She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her sighing;
But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying.
She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking;
Ah! little they think who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking.
He had liv’d for his love, for his country he died,
They were all that to life had entwined him;
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him.
Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest,
When they make her a glorious morrow;
They’ll shine o’er her sleep, like a smile from the west,
From her own loved island of sorrow.
The evening before his death, Miss Curran was admitted into his dungeon
to bid him her eternal farewell. He was leaning in a melancholy mood
against the window of the prison, and the heavy clanking of his chains
smote dismally on her heart. The interview was bitterly affecting, and
melted even the callous soul of the jailor. As for Emmet himself, he
wept, and spoke little; but as he pressed his beloved in silence to his
heart, his countenance betrayed his emotions. In a low voice, half
choked by anguish, he besought her not to forget him; he reminded her of
their former happiness, of the long past days of their childhood, and
concluded by requesting her sometimes to visit the scenes where their
infancy was spent, and though the world might repeat his name with
scorn, to cling to his memory with affection. In parting, she turned
round, as if to gaze once more on her widowed love. He caught her eye as
she retired—it was but for a moment—and as the door closed on him, it
informed her too surely that they had met for the last time on earth,
but that they should meet in a better world, where man could not
separate them.
She loved him with the disinterested fervour of a woman’s first and
early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him—when
blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around his name,
she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then, his
fate could awaken the sympathy even of his foes, what must have been the
agony of her whose whole soul was occupied by his image? Let those tell
who have had the portal of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the
being they most loved on earth—who have sat at its threshold, as one
shut out in a cold and lonely world from whence all that was most lovely
and loving had departed.
To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her
father’s displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile
from her paternal roof. But could the sympathy and offices of friends
reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have
experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are proverbially a
people of quick and generous sensibilities.
The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of
wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all
kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her
from the tragical story of her love. But it was all in vain.
There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul—that
penetrate to the vital seat of happiness—and blast it, never again to
put forth bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of
pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude.
She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious of the world
around her. She carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the
blandishments of friendship, and “heeded not the song of the charmer,
charm he never so wisely.”
On the occasion of a masquerade at the Rotunda, her friends brought her
to it. There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking
and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a
spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay—to see it dressed
out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and wo-begone, as if
it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary
forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and
giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on
the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant
air, that shewed insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the
capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She
had an exquisite voice but on this occasion it was so simple, so
touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that she drew a
crowd, mute and silent around her, and melted every one into tears.
The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interest
in a country remark for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of a
brave officer who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so
true to the dead could not but prove affectionate to the living. She
declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by
the memory of her former lover.—He, however, persisted in his suit. He
solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her
conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and
dependant situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In
a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the
solemn assurance that her heart was unalterably another’s.
He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might wear
out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary
wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the
silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She
wasted away in a slow but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the
grave, the victim of a broken heart.
Her sorrows are numbered—no longer she weeps,
Every pang she endured is requited;
With endless delight, and in silence she sleeps,
For in death with her love she’s united.
Like Sidney he died, but his mem’ry shall live
In the bosoms of those who deplored him;
And Pity her purest of dew-drops shall give
To the sorrows of those who adored him.
For he loved—was beloved—but alas! in his bloom,
The ordeal of fate here sore tried him;
And his spirit took flight from this world of gloom,
To that glory which here was denied him.
From regions of bliss—the high Heavens above,
Where sorrows can never invade him;
He saw her distress, and he beckoned his love
To ascend, and with joy she obeyed him.
And she who is joined to the spirit she mourned,
Now in bliss, ’tis in vain to deplore her;
For her memory shall live in their bosoms inurned,
Who vowed even in death to adore her.
Whether hero, or lover, or else matters not,
“Other times—other men shall divine him;”
Let him rest with his love, by the world forgot,
We have hearts large enough to enshrine him.