A PLACE IN THY MEMORY, DEAREST.
A PLACE in thy memory, dearest,
Is all that I claim,
To pause and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name.
Another may woo thee, nearer, Another may win and wear; I care not though he be dearer, If I am remembered there.
Remember me-not as a lover Whose hope was cross'd,
Whose bosom can never recover
The light it hath lost;
As the young bride remembers the mother She loves, though she never may see; As a sister remembers a brother, O dearest! remember me.
Could I be thy true lover, dearest, Could'st thou smile on me,
I would be the fondest and nearest That ever loved thee!
But a cloud on my pathway is glooming, That never must burst upon thine; And Heaven, that made thee all blooming, Ne'er made thee to wither on mine.
Remember me, then!-oh, remember, My calm, light love;
Though bleak as the blasts of November
That life will, though lonely, be sweet,
If its brightest enjoyment should be A smile and kind word when we meet,
And a place in thy memory.
LINES ADDRESSED TO A SEAGULL,
SEEN OFF THE CLIFFS OF MOHER, IN THE COUNTY OF CLARE. WHITE bird of the tempest! oh, beautiful thing, With the bosom of snow, and the motionless wing Now sweeping the billow, now floating on high, Now bathing thy plumes in the light of the sky Now poising o'er ocean thy delicate form. Now breasting the surge with thy bosom so warm, Now darting aloft, with a heavenly scorn, Now shooting along, like a ray of the morn; Now lost in the folds of the cloud-curtained dome, Now floating abroad like a flake of the foam; Now silently poised o'er the war of the main, Like the spirit of charity, brooding o'er pain; Now gliding with pinion, all silently furled, Like an Angel descending to comfort the world! Thou seem'st to my spirit, as upward I gaze, And see thee, now clothed in mellowest rays; Now lost in the storm-driven vapors that fly, Like hosts that are routed across the broad sky! Like a pure spirit, true to its virtue and faith, 'Mid the tempests of nature, of passion, and death!
Rise! beautiful emblem of purity! rise
On the sweet winds of heaven, to thine own brilliant skies
Still higher! still higher! till lost to our sight,
Thou hidest thy wings in a mantle of light;
And I think how a pure spirit gazing on thee, Must long for the moment-the joyous and free- When the soul, disembodied from nature, shall spring, Unfettered, at once to her maker and king;
When, the bright day of service and suffering past, Shapes fairer than thine shall shine round her at last, While the standard of battle triumphantly furled,
She smiles like a victor, serene on the world!
A MONODY ON THE DEATH OF GERALD GRIFFIN, BY THOMAS D'ARCY M'GEE.
[Written during the author's visit to Ireland in March, 1855.]
WHEN night surrounds the sun, and the day dies, Leaving to darkness for its hour the skies, Nought has the heart of man thence to deplore- The day lived long, was fruitful, is no more; But when the hurricane at noon o'erspreads The orb divine, which life and gladness sheds, Or some disorder'd planet rolls between The sun and earth, darkling the verdant green, Eclipsing ocean, shadowing like a pall The busy town,-men, discontented all, By sea and land, anxiously pause and pray For the returning giver of the day- So have bright spirits been eclipsed and lost, Forever dark, if by Death's shadow cross'd. In Munster's beauteous city died a man As 'twere but yesterday, whose course began In clouded and in cheerless morning guise- Had climb'd the summit of his native skies,
And, as he rose, brighter and fairer grew, Beneath his influence, every scene he knew. His country hail'd him as a Saviour, given To chronicle past times; when 'mid the heaven Of expectation and achievement, lo!
A monastery's gate-therein the Bard doth
And sees the children of the poor around
Feed on the knowledge elsewhere yet unfound. The Poet, then, his former tasks foreswore,
Vowing himself to charity evermore,
Folded his wings of light-cast his fresh bays aside— His friends beloved abjured, abjured his pride.
There lived and labor'd, and there early died
Short was his day of labor, but its morn Prolific was of beauty; thoughts were born In his heart's secret spots, which grew, attended By a fine sense-instinct and reason blended- Till, like a spring, they spread his haunts with glory, O'er-arched their streams, upraised their hills in story, Fixed the broad Shannon in its course forever, And bade it flow for aye, a genius-haunted river.
Ye men of Munster, guard his sleep serene! Spirits of such bright order are not seen
But once in generations. He was an echo, dwelling Amid your mountains, all their secrets telling, Their mem'ries, their traditions, and their wrongs, The story of their sins-the music of their songs, Their tempests, and their terrors, and the forms They bring forth, impregnated by the storms.
He knew the voices of your rivers, knew Every deep chasm they leap or murmur through,— Blindfold, at midnight, by their sounds could tell Their names and their descent o'er cliff and dell. Oh! men of Munster, since the ancient time,
Ye have not met such loss as in this monk sublime!
The second summer's grass was on his grave, When to his memory Melpomene gave
A laurel wreath wove from the self-same tree That shades Boccaccio's dust perennially; Fair were the smiles her mournful glances met In woman's lovely eyes, with heart's-dew wet, And many voices loudly cried, "Well done!" As the sad goddess crown'd her lifeless son. Oh, ever thus: Death strikes the gifted, then Come the worms-inquests--and the award of men!
Low in your grave, young Gerald Griffin, sleep; You never looked on him who now doth weep Above your resting-place-yon never heard The voice that oft has echo'd every word
Dropped from your pen of light-sleep on, sleep on- I would I knew you, yet not-now you are gone!
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