H! once the harp of Innisfail
Was strung full high to notes of gladness;
But yet it often told a tale
Of more prevailing sadness.
Sad was the note, and wild its fall,
As winds that moan at night forlorn
Along the isles of Fion-Gall,
When, for O'Connor's child to mourn,
The harper told, how lone, how far
From any mansion's twinkling star,
From any path of social men,
Or voice, but from the fox's den,
The lady in the desert dwelt;
And yet no wrongs nor fear she felt.
Say, why should dwell in place so wild,
O'Connor's pale and lovely child?
Sweet lady she no more inspires
Green Erin's hearts with beauty's power,
As in the palace of her sires
She bloomed a peerless flower.
Gone from her hand and bosom, gone,
The royal brooch, the jewelled ring,
That o'er her dazzling whiteness shone,
Like dews on lilies of the spring.
Yet why, though fallen her brother's kerne,
Beneath De Bourgo's battle stern,
While yet, in Leinster unexplored,
Her friends survive the English sword,
Why lingers she from Erin's host,
So far on Galway's shipwrecked coast?
Why wanders she a huntress wild, –
O'Connor's pale and lovely child?
And, fixed on empty space, why burn
Her eyes with momentary wildness;
And wherefore do they then return
To more than woman's mildness?
Dishevelled are her raven locks;
On Connocht Moran's name she calls;
And oft amidst the lonely rocks
She sings sweet madrigals.
Placed in the foxglove and the moss,
Behold a parted warrior's cross!
That is the spot where, evermore,
The lady, at her shieling door,
Enjoys that, in communion sweet,
The living and the dead can meet;
For lo! to love-lorn fantasy,
The hero of her heart is nigh.
Bright as the bow that spans the storm,
In Erin's yellow vesture clad,
A son of light, a lovely form,
He comes and makes her glad :
Now on the grass-green turf he sits,
His tasselled horn beside him laid;
Now o'er the hills in chase he flits,
The hunter and the deer a shade!
Sweet mourner! those are shadows vain,
That cross the twilight of her brain;
Yet she will tell you she is blest,
Of Connocht Moran's tomb possessed,
More richly than in Aghrim's bower,
When bards high praised her beauty's power,
And kneeling pages offered up
The morat in a golden cup.
"A hero's bride! this desert bower,
It ill befits thy gentle breeding.
And wherefore dost thou love this flower
To call My love lies bleeding'?"
"This purple flower my tears have nursed,
A hero's blood supplied its bloom:
I love it, for it was the first
That grew on Connocht Moran's tomb.
O, hearken, stranger, to my voice!
This desert mansion is my choice;
And blest, though fatal, be the star
That led me to its wilds afar.
For here these pathless mountains free
Gave shelter to my love and me;
And every rock and every stone
Bare witness that he was my own.
"O'Connor's child, I was the bud
Of Erin's royal tree of glory;
But woe to them that wrapt in blood
The tissue of my story!
Still, as I clasp my burning brain,
A death-scene rushes on my sight;
It rises o'er and o'er again,
The bloody feud, the fatal night,
When, chafing Connocht Moran's scorn,
They called my hero basely born,
And bade him choose a meaner bride
Than from O'Connor's house of pride.
Their tribe, they said, their high degree,
Was sung in Tara's psaltery;
Witness their Eath's victorious brand,
And Cathal of the bloody hand.
Glory (they said) and power and honor
Were in the mansion of O'Connor;
But he, my loved one, bore in field
A meaner crest upon his shield.
“Ah! brothers, what did it avail,
That fiercely and triumphantly
Ye fought the English of the Pale,
And stemmed De Bourgo's chivalry?
And what was it to love and me,
That barons by your standard rode,
Or beal-fires for your jubilee
Upon a hundred mountains glowed?
What though the lords of tower and dome
From Shannon to the North Sea foam,
Thought ye your iron hands of pride
Could break the knot that love had tied?
No let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom;
But ties around this heart were spun
That could not, would not, be undone!
"At bleating of the wild watch-fold, Thus sang my love: O, come with me! Our bark is on the lake, behold!
Our steeds are fastened to the tree.
Come far from Castle-Connor's clans,
Come with thy belted forestere;
And I, beside the lake of swans,
Shall hunt for thee the fallow deer,
And build thy hut, and bring thee home
The wild-fowl and the honeycomb,
And berries from the wood provide,
And play my clarshech by thy side.
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