Our Poet, and not all Westminster's glory
Could ever give him half so loved a grave
As this green mound, with simple cross, whose story
Shall live 'mong annals of our gifted brave!
Methinks that far among old Ireland's mountains
I hear the breezes sing a sad dirge, low,
Wild, and yet soft, with tears from many fountains
And murmuring riven wailing in their flow.
The grand old woods, with leafy branches waving,
Mingle their many harps in one refrain,
Blent with the waves, whose foam our coast is laving,
Rolling afar, weeping aloud the strain—
Waters and wondrous deep,
Mountains and valleys;
Woodlands and heathery steep,
Lone greenwood alleys,
Sound the long wail of woe,
Tell the news, sad and low,
Let all the wide world know
Of the loved, lost one!
Waves of deep, boundless sea,
Boiling for ever free,
Tell through the time to be
Of the bright, lost one!
Erin, whose bosom green,
His own, his loved shrine has been,
Feel the woe thou hast seen
For the true, lost one!
His land, in weal or woe,
In dark gloom or sunny glow,
Do all Ireland's great ones know
Such zeal as this lost one?
Bright dreams! ah, how fleeting
Was his life's fair story!
Swift, swift was the meeting
Of Death, with earth's glory!
Unrivalled in splendour
His sky was at morning,
Still brightening, its grandeur
His noonday adorning.