The Bard of Akron Rears His Head Again

The March snow is quick to go
It lacks the power to stay.
So if the ground is covered now
It soon will melt away.

Eat your heart out, Shakespeare. The bard, who also reigns supreme in Barberton and Cuyahoga Falls, penned that little gem on March 1. So we had an inch of snow overnight but the sun came out on this St. Patrick's Day and now it's gone. The bard knows about such things. So even though the thermometer reads only 30 degrees the snow is no match for the March sun, which is nothing at all like the January sun.
Speaking of St. Patrick's Day, the bard inherited his awesome skill from his Irish great-grandfather, Peter Lynch. Peter was 18 when he left his beloved County Cavan on an August day in 1853. As an elderly man in 1909 he wrote the following in his notebook:

No more through Mt. Prospect shall I ever wander.
No more around the White Gate will I ever roam.
For soon I must close my sad eyes in death's slumber.
Far, far from Mt. Prospect, my dear native home.
Tis long years since I parted well nigh broken hearted,
My friends and relations so kind and so true.
The home of my childhood, tho humble yet happy,
Near the hawthorn hedges that surround Gawry Dher.
Right well I remember that grieving in August
That beautiful evening in the year '53.
The weeping and wailing of friends at leave taking,
Saying the Lord may be with you Acushla Macree.
Remember, my darling, the kind friends you're leaving,
Though your home may be far over the Western main.
And should fortune but favour your honest endeavor,
Then come back my dear Bochal to see us again.
Those friends are long dead and almost forgotten,
But never by me while life does remain.
For tears fill my eyes with my bosom oft heaving
When I think of those kind friends I'll never meet again.

His unhappy story was one told by many Irishmen during those years of British oppression. Conditions are far better, although not perfect, in the old country today. Peter Lynch lived another 13 years after writing the words above. He died late in 1922 at the home of my grandfather, James T. Lynch in Muncie, Indiana.

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