GIVE me the songs I loved to hear,
In sweet and sunny days of yore;
Which came in gushes to my ear
From lips that breathe them now no more;
From lips, alas! on which the worm,
In coiled and dusty silence lies,
Where many a loved, lamented form
Is hid from Sorrow's filling eyes!
Yes! when those unforgotten lays,
Come trembling with a spirit-voice,
I mind me of those early days,
When to respire was to rejoice:
When gladsome flowers and fruitage shone
Where'er my willing footstep fell;
When Hope's bright realm was all mine own,
And Fancy whispered, "All is well."
Give me old songs! They stir my heart
As with some glorious trumpet-tone :
Beyond the reach of modern art,
They rule its thrilling cords alone,
Till, on the wings of thought, I fly
Back to that boundary of bliss,
Which once beneath my childhood's sky
Embraced a scene of loveliness!
Thus, when the portals of mine ear
Those long-remembered lays receive,
They seem like guests, whose voices cheer
My breast, and bid it not to grieve:
They ring in cadences of love,
They tell of dreams now vanished all;
Dreams, that descended from above-
Visions, 't is rapture to recall!
Give me old songs! I know not why,
But every tone they breathe to me
Is fraught with pleasures pure and high,
With honest love or honest glee:
They move me, when by chance I hear,
They rouse each slumbering pulse anew
Till every scene to memory dear
Is pictured brightly to my view.
I do not ask those sickly lays
O'er which affected maidens bend; Which scented fops are bound to praise, To which dull crowds their homage lend: Give me some simple Scottish song, Or lays, from Erin's distant isle: Lays that to love and truth belong, And cause the saddest lip to smile!
"Ah! weladay! most angelike of face,
A childe, young in his pure innocence,
Tender of limbes, God wote full guiltilesse,
The goodly faire that lieth here speechelesse.
A mouth he has, but wordis hath he none;
Can not complain, alas! for none outrage,
Ne grutcheth not, but lies here all alone,
Still as a lambe, most meke of his visage:
What heart of steele could do to him damage,
Or suffer him die, beholding the manere,
And look benign of his twin eyen clere ?"
YOUNG mother, he is gone! His dimpled cheek no more will touch thy breast; No more the music-tone
Float from his lips, to thine all fondly pressed; His smile and happy laugh are lost to thee: Earth must his mother and his pillow be.
His was the morning hour,
And he had passed in beauty from the day,
A bud, not yet a flower,
Torn, in its sweetness, from the parent spray;
The death-wind swept him to his soft repose,
As frost, in spring-time blights the early rose.
Will his rich accents charm thy listening ear, Like some Æolian strain,
Breathing at eventide serene and clear;
His voice is choked in dust, and on his eyes
The unbroken seal of peace and silence lies.
And from thy yearning heart,
Whose inmost core was warm with love for him, A gladness must depart,
And those kind eyes with many tears be dim;
While lonely memories, an unceasing train,
Will turn the raptures of the past to pain.
Yet, mourner, while the day
Rolls like the darkness of a funeral by,
And hope forbids one ray
To stream athwart the grief-discolored sky;
There breaks upon thy sorrow's evening gloom
A trembling lustre from beyond the tomb.
'Tis from the better land;
There, bathed in radiance that around them springs,
Thy loved one's wings expand;
As with the choiring cherubim he sings,
And all the glory of that GOD can see,
Who said, on earth, to children, "Come to me."
Mother, thy child is blessed :
And though his presence may be lost to thee, And vacant leave thy breast,
And missed, a sweet load from thy parent knee : Though tones familiar from thine ear have passed, Thou'lt meet thy first-born with his LORD at last.
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