And we who draw our being from thy being, Blown by the untimely blast about the earth, Back in love’s visions to thy bosom fleeing, Droop with thy sorrows, brighten with thy mirth; O, from afar, with sad and straining eyes, Tired arms across the darkness and the foam We stretch to thy bluff capes and sombre skies, Belovèd home! The nurselings of thy moorlands and thy mountains, Thy children tempered by thy winter gales, Swayed by the tumult of thy headlong fountains That clothe with pasture green thy grassy vales, True to one love in climes’ and years’ despite, We yearn, in our last hour, upon thy breast, When the Great Darkness wraps thee from our sight, To sink to rest! _George Francis Savage-Armstrong._ GRAVES CLXXXV THE SONGS OF ERIN (‘Music shall outlive all the songs of the birds.’--_Old Irish_) I’ve heard the lark’s cry thrill the sky o’er the meadows of Lusk, And the first joyous gush of the thrush from Adare’s April Wood; At thy lone music’s spell, Philomel, magic-stricken I’ve stood, When, in Espan afar, star on star trembled out of the dusk. While Dunkerron’s blue dove murmured love, ’neath her nest I have sighed, And by mazy Culdaff with a laugh mocked the cuckoo’s refrain; Derrycarn’s dusky bird I have heard piping joy hard by pain, And the swan’s last lament sobbing sent over Moyle’s mystic tide. Yet as bright shadows pass from the glass of the darkening lake, As the rose’s rapt sigh will soon die, when the zephyr is stilled; In oblivion grey sleeps each lay that those birds ever trilled, But the songs Erin sings from her strings shall immortally wake. _Alfred Perceval Graves._ CASEY CLXXXVI THE RISING OF THE MOON (1798) ‘O, then, tell me, Shawn O’Ferrall, tell me why you hurry so?’ ‘Hush, _ma bouchal_, hush and listen;’ and his cheeks were all aglow: ‘I bear orders from the Captain--get you ready quick and soon; For the pikes must be together at the risin’ o’ the moon.’ ‘O, then, tell me, Shawn O’Ferrall, where the gath’rin’ is to be?’ ‘At the old spot by the river, right well known to you and me; One word more--for signal token, whistle up the marchin’ tune, With your pike upon your shoulder, by the risin’ o’ the moon.’ Out from many a mud-wall cabin eyes were watching through that night, Many a manly heart was throbbing for the blessed warning light. Murmurs passed along the valleys, like the banshee’s lonely croon, And a thousand blades were flashing at the rising of the moon. There, beside the singing river, that dark mass of men was seen-- Far above the shining weapons hung their own beloved Green. ‘Death to every foe and traitor! Forward! strike the marchin’ tune, And hurrah, my boys, for Freedom! ’tis the risin’ o’ the moon!’