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When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit

This bleak world alone?

488 THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS

489

THE harp that once through Tara's halls

The soul of music shed,

Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls

As if that soul were fled.

So sleeps the pride of former days,

So glory's thrill is o'er,

And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
Now feel that pulse no more.

No more to chiefs and ladies bright
The harp of Tara swells:

The chord alone, that breaks at night,
Its tale of ruin tells.

Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
The only throb she gives,

Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives.

A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG

FAINTLY as tolls the evening chime

Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,

We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.

Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight's past!

Why should we yet our sail unfurl?

There is not a breath the blue wave to curl;
But, when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near and the daylight's past!

490

Utawa's tide! this trembling moon

Shall see us float over thy surges soon.
Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,
Oh, grant us cool heavens and favouring airs.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight's past!

THE JOURNEY ONWARDS

As slow our ship her foamy track
Against the wind was cleaving,
Her trembling pennant still look'd back
To that dear isle 'twas leaving.
So loth we part from all we love,
From all the links that bind us;
So turn our hearts, as on we rove,
To those we've left behind us!

When, round the bowl, of vanish'd years
We talk with joyous seeming-
With smiles that might as well be tears,
So faint, so sad their beaming;
While memory brings us back again
Each early tie that twined us,
O, sweet's the cup that circles then
To those we've left behind us!

And when, in other climes, we meet
Some isle or vale enchanting,
Where all looks flowery, wild and sweet,
And nought but love is wanting;
We think how great had been our bliss
If Heaven had but assign'd us
To live and die in scenes like this,
With some we've left behind us!

As travellers oft look back at eve
When eastward darkly going,
To gaze upon that light they leave

Still faint behind them glowing,

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So, when the close of pleasure's day
To gloom hath near consign'd us,
We turn to catch one fading ray
Of joy that's left behind us.

491

THE YOUNG MAY MOON

THE young May moon is beaming, love,
The glow-worm's lamp is gleaming, love;
How sweet to rove

Through Morna's grove,

When the drowsy world is dreaming, love!
Then awake!-the heavens look bright, my dear,
'Tis never too late for delight, my dear;
And the best of all ways

To lengthen our days

Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!

Now all the world is sleeping, love,
But the Sage, his star-watch keeping, love,
And I, whose star

More glorious far

Is the eye from that casement peeping, love.
Then awake!-till rise of sun, my dear,
The Sage's glass we'll shun, my dear,

Or in watching the flight

Of bodies of light

He might happen to take thee for one, my dear!

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How sweet the answer Echo makes

To Music at night

When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,

And far away o'er lawns and lakes
Goes answering light!

Yet Love hath echoes truer far

And far more sweet

Than e'er, beneath the moonlight's star,
Of horn or lute or soft guitar

The songs repeat.

'Tis when the sigh,-in youth sincere

And only then,

The sigh that's breathed for one to hear-
Is by that one, that only Dear

Breathed back again.

493

AT THE MID HOUR OF NIGHT

Ar the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there
And tell me our love is remember'd, even in the sky!

Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear
When our voices, commingling, breathed like one on the ear;
And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, O my Love! 'tis thy voice, from the Kingdom of
Souls

Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.

CHARLES WOLFE

[1791-1823]

494 THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT Corunna

Nor a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

;

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,—
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring:
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

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