*FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING."
OH! once the harp of Innisfail'
Was strung full high to notes of gladness;
But yet it often told a tale
Of more prevailing sadness.
Sad was the note, and wild its fail,
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 fear 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 brother's kerne,'
Beneath De Bourgo's battle stern,
While yet in Leinster unexplored,
Her friends survive 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 in the foxglove and the moss,
Behold a parted warrior's cross!
That is the spot where, evermore,
• Kerne, the ancient Irish foot-soldiery.
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!
Sweet 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 morat 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 wo 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 call'd 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,t
• The psalter of Tara was the great national register of the an cient Irish.
† Vide the note upon the victories of the house of O'Connor.
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 meaner crest upon his shield.
"Ah, brothers! what did it avail,
That fiercely and triumphantly
Ye fought the English of the pale,
And stemm'd 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?
No-let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom;
But ties around this heart were spun,
That could not, would not, be undone !
"At bleating of the wild watch-fold
Thus sang my love-' Oh, come with me:
Our bark is on the lake, behold
Our steeds are fasten'd to the tree
• Fires lighted on May-day on the hill-tops by the Irish. Vide the note on Stanza VIL
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