Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,
And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom
Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
Bloom the year long!
Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art.
Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.
_Arthur O'Shaughnessy_
The Irish-English singer, Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, was born
in London in 1844. He was connected, for a while, with the British
Museum, and was transferred later to the Department of Natural
History. His first literary success, _Epic of Women_ (1870), promised
a brilliant future for the young poet, a promise strengthened by his
_Music and Moonlight_ (1874). Always delicate in health, his hopes
were dashed by periods of illness and an early death in London in
1881.
The poem here reprinted is not only O'Shaughnessy's best, but is,
because of its perfect blending of music and message, one of the
immortal classics of our verse.