THE 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 fall,
As winds that moan at night forlorn
Along the isles of Fion-Gael,
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
The lovely pale O'Connor's child?
Sweet lady! she no more inspires
Green Erin's heart with beauty's pow'r,
As in the palace of her sires
She bloomed a peerless flow'r.
Gone from her hand and bosom, gone,
The regal broche, the jewelled ring,
The ancient name of Ireland.
That o'er her dazzling whiteness shone
Like dews on lilies of the spring.
Yet why, though fallen 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 shipwrecked coast;
Why wanders she a huntress wild-
The lovely pale O'Connor's child?
And fixed on empty space, why burn
Her eyes
with momentary wildness;
And wherefore do they then return
To more than woman's mildness?
Dishevelled 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,
The lady, at her shielingt door,
Enjoys that in communion sweet,
The living and the dead can meet:
For lo! to lovelorn 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:
*Kerne, the ancient Irish foot soldiery.
† Rude hut, or cabin.
Now on the grass-green turf he sits,
His tasselled 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 possessed,
More richly than in Aghrim's bow'r,
When bards high praised her beauty's pow'r,
And kneeling pages offered up
The morat* in a golden cup.
"A hero's bride! this desert bow'r,
It ill befits thy gentle breeding:
And wherefore dost thou love this flow'r
To call-My love lies bleeding?"
"This purple flow'r my tears have nursed;
A heroe'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
Bare 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!
* A drink made of the juice of mulberry mixed with honey.
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,t
And Cathal of the bloody hand,—
Glory (they said) and power and honour
Were in the mansion of O'Connor';
But he, my lov'd 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 stemmed De Bourgo's chivalry?
And what was it to love and me,
That barons by your standard rode;
Or beal-firest for your jubilee,
Upon a hundred mountains glowed.
What tho' 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;
*The psalter of Tara was the great national register of the ancient Irish.
† Vide the note upon the victories of the house of O'Connor.
Fires lighted on May-day on the hill tops by the Irish. Vide the note on stanza VII.
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-' O come with ine:
Our bark is on the lake: behold,
Our steeds are fastened to the tree.
Come far from Castle-Connor's clans-
Come with thy belted forestere,
And I, beside the lake of swans,
Shall hunt for thee the fallow deer;
And build thy hut and bring thee home
The wild fowl and the honeycomb ;
And berries from the wood provide,
And play my clarshech* by thy side.
Then come, my love!'-How could I stay?
Our nimble stag-hounds tracked the way,
And I pursued by moonless skies,
The light of Connocht Moran's eyes.
"And fast and far, before the star
Of dayspring rushed me thro' the glade,
And saw at dawn the lofty bawnt
Of Castle Connor fade.
Sweet was to us the hermitage
Of this unploughed, untrodden shore:
Like birds all joyous from the cage,
For man's neglect we loved it more.
And well he knew, my huntsman dear,
To search the game with hawk and spear;
While I, his evening food to dress,
Would sing to him in happiness.
|