Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By Songs

John Everett (1801–1826)

COME not to me, my dearest love,

When hope is gay and wo is fled;

Sad is my bower and high above,

Deep trees their shroudlike branches spread.

But when that wo tenfold returns,

When in the dust those hopes shall be,

When with deep pain thy bosom burns,

Then thou, my love, must come to me.

For thee, my desert bower I ’ll dress,

For thee will light my tearful eyes;

For thee will braid each raven tress

That now in wild disorder flies.

And grief, who sits within my cell

A constant visitor to me,

Shall greet thee, for she knows full well

How sadly sweet I ’ll sing to thee.

SING to me as in old “lang syne,”

Thy sweet neglected songs.

To other hearts, oh! not to mine,

Thy newer, lighter strain belongs,

My desert memory it wrongs.

The strains thou lightly hurried’st o’er

To charm the gallant and the gay,

The brighter smile thy features wore,

When ceased thy sportive roundelay,

How changed from that more lovely day!

Then to the known, the loved, the few,

Awoke each dear, familiar tone,

Which every heart instinctive knew

And thrilling answer’d with its own,

Till not a note was felt alone.

Gone are the few—the known estranged,

Perchance ’tis right thy melody

Like them and these and all be changed,

And none preserve those songs but me

To think on what has been, what ne’er shall be.

TOM MOORE, again we’re met—

By the sparkles of thine eye,

By thy lip with bright wine wet,

Thou art glad as well as I.

And thine eye shall gleam the brighter

Ere our meeting shall be o’er

And thy minstrelsy flow lighter

With our healths to thee, Tom Moore.

For thy boyish songs of woman

Thrown about like unstrung pearls,

Ere thy armed spirit’s summon

Bade thee leave thy bright-hair’d girls;

For thy satire’s quenchless arrows

On the foes thy country bore,

For thy song of Erin’s sorrows,

Here ’s health to thee, Tom Moore.

Drink to Moore, drink to Moore—

What though England renounce him,

Her dark days shall soon be o’er,

And her brightest band surrounds him.

In the land, then, of the vine,

To thee, its glittering drops we pour,

And in warmest, reddest wine,

Drink a health to thee, Tom Moore.