94. The Irish Peasant Girl

SHE lived beside the Anner,

At the foot of Slievna-man,

A gentle peasant girl,

With mild eyes like the dawn;

Her lips were dewy rosebuds;

her teeth of pearls rare;

And a snow-drift ’neath a beechen bough

Her neck and nut-brown hair.

How pleasant ’twas to meet her

On Sunday, when the bell

Was filling with its mellow tones

Lone wood and grassy dell

And when at eve young maidens

Strayed the river bank along,

The widow’s brown-haired daughter

Was loveliest of the throng.

O brave, brave Irish girls—

We well may call you brave!—

Sure the least of all your perils

Is the stormy ocean wave,

When you leave our quiet valleys,

And cross the Atlantic’s foam,

To hoard your hard-won earnings

For the helpless ones at home.

“Write word to my own dear mother—

Say, we’ll meet with God above;

And tell my little brothers

I send them all my love;

May the angels ever guard them,

Is their dying sister’s prayer”—

And folded in a letter

Was a braid of nut-brown hair.

Ah, cold and well-nigh callous,

This weary heart has grown

For thy helpless fate, dear Ireland,

And for sorrows of my own;

Yet a tear my eye will moister,

When by Anner side I stray,

For the lily of the mountain foot

That withered far away.