In concert grand the tuneful waves
Break wildly on the foam-girt shore,
And through a thousand secret caves
The shrill wind-voices loudly roar.
Now are the harps of the Ocean waking,
'Mid the howling winds and the billows breaking!
The mermaid leaves her ocean home
To sing her love-songs, soft and tender;
The moonlight gilds the breaker's foam,
And bathes the sea in silvery splendour;
And the splashing spray on the White Rocks falling
Sounds like lonely voices of Ocean calling.
Oh, lone Dunluce! looking o'er the sea,
With tower and keep so grim and hoary,
Do the waves' wild revels recall to thee
The days of your long-departed glory--
When the wan, weird moonlight is round thee streaming,
With the stars' pale light on your gray walls beaming?
Oh, stern old relic of bygone ages!
Oh, stout old scorner of Time's rude hand!
Your name shall live in our history's pages
While a poet sings in our native land;
And your fame shall be heard in old Erin's story
When we tell of the days of her vanished glory.
Ah! many a tale not in history's keeping,
Of lordly chieftain and lady fair,
in the gloom of Oblivion now are sleeping,
And can never be told in the twilight there;
Who repose unremembered in graves unknown,
Where the storms of past ages have o'er them blown.
I can almost fancy the winds are singing
Those stories forgotten by all but thee,
And the rolling waves in their turn are bringing
Back mem'ries of olden chivalry;
Wild minstrels around thee in darkness stealing
The scenes of the long ago revealing
I hear in the distance their harp-notes swelling
In a dirge-like wail o'er the moaning sea,
And I think that their mournful strains are telling
A thousand tales of the past to me.
The echoing caves to their songs replying,
As each fitful sound on the gale is dying.
Wild minstrels of Nature, whose poet-fire
Rings out through her solitudes, wild and grand.
Let your spirit rest on my feeble lyre,
And I'll chain it there with a willing hand.
And when Night hangs her myriad star-lamps shine
Let me blend her notes with your wondrous chord.