Fair vales of Ulster! in the noontide smiling,
Blue Northern mountains, frowning to the sky;
Rivers that flow along, with song beguiling
The summer day _your_ beauties, too, must die!
Know ye no _requiem_? Ah! streamlets borrow
Your tones from tearful voices! Mountains blue,
O'er your high heads let heavy clouds of sorrow
Tell that ye mourn the death of Patriot true.
Erin! green Erin! let your great heart feel it!
Bid all your sons and daughters, fair and brave,
By dropping tears and mourning faces tell it,
As they place laurels on a new-made grave!
Lowly he lies to day? Death's deep, calm slumber
Has claimed another of our cherished ones;
As he, the talented, ranks with the number
Of Erin's lost, best-loved--her gifted sons!
"Barney Maglone" is dead! Let the winds sighing
On their fleet wings, bear far the wail of woe
To every land. Let them in wild, sad crying
Tell out to all the sorrow that we know.
_Our_ Poet, and not all Westminster's glory
Could ever give him half so loved a grave
As this green mound, with simple cross, whose story
Shall live 'mong annals of our gifted brave!
Methinks that far among old Ireland's mountains
I hear the breezes sing a sad dirge, low,
Wild, and yet soft, with tears from many fountains
And murmuring riven wailing in their flow.
The grand old woods, with leafy branches waving,
Mingle their many harps in one refrain,
Blent with the waves, whose foam our coast is laving,
Rolling afar, weeping aloud the strain--
Waters and wondrous deep,
Mountains and valleys;
Woodlands and heathery steep,
Lone greenwood alleys,
Sound the long wail of woe,
Tell the news, sad and low,
Let all the wide world know
Of the loved, lost one!
Waves of deep, boundless sea,
Boiling for ever free,
Tell through the time to be
Of the bright, lost one!
Erin, whose bosom green,
His own, his loved shrine has been,
Feel the woe thou hast seen
For the true, lost one!
His land, in weal or woe,
In dark gloom or sunny glow,
Do all Ireland's great ones know
Such zeal as this lost one?
Bright dreams! ah, how fleeting
Was his life's fair story!
Swift, swift was the meeting
Of Death, with earth's glory!
Unrivalled in splendour
His sky was at morning,
Still brightening, its grandeur
His noonday adorning.
But a dark cloud rose glooming,
Ah, me! 'twas Death's shadow!
It chilled the heat blooming
Of hillside or meadow!
Oh, waters and wondrous deep,
Mountains and valleys,
Woodlands and heathery steep,
Lone greenwood alleys--
Sound the weird wail of woe,
Tell the news sad and low,
Let all the wide world knew
Of Erin's best lost one!