Shall mortal hand, with murder gory,
Cause immortal blood to flow !
Sun of Heaven!-array'd in glory
Rise, forbid, avert the blow!
In the vales of placid gladness
Let no rueful maniac range;
Chase afar the fiend of Madness,
Wrest the dagger from Revenge!
Say, hast thou, with kind protection,. Rear'd thy smiling race in vain ; Fostering Nature's fond affection, Tender cares, and pleasing pain?
Hast thou, on the troubled ocean, Braved the tempest loud and strong, Where the waves, in wild commotion, Roar Cyanean rocks among?
Didst thou roam the paths of danger,
Hymenean joys to prove?
Spare, O sanguinary stranger,
Pledges of thy sacred love!
Ask not heaven's commiseration,
After thou hast done the deed;
Mercy, pardon, expiation,
Perish when thy victims bleed.
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 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 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 broche, 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 midst the fox-glove 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!
Sweet mourner! these 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
Bore 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!
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