Page images
PDF
EPUB

Nor fruits of autumn, blossom-born,
My green and glossy leaves adorn ;
Nor murmuring tribes from me derive
The ambrosial amber of the hive;
Yet leave this barren spot to me:
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!

Thrice twenty summers I have seen
The sky grow bright, the forest green;
And many a wintry wind have stood
In bloomless, fruitless solitude,
Since childhood in my pleasant bower
First spent its sweet and sportive hour,
Since youthful lovers in my shade
Their vows of truth and rapture made;
And on my trunk's surviving frame
Carved many a long-forgotten name.
Oh! by the sighs of gentle sound,
First breathed upon this sacred ground;
By all that Love has whispered here,
Or Beauty heard with ravished ear;
As Love's own altar honour me:
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!

Τ

THE EXILE OF ERIN.*

HERE came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin, The dew on his thin robes was heavy and chill: For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.

But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of "Erin go bragh!" †

"Sad is my fate!" said the heart-broken stranger;
"The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again, in the green sunny bowers,

Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,

Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,

And strike to the numbers of "Erin go bragh!"

"Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken, In dreams I revisit the sea-beaten shore;

But alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,

And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more !

Oh cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me

In a mansion of peace-where no perils can chase me? Never again shall my brothers embrace me?

They die to defend me, or live to deplore!

*Anthony McCann, exiled for being implicated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Campbell met him at Hamburg.

+ Ireland for ever.

"Where is my cabin door, fast by the wild wood?
Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall?
Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?
And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all !
Oh! my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure,
Why did it doat on a fast-fading treasure?
Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.

[ocr errors]

"Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,
One dying wish my lone bosom can draw:
Erin! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing!
Land of my forefathers! Erin go bragli!'
Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,
Green be thy fields-sweetest isle of the ocean!
And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with
devotion-

'Erin mavournin*-Erin go bragh!""

[ocr errors]

THE SOLDIER'S DREAM.

UR bugles sang truce-for the night-cloud had lowered,

And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain ;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

* Ireland my darling.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track:
'Twas Autumn-and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young, I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore, From my home and my weeping friends never to part; My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,

And my wife sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart,

Stay, stay with us-rest, thou art weary and worn ;
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay-
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

LINES WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN
ARGYLESHIRE,

T the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,

AT

On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower, Where the home of my forefathers stood.*

All ruined and wild is their roofless abode,

And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree:

[blocks in formation]

And travelled by few is the grass-covered road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode
To his hills that encircle the sea.

Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,

One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been.

Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,

From each wandering sunbeam, a lonely embrace,
For the night-weed and thorn overshadowed the place,
Where the flower of my forefathers grew.

Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
That remains in this desolate heart!
The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,
But patience shall never depart !

Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,

In the days of delusion by fancy combined
With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,
And leave but a desert behind.

Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore;

Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore !

Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain,
May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!
Yea! even the name I have worshipped in vain
Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again :
To bear is to conquer our fate.

« PreviousContinue »