“I will arise and go now,
For always, night or day,
I hear lake water lapping,
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway,
Or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
Moore’s description is perhaps as appropriate, but it is no more beautiful:
“Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,
May calm and sunshine long be thine!
How fair thou art let others tell,—
To feel how fair shall long be mine.”
From Glengarriff to Killarney via Kenmare is a long-drawn sweetness of prospect, which it is perhaps impossible to duplicate for its sentimental charm,—an ability to appreciate which belongs to us all, even if only to a limited extent.
The road from County Cork to County Kerry—and one journeys only by road from Bantry Bay to Dingle Bay, via Kenmare and Killarney, the age of steam not yet having arrived at these parts—winds fascinatingly up and down hill and dale, diving suddenly through a tunnelled rock, when a transformation takes place, and one leaves the ruggedness and freshness of Bantry Bay for the more or less humid fairy-land of the region about Killarney. The view ahead is peculiarly grand in its contrast with that left behind. Down the beetling precipices along which the road is clinging to its sterile sides, one traces the valley beneath until it blends with the silvery surface of Kenmare River. From Kenmare, the way to Killarney is by the “Windy Gap.” Beneath lies an extensive valley, and beyond is the Black Valley. Farther on are the skylines of the mountains which encompass the wild and dark Gap of Dunloe; and, farther still, will be observed the more jagged outlines of “MacGillicuddy’s Reeks.” Soon one beholds the first view of the beauties of far-famed Killarney, the immense valley in which repose the three lakes,—the upper, lower, and middle, with their numerous islets. En route from Kenmare to Killarney, one first comes to Muckross Abbey and Demesne, of which
