In time of war

My cousin, Desima Connolly, reminded me of a poem by Louis MacNeice, written in a beautiful Glens of Antrim village. 

CUSHENDUN

Fuschia and ragweed and the distant hills
Made as it were out of clouds and sea:
All night the bay is plashing and the moon
             Marks the break of the waves.

Limestone and basalt and a whitewashed house
With passages of great stone flags
And a walled garden with plums on the wall
               And a bird piping in the night.

Forgetfulness: brass lamps and copper jugs
And home-made bread and the smell of turf or flax
And the air a glove and the water lathering easy
                 And convolvulus in the hedge.

Only in the dark green room beside the fire
With the curtains drawn against the winds and waves
There is a little box with a well-bred voice;
                   What a place to talk of War.

(Louis MacNeice, August-September 1939)