THE SUMMER sun is falling soft on Carbery’s hundred isles, | |
| The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel’s rough defiles,— | |
| Old Inisherkin’s crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird; | |
| And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard: | |
| The hookers lie upon the beach; the children cease their play; | 5 |
| The gossips leave the little inn; the households kneel to pray; | |
| And full of love and peace and rest,—its daily labor o’er,— | |
| Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore. | |
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| A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there; | |
| No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth or sea or air. | 10 |
| The massive capes and ruined towers seem conscious of the calm; | |
| The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm. | |
| So still the night, these two long barks round Dunashad that glide | |
| Must trust their oars—methinks not few—against the ebbing tide. | |
| O, some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the shore,— | 15 |
| They bring some lover to his bride, who sighs in Baltimore! | |
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| All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky street, | |
| And these must be the lover’s friends, with gently gliding feet. | |
| A stifled gasp! a dreamy noise! The roof is in a flame! | |
| From out their beds, and to their doors, rush maid and sire and dame, | 20 |
| And meet upon the threshold stone, the gleaming sabre’s fall, | |
| And o’er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl. | |
| The yell of “Allah!” breaks above the prayer and shriek and roar— | |
| O blessèd God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore! | |
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| Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword; | 25 |
| Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was gored; | |
| Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching wild; | |
| Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled with the child. | |
| But see, yon pirate strangling lies, and crushed with splashing heel, | |
| While o’er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian steel; | 30 |
| Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store, | |
| There ’s one hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore! | |
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| Midsummer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds begin to sing; | |
| They see not now the milking-maids, deserted is the spring! | |
| Midsummer day, this gallant rides from the distant Bandon’s town, | 35 |
| These hookers crossed from stormy Skull, that skiff from Affadown. | |
| They only found the smoking walls with neighbors’ blood besprent, | |
| And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went, | |
| Then dashed to sea, and passed Cape Clear, and saw, five leagues before, | |
| The pirate-galleys vanishing that ravaged Baltimore. | 40 |
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| O, some must tug the galley’s oar, and some must tend the steed,— | |
| This boy will bear a Scheik’s chibouk, and that a Bey’s jerreed. | |
| O, some are for the arsenals by beauteous Dardanelles, | |
| And some are in the caravan to Mecca’s sandy dells. | |
| The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey, | 45 |
| She ’s safe,—she ’s dead,—she stabbed him in the midst of his Serai; | |
| And when to die a death of fire that noble maid they bore, | |
| She only smiled,—O’Driscoll’s child,—she thought of Baltimore. | |
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| ’T is two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band, | |
| And all around its trampled hearth a larger concourse stand, | 50 |
| Where high upon a gallows-tree a yelling wretch is seen,— | |
| ’T is Hackett of Dungarvan,—he who steered the Algerine! | |
| He fell amid a sullen shout, with scarce a passing prayer, | |
| For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there: | |
| Some muttered of MacMorrogh, who had brought the Norman o’er, | 55 |
| Some cursed him with Iscariot, that day in Baltimore. | |
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