Oh, ye Dead! oh, ye Dead![1] whom we know by the light you give
From your cold gleaming eyes, tho' you move like men who live,
Why leave you thus your graves,
In far off fields and waves,
Where the worm and the sea-bird only know your bed,
To haunt this spot where all
Those eyes that wept your fall,
And the hearts that wailed you, like your own, lie dead?
It is true, it is true, we are shadows cold and wan;
And the fair and the brave whom we loved on earth are gone;
But still thus even in death,
So sweet the living breath
Of the fields and the flowers in our youth we wander'd o'er,
That ere, condemned, we go
To freeze mid Hecla's snow,
We would taste it awhile, and think we live once more!
[1] Paul Zealand mentions that there is a mountain in some part of
Ireland, where the ghosts of persons who have died in foreign lands walk
about and converse with those they meet, like living people. If asked why
they do not return to their homes, they say they are obliged to go to
Mount Hecla, and disappear immediately.