Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, Shall give you health, and help, and hope, My dark Rosaleen!

Over hills and through dales
Have I roamed for your sake;
All yesterday I sailed the sails
On river and on lake.

The Erne, at its highest flood,
I dashed across unseen,

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,
My life, my love, my saint of saints,

My dark Rosaleen!

Woe and pain, pain and woe,

Are my lot, night and noon,
To see your bright face clouded so,
Like to the mournful moon.

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,
From morning's dawn till e'en,

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,
My dark Rosaleen!

I could scale the blue air,

I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!

And one beamy smile from you

Would float like light between

My toils and me, my own, my true,
My dark Rosaleen!

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!
My own Rosaleen!

The Judgment Hour must first be nigh,
Ere you shall fade, ere you can die,

My dark Rosaleen!

James Clarence Mangan [1803-1849]

EXILE OF ERIN

THERE came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill;
For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.

But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh.

Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger;
The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again, in the green sunny bowers

Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,

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?
Never again shall my brothers embrace me?

They died to defend me, or live to deplore!

Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wildwood?
Sisters and sire, did ye weep for its fall?
Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?

And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all?

O my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure,
Why did it dote on a fast-fading treasure?

Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.

Yet, all its sad recollections suppressing,

One dying wish my lone bosom can draw,— Erin, an exile bequeaths thee his blessing!

Land of my forefathers, Erin go bragh! Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion, Green be thy fields, sweetest isle of the ocean!

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;
The night that hath no morrow was brooding on the main:
But, lo! a light is breaking of hope for thee again;

'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,
Are sisters; the sad winds are of thy race:
The heart of melancholy beats in thee,
And the lamenting spirit haunts thy face,

Mournful and mighty Mother! who art kin
To the ancient earth's first woe,
When holy Angels wept, beholding sin.
For not in penance do thy true tears flow,
Not thine the long transgression: at thy name,
We sorrow not with shame,

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,
Who wouldst thy children upon earth suffice
For Paradise, and pure Hesperian rest;

Had not the violent and bitter fates

Burned up with fiery feet

The greenness of thy pastures; had not hates,
Envies, and desolations, with fierce heat
Wasted thee, and consumed the land of grace,
Beauty's abiding place;

And vexed with agony bright joy's retreat.

Swift at the word of the Eternal Will,
Upon thee the malign armed Angels came.
Flame was their winging, flame that laps thee still;
And in the anger of their eyes was flame.
One was the Angel of the field of blood,
And one of lonelier death:

One saddened exiles on the ocean flood,
And famine followed on another's breath.
Angels of evil, with incessant sword,

Smote thee, O land adored!

And yet smite: for the Will of God so saith.

A severing and sundering they wrought,
A rending of the soul. They turned to tears
The laughter of thy waters: and they brought,
To sow upon thy fields, quick seed of fears;
That brother should hate brother, and one roof
Shelter unkindly hearts;

Friend from his ancient friendship hold aloof,
And comrades learn to play sad alien parts,

« AnteriorContinuar »