When true hearts lie withered 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, No more to chiefs and ladies bright The chord alone, that breaks at night, Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, Is when some heart indignant breaks, A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG FAINTLY as tolls the evening chime Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time. We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn. Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast, Why should we yet our sail unfurl? There is not a breath the blue wave to curl; The Rapids are near and the daylight's past! 490 Utawa's tide! this trembling moon Shall see us float over thy surges soon. THE JOURNEY ONWARDS As slow our ship her foamy track When, round the bowl, of vanish'd years And when, in other climes, we meet As travellers oft look back at eve Still faint behind them glowing, So, when the close of pleasure's day 491 THE YOUNG MAY MOON THE young May moon is beaming, love, Through Morna's grove, When the drowsy world is dreaming, love! To lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear! Now all the world is sleeping, love, More glorious far Is the eye from that casement peeping, love. Or in watching the flight Of bodies of light He might happen to take thee for one, my dear! 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 Yet Love hath echoes truer far And far more sweet Than e'er, beneath the moonlight's star, The songs repeat. 'Tis when the sigh,-in youth sincere And only then, The sigh that's breathed for one to hear- Breathed back again. 493 AT THE MID HOUR OF NIGHT Ar the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear 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, ; We buried him darkly at dead of night, No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; Few and short were the prayers we said, But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring: Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; |