| |
| O, 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, | 5 |
| As winds that moan at night forlorn | |
| Along the isles of Fion-Gael, | |
| When for O’Connor’s child to mourn, | |
| The harper told, how lone, how far | |
| From any mansion’s twinkling star, | 10 |
| From any path of social men, | |
| Or voice, but from the fox’s den, | |
| The lady in the desert dwelt, | |
| And yet no wrongs, no fear she felt: | |
| Say, why should dwell in place so wild | 15 |
| The lovely pale O’Connor’s child? | |
| Sweet lady! she no more inspires | |
| Green Erin’s heart with beauty’s power, | |
| As in the palace of her sires | |
| She bloomed a peerless flower. | 20 |
| Gone from her hand and bosom, gone, | |
| The regal broche, 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, | 25 |
| 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; | 30 |
| Why wanders she a huntress wild,— | |
| The lovely pale O’Connor’s child? | |
| |
| And fixed on empty space, why burn | |
| Her eyes with momentary wildness; | |
| And wherefore do they then return | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| 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 | 45 |
| The living and the dead can meet: | |
| For lo! to lovelorn fantasy | |
| The hero of her heart is nigh. | |
| |
| Bright as the bow that spans the storm, | |
| In Erin’s yellow vesture clad, | 50 |
| 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, | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| 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. * * * * * | |
| |
