"Oh, search with mother-love the gifts
Our land can boast;
Fair Erna's isles--Neagh's wooded slopes--
Green Antrim's coast."--MACCARTHY.
In peerless beauty, flushing, glowing,
O'er broad Lutigh Neagh's breast,
The sunset banner hovers, throwing
Its glory over the West.
And varied banks of glen and wood,
That smile round Neagh's smiling flood,
In this sweet hour seem fitting theme
For Poet's song or artist's dream.
Round the horizon, sternly frowning,
The mountains like a barrier rise,
The purple range, Slieve Gallion crowning,
Towers grimly to the western skies.
Northward Losgh Beg's bright waters play
Round the Church Isle, where, lone and grey.
The ruined pile with ivied walls
To present days the past recalls.
On many a grave the sunset gleams,
Where calmly rest the sleeping dead--
Tired mortals, done with mortal dreams
In other life, whetted they have fled.
E'en now they live! Oh! if tonight
One soul might earthward take its flight,
In awful tones methinks t'would say--
"Prepare for death, oh child of clay!"
Oh, time-worn walls! full many a word
Ye echoed in the Sabbath calm;
Love, warning, blessing, oft ye heard,
And solemn prayer, and chanted psalm;
And funeral dirge, as wild and high'
Rose on the gale the _caione_-cry,
Borne far and wide, o'er fern and brake,
As passed the cortege o'er the lake.
And legends of the days gone by
Tell that if, when a funeral train
Passed there, dark clouds swept over the sky,
And howled the wind and sobbed the rain,
Such storm was still an omen blest,
And told the spirit's happy rest.
If all were calm--then woe the dead!
Sad rose their wailing, weird and dread!
And that before a chieftain's death,
On moonless nights, by lightning shown,
How oft they saw the water-wraith,
And heard the weeping banshee's groan.
How many a barque, at midnight toss'd
And in the angry waters lost,
In the gray dawn-light seemed to glide
In phantom-beauty o'er the tide.
But ah! the past and all its lore
Is fading from our hearts away,
And memories of the times of yore
Are all forgotten in to day!
And now, 'tis but by peasants old
These cherished legends can be told;
For Erin's harp is mute and still,
Its mystic notes no heart can thrill!
Once minstrel hearts awoke its strain,
And swept its chords with master-hand;
But who can wake these lays again
In songs of love and fatherland?
Oh! when again shall such as they
Wake passion'd song and warrior's lay?
Till Erin's vales once more resound
With harp-notes long in silence bound!