ECHO. HOW sweet the answer Echo makes When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes, Yet Love hath echoes truer far, Than e'er beneath the moonlight's star, 'Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere, The sigh that's breath'd for one to hear, OH BANQUET NOT. OH banquet not in those shining bowers Where youth resorts but come to me; For mine's a garden of faded flowers, More fit for sorrow, for age, and thee. And there we shall have our feast of tears, And many a cup in silence pour; Our guests, the shades of former years. Our toasts to lips that bloom no more. There, while the myrtle's withering boughs To friends long lost, the changed, the dead. THEE, THEE, ONLY THEE. THE dawning of morn, the daylight's sinking, When friends are met, and goblets crown'd, Whatever in fame's high path could waken For thee, thee, only thee. Like shores by which some headlong bark M2 I have not a joy but of thy bringing, Like spells that naught on earth can break, SHALL THE HARP THEN BE SILENT. SHALL the Harp then be silent, when he who first gave To our country a name is withdrawn from all eyes? Shall a Minstrel of Erin stand mute by the grave Where the first-where the last of her Patriots lies? No-faint tho' the death-song may fall from his lips, Though 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 * It is only the first two verses that are either fitted or intended to be sung. Oh, who that loves Erin, or who that can see, Thro' the waste of her annals, that epoch sublime Like a pyramid rais'd in the desert where he And his glory stand out to the eyes of all time; That one lucid interval, snatched from the gloom And the madness of ages, when fill'd with his soul, A nation o'erleap'd the dark bounds of her doom, And for one sacred instant touch'd Liberty's goal Who, that ever hath heard him hath drank at the source Of that wonderful eloquence, all Erin's own, In whose high-thoughted daring, the fire, and the force, And the yet untam'd spring of her spirit are shown; 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,' that gave, With the flash of the gem, its solidity too Who, that ever approached him, when free from the crowd, In a home full of love, he delighted to tread Mong the trees which a nation had giv'n, and which bow'd, As if each brought a new civic crown for his head Is there one who hath thus, through his orbit of life, But at distance observ'd him-through glory, through blame, In the calm of retreat, in the grandeur of strife, Whether shining or clouded, still high and the same Oh no, not a heart that e'er knew him but mourns Deep, deep o'er the grave where such glory is shrin'd O'er a monument Fame will preserve 'mong the urns Of the wisest, the bravest, the best of mankind. OH THE SIGHT ENTRANCING. Он, the sight entrancing, With helm and blade, And plumes in the gay wind dancing! May lead to death, But never to retreating. Oh, the sight entrancing, When morning's beam is glancing |