IRISH MELODIES.

No. VIII.

NE'ER ASK THE HOUR.

AIR.-My Husband's a Journey to Portugal gone.

I.

NE'ER ask the hour-what is it to us
How Time deals out his treasures?

The golden moments, lent us thus,

If

Are not his coin, but Pleasure's.

counting them over could add to their blisses,

I'd number each glorious second;

But moments of joy are, like LESBIA's kisses,
Too quick and sweet to be reckon'd.

Then fill the cup-what is it to us
How Time his circle measures?

The fairy hours we call up thus
Obey no wand but Pleasure's!

II.

Young Joy ne'er thought of counting hours,
Till Care, one summer's morning,

Set up among his smiling flowers

A dial, by way of warning.

But Joy loved better to gaze on the sun,
As long as its light was glowing,

Than to watch with old Care how the shadow

stole on,

And how fast that light was going.

So fill the cup-what is it to us

How Time his circle measures? The fairy hours we call up thus Obey no wand but Pleasure's.

SAIL ON, SAIL ON.

AIR.-The Humming of the Ban.

SAIL on,

I.

sail on, thou fearless bark

Wherever blows the welcome wind,

It cannot lead to scenes more dark,

More sad than those we leave behind.

Each wave that passes seems to say,

Though death beneath our smile may be,

"Less cold we are, less false than they

"Whose smiling wreck'd thy hopes and thee."

II.

Sail on, sail on-through endless space

Through calm-through tempest-stop no more ;

The stormiest sea's a resting-place

To him who leaves such hearts on shore.

Or-if some desert land we meet,

Where never yet false-hearted men Profaned a world, that else were sweetThen rest thee bark, but not till then.

THE PARALLEL.

AIR.-1 would rather than Ireland.

I.

YES, sad one of SION*-if closely resembling,

In shame and in sorrow, thy wither'd-up heartIf drinking deep, deep, of the “same cup of trembling” Could make us thy children, our parent thou art.

II.

Like thee doth our nation lie conquer'd and broken,

And fallen from her head is the once royal crown; In her streets, in her halls, Desolation hath spoken, And "while it is day yet, her sun hath gone down."+

III.

Like thine doth her exile, 'mid dreams of returning,
Die far from the home it were life to behold;
Like thine do her sons, in the day of their mourning,
Remember the bright things that bless'd them of old!

* These verses were written after the perusal of a treatise by Mr. Hamilton, professing to prove that the Irish were originally Jews.

"Her sun is gone down while it was yet day."-Jer. xv. 9.

IV.

Ah, well may we call her, like thee, "the Forsaken,"* Her boldest are vanquish'd, her proudest are slaves; And the harps of her minstrels, when gayest they waken, Have breathings as sad as the wind over graves!

V.

Yet hadst thou thy vengeance-yet came there the

morrow,

That shines out, at last, on the longest dark night, When the sceptre that smote thee with slavery and sorrow Was shiver'd at once, like a reed, in thy sight.

VI.

When that cup, which for others the proud Golden City †

Had brimm'd full of bitterness, drench'd her own lips, And the world she had trampled on heard, without pity, The howl in her halls and the cry from her ships.

VII.

When the curse Heaven keeps for the haughty came over Her merchants rapacious, her rulers unjust,

* "Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken."-Isaiah Ixii. 4. "How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased." -Isaiah xiv. 4.