"Go, let oblivion's curtain fall
Upon the stage of men,
Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life's tragedy again :
Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh, upon the rack
Of pain anew to writhe;
Stretch'd in disease's shapes abhorr'd,
Or mown in battle by the sword,
Like grass beneath the scythe.
"Ev'n I am weary in yon skies
To watch thy fading fire;
Test of all sumless agonies,
Behold not me expire.
My lips that speak thy dirge of death-
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath
To see thou shalt not boast.
The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall,— The majesty of darkness shall
Receive my parting ghost!
"This spirit shall return to Him
Who gave its heavenly spark;
Yet, think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself art dark!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recall'd to breath,
Who captive led captivity,
Who robb'd the grave of Victory,-
And took the sting from Death!
"Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste
To drink this last and bitter cup
Of grief that man shall taste-
Go, tell the night that hides thy face,
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race,
On Earth's sepulchral clod,
The darkening universe defy
To quench his Immortality,
Or shake his trust in God!"
"THE FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING."
H! once the harp of Innisfail
et tung nightofotes of gladness;
But yet it often told a tale
Of more prevailing sadness.
Sad was the note, and wild its fall,
As winds that moan at night forlorn
Along the isles of Fion-Gall,
When, for O'Connor's child to mourn,
The harper told, how lone, how far
From any mansion's twinkling star,
From any path of social men,
Or voice, but from the fox's den,
The lady in the desert dwelt ;
And yet no wrongs, no fears she felt:
Say, why should dwell in place so wild,
O'Connor's pale and lovely child?
Sweet lady! she no more inspires
Green Erin's hearts with beauty's power,
As, in the palace of her sires,
She bloom'd a peerless flower.
Gone from her hand and bosom, gone,
The royal brooch, the jewell'd ring,
That o'er her dazzling whiteness shone,
Like dews on lilies of the spring.
Yet why, though fall'n her brothers' kerne
Beneath De Bourgo's battle stern,
While yet in Leinster unexplored,
Her friends survived the English sword;
Why lingers she from Erin's host,
So far on Galway's shipwreck'd coast;
Why wanders she a huntress wild-
O'Connor's pale and lovely child?
And fix'd on empty space, why burn
Her eyes with momentary wildness;
And wherefore do they then return
To more than woman's mildness?
Dishevell'd are her raven locks;
On Connocht Moran's name she calls;
And oft amidst the lonely rocks
She sings sweet madrigals.
Placed 'midst the foxglove and the moss,
Behold a parted warrior's cross!
That is the spot where, evermore,
The lady, at her shieling door,
Enjoys that, in communion sweet,
The living and the dead can meet,
For, lo! to love-lorn fantasy,
The hero of her heart is nigh.
Bright as the bow that spans the storm,
In Erin's yellow vesture clad,
A son of light-a lovely form,
He comes and makes her glad ;
Now on the grass-green turf he sits,
His tassell'd horn beside him laid;
Now o'er the hills in chase he flits,
The hunter and the deer a shade!
Sweeter mourner! those are shadows vain
That cross the twilight of her brain;
Yet she will tell you she is blest,
Of Connocht Moran's tomb possess'd,
More richly than in Aghrim's bower,
When bards high praised her beauty's power,
And kneeling pages offer'd up
The mórat in a golden cup.
"A hero's bride! this desert bower,
It ill befits thy gentle breeding:
And wherefore dost thou love this flower
To call 'My love lies bleeding'?"
"This purple flower my tears have nursed; A hero's blood supplied its bloom:
I love it, for it was the first
That grew on Connocht Moran's tomb.
Oh! hearken, stranger, to my voice!
This desert mansion is my choice!
And blest, though fatal, be the star
That led me to its wilds afar :
For here these pathless mountains free
Gave shelter to my love and me;
And every rock and every stone
Bear witness that he was my own.
"O'Connor's child, I was the bud
Of Erin's royal tree of glory;
But woe to them that wrapt in blood
The tissue of my story!
Still as I clasp my burning brain,
A death-scene rushes on my sight;
It rises o'er and o'er again,
The bloody feud-the fatal night,
When chafing Connocht Moran's scorn,
They called my hero basely-born ;
And bade him choose a meaner bride
Than from O'Connor's house of pride.
Their tribe, they said, their high degree,
Was sung in Tara's psaltery;
Witness their Eath's victorious brand;
And Cathal of the bloody hand;
Glory (they said) and power and honour
Were in the mansion of O'Connor:
But he, my loved one, bore in field
A humbler crest, a meaner shield.
"Ah, brothers! what did it avail,
That fiercely and triumphantly
Ye fought the English of the pale,
And stemmed De Bourgo's chivalry!
And what was it to love and me,
That barons by your standard rode;
Or beal-fires for your jubilee
Upon a hundred mountains glow'd?
What though the lords of tower and dome
From Shannon to the North-sea foam,-
Thought ye your iron hands of pride
Could break the knot that love had tied ?
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