Born: February 1, 1854, Ballynary, County Sligo, Ireland.
Died: Circa February 19, 1909, on board the Allan Liner Carthagenian.
Buried: At sea, between Ireland and America.
Teggart was the son of a postman. His father also served as parish clerk in Tartaraghan Parish Church.
Moses was educated at the Cloncore Lower Primary School, and later in Belfast.
He taught in Milltown, County Kerry, and Cork, then to Scotland, where he took a government position. In the 1880s, he emigrated to America, settling in Springfield, Massachusetts.
He wrote a number of poems published in local papers, many reflecting his childhood in the Irish bog lands.
Others were religious or classical in nature (for example, paraphrases of works such as Hero and Leander and Homer’s Vision of Penelope).
His When Children Lift Their Voices was published in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1906.
In 1908, he returned to Ireland to visit his aged father. He died during the return voyage to America.
Farewell, ye cold black bogs and moors!
Good-bye, ye gold-bloomed whins!
Ye teach me how the love endures
That in friendship fond begins,
Good-bye ye little red-breasts all,
That sing so sweet at dawn!
At dusk I hear your pensive call,
And shall when I am gone.
Ye joyous lark that in the blue
Already carols loud,
I know your song is sweet and true
Though I’m with sorrow bowed.
A home across the western wave
Once more I go to seek;
Beside your song so loud and brave
This dirge sounds worn and weak.
Farewell, ye kindly people all,
In bogland and in town!
Your friendship I esteem, and shall
Till I this head lay down
In that last sleep o’er which the dawn
Of heaven some morn shall rise.
When I, fond hope! though some time gone,
Shall join you in the skies.
Moses Teggart, written at The Birches
eight days before his death in 1909
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