The Harvest Fair and the Battle of the Somme

From Quintin Point to Carrowdore
Full many a lad will come no more;
In fields of France he sleeps serene
Nor heeds if fields of Ards be green

No more shall he behold with joy
The wooded heights of Clandeboye
Nor see, 'gainst burnished sunset skies
The bastioned bulk of Scrabo rise.

He does not hear the plover cry,
At daybreak, as his team goes by;
Now, on those wide and fertile lands,
His plough is steered by other hands

No more he loads, with ready art,
The soil's rich produce on the cart;
He goes no longer to the Fair;
Stilled is his voice in Newtown Square.

And many a maid, while drag the days
Broods upon bygone happier ways
And deep within her bosom guards
The memory of a Son of Ards


from Songs of a Port by W.H.F. (Belfast, 1920), a collection of poems written from Donaghadee and about many people and places of the Ards and north Down.