The Swans of Derravaragh

The story of the Children of Lir is familiar to many Irish people from Irish folklore; the story originates, I believe, in Scandinavia. It is the sad tale of four siblings who are transformed into swans for 900 years; their step-mother couldn't quite muster the courage to murder them but could not live with the jealousy of  her husband's love for them. The story is heart-wrenchingly sad, but still does not quite distill all the sadness that's in the story.
The siblings will spend 300 years on Lough Derravaragh, 300 on the Sea of Moyle, 300 on Inish Glora. This is my Lough Derravaragh poem. (Please google 'Children of Lir' if you aren't familiar with the story)

On Lough Derravaragh the swans had their fill

of waterweed, pondweed, wild celery and grass;

their songs carried so sweetly over the water

that people travelled to listen and be transported.

Daily their father came to speak with them;

they related their stories. Aoife  was banished

to the high skies, and happiness

was as blue is patched into a cloudy sky.

They saw their father age, grow slower in thought

and speech; bitterness grew with self-recrimination

till finally he could not face them; the rock on which he sat

left bare,their songs became plaintiff and spare.

Three hundred years they spent on that lake,

three hundred years on its iron-coloured water;

the sounds of human life carrying down from the fields, and

the passing years counted in growth and decay, growth and decay.