Oh! if regret, however sweet, Must with the lapse of time decay; Yet still when thus in mirth you meet, Fill high to him that's far away. Long be the flame of memory found Let that be still the magic round THE RUINED ISLE. WEEP on, weep on, your hour is past, The fatal chain is round you cast, In vain the hero's heart hath bled, Weep on; perhaps in after days, And when they tread the ruin'd Isle, Where rest alike the lord and slave; They'll wondering ask how hands so vile, Could conquer hearts so brave. Are Erin's sons so good or so cold, "Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm, For though they love women and golde store, Sir Knight, they love honour and virtue more." On she went, and her maiden smile, In safety lighted her round the green isle; AS A BEAM O'ER THE FACE. AIR-"The young man's dream.” As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow, While the tide runs in darkness and coldne below, So the cheek may be ting'd with a warm sunny smile, Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while. One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws Its bleak shades alike o'er our joys and our woes, To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring, For which joy has no balm and affliction no sting! Oh! this thought in the midst of enjoyment will stay, Like a dead leafless branch in the summer's bright ray; The beams of the warm sun play round it in vain, It may smile in his light, but it blooms not again. THE MEETING OF THE WATERS.* AIR" The head of old Denis." THERE is not in the wide world a valley so sweet, As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet ;† Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must de part, Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart. Tet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene Her purest of crystal and brightest of green; "The meeting of the waters" forms a part of the beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in the county of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested by a visit to this romantic spot, in the summer of the year 1807. f The rivers of Avon and Ovoca. 'Twas not the soft magic of streamlet or hill, Oh! no,-it was something more exquisite still. Twas that friends, the belov'd of my bosom, were near, Who made each scene of enchantment more dear, And who felt how the blest charms of nature improve, When we see them reflected from looks that we love. Sweet vale of Ovoca! how calm could I rest In thy bosom of shade with the friends I love best, Where the storms which we feel in this cold world should cease, And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace! ST. SENANUS AND THE LADY. AIR-" The brown Thorn." ST. SENANUS.* "OH, haste and leave this sacred isle, In a metrical life of St. Senanus, which is taken from an old Kilkenny MS. and may be found among the acta sanctorum Hiberniæ, we are told of And I have sworn this sainted sod THE LADY. "Oh, father, send not hence my bark; Through wint'ry winds, o'er billows dark, I come with humble heart to share Thy morn and ev'ning pray'r; Nor mine the feet, oh! holy saint, The brightness of thy sod to taint." The lady's pray'r Senanus spurn'd The wind blew fresh, and the bark return'd: But legends hint, that had the maid Till morning's light delay'd, And giv'n the saint one rosy smile, She ne'er had left his lonely isle. his flight to the island of Scattery, and his resolution not to admit any woman of the party; he refused to receive even a sister saint, (St. Cannera,) whom an angel had taken to the island, for the express purpose of introducing her to him The fol lowing was the ungracious answer of Senanus, ac cording to his poetical biographer. Cui præsul, quid fœminis Commure est cum monarchis, Admittentus in ensulam. See the Acta Sanct. Hib. page 610. According to Dr Ledwick, St. Senanus was no less a personage than the river Shannon, but O'Conner and the other antiquarians deny this metamorphrose indignantly. |