FILL THE BUMPER FAIR. FILL the bumper fair! Every drop we sprinkle O'er the brow of Care Smoothes away a wrinkle. Ne'er so swiftly passes, It shoots from brimming glasses. Fill the bumper fair! Every drop we sprinkle O'er the brow of Care Smoothes away a wrinkle. Sages can, they say, Grasp the lightning's pinions, And bring down its ray From the starr'd dominious: So we, Sages, sit, And, 'mid bumpers bright'ning, From the Heaven of Wit Draw down all its lightning. Wouldst thou know what first This ennobling thirst For wine's celestial spirit? It chanc'd upon that day, The living fires that warm us: The careless Youth, when up To hide the pilfer'd fire in. But oh his joy, when, round Some drops were in that bowl, Hath such spells to win us; O'er that flame within us. Fill the bumper fair! Every drop we sprinkle Smoothes away a wrinkle. OH BANQUET NOT. OH banquet not in those shining bowers, More fit for sorrow, for age, and thee. There, while the myrtle's withering boughs To friends long lost, the changed, the dead. Where valour sleeps, unnam'd, forgot. MY GENTLE HARP. My gentle Harp, once more I waken And yet, since last thy chord resounded, With hopes-that now are turn'd to shame. Then, who can ask for notes of pleasure, As ill would suit the swan's decline! But come-if yet thy frame can borrow 'Twas light, indeed, too blest for one No more unto thy shores to come, Far better in thy weeping hours To part from thee, as I do now, When mist is o'er thy blooming bowers, Like sorrow's veil on beauty's brow. For, though unrivall'd still thy grace, But thus in shadow, seem'st a place Might hope to rest, and find in thee Weeping or smiling, lovely isle! And all the lovelier for thy tearsFor though but rare thy sunny smile, 'Tis heav'n's own glance when it appears. Like feeling hearts, whose joys are few, The brightest light the sun e'er threw SHALL THE HARP, THEN, BE SILENT.1 SHALL the Harp, then, be silent, when he who first gave Where the first-where the last of her Patriots lies? No-faint tho' the death-song may fall from his lips, Tho' his Harp, like his soul, may with shadows be crost, Yet, yet shall it sound, 'mid a nation's eclipse, And proclaim to the world what a star hath been lost; What a union of all the affections and powers By which life is exalted, embellish'd, refin'd, Oh, who that loves Erin, or who that can see, That one lucid interval, snatch'd from the gloom And for one sacred instant, touch'd Liberty's goal? Who, that ever hath heard him-hath drunk at the source In whose high-thoughted daring, the fire, and the force, An eloquence rich, wheresoever its wave Wander'd free and triumphant, with thoughts that shone through, As clear as the brook's "stone of lustre," and gave, With the flash of the gem, its solidity too. |