It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,
Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;
It laughed with my joy—in my moments of sadness
What solace I found in its pitying shade.
When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,
My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,
What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,
So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?
But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,
Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,
Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,
The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;
Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,
Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;
The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,
Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.
A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,
The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,
As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,
I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;
And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor
The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,
Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,
My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.
Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel
With sickness and want I have earned only scars;
Life’s twilight is nearing—its day disappearing—
My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;
But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,
Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene
Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,
The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!
AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.
UPON the rugged ladder rungs—whose pinnacle is Fame—
How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;
The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,
And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.
To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise
Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;
Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,
The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen
Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,
We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,
But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;
Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store
Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.
No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill
In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
Perhaps—and yet ’tis hard to think—our boastful modern school
Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;
Would scorn his simple ways—and in the rapid march of mind
His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.
No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;
He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;
To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill
Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.
He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs—
Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:
We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung
Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.
In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well
That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,
And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still
All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.
The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;
Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;
The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;
The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.
But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,
When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,
He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,
The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.