oh, thy sorrow Crocknaharna) On an evening dim and misty Of a cold November day, There I heard a woman weeping In the brown rocks and the grey. Oh, the pearl of Crocknaharna (Crocknaharna, Crocknaharna), Black with grief is Crocknaharna Twenty hundred miles away.