Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, Shall give you health, and help, and hope, My dark Rosaleen! Over hills and through dales The Erne, at its highest flood, For there was lightning in my blood, My dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! Oh! there was lightning in my blood, Red lightning lightened through my blood, My dark Rosaleen! All day long, in unrest, To and fro do I move. The very soul within my breast Is wasted for you, love! The heart in my bosom faints To think of you, my Queen, My life of life, my saint of saints, My dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! To hear your sweet and sad complaints, Woe and pain, pain and woe, Are my lot, night and noon, But yet will I rear your throne Again in golden sheen; 'Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone My dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! "Tis you shall have the golden throne, 'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone, My dark Rosaleen! Over dews, over sands, Will I fly for your weal: Your holy, delicate white hands Shall girdle me with steel. At home in your emerald bowers, You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers, My dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! You'll think of me through daylight's hours, My virgin flower, my flower of flowers, I could scale the blue air, I could plough the high hills, And one beamy smile from you Would float like light between My toils and me, my own, my true, My own Rosaleen! Would give me life and soul anew, A second life, a soul anew, My dark Rosaleen! Oh! the Erne shall run red With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath our tread, And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan-cry Wake many a glen serene, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, My dark Rosaleen! The Judgment Hour must first be nigh, Ere My dark Rosaleen! James Clarence Mangan [1803-1849] EXILE OF ERIN THERE came to the beach a poor exile of Erin, But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion, Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger; Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours, And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh! Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken, In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore; But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken, And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more! O cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me In a mansion of peace, where no perils can chase me? They died to defend me, or live to deplore! Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wildwood? And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all? O my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure, Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure, Yet, all its sad recollections suppressing, One dying wish my lone bosom can draw,— Land of my forefathers, Erin go bragh! And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotion,Erin mavournin, Erin go bragh! Thomas Campbell [1777–1844] ANDROMEDA THEY chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone; The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own; The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone. Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her, Ye left her there alone! My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain; 'Tis Perseus' sword a-flaming, thy dawn of day proclaiming Across the western main. O Ireland! O my country! he comes to break thy chain! James Jeffrey Roche [1847-1908] IRELAND Si oblitus fuero tui Ierusalem: oblivioni detur dextera mea. THY Sorrow, and the sorrow of the sea, Mournful and mighty Mother! who art kin But proudly: for thy soul is as the snow. Old as the sorrow for lost Paradise Seems thine old sorrow: thou in the mild West, Had not the violent and bitter fates Burned up with fiery feet The greenness of thy pastures; had not hates, And vexed with agony bright joy's retreat. Swift at the word of the Eternal Will, One saddened exiles on the ocean flood, Smote thee, O land adored! And yet smite: for the Will of God so saith. A severing and sundering they wrought, Friend from his ancient friendship hold aloof, |