Elsie! my bright-haired sister! tender blossom and pure!
You drooped in that last storm's fury, too fragile its might
to endure;
And then I left the home-nest when my last sweet dove had
flown,
And sought to forget, amid stranger scenes, the sorrows my
soul had known.
It's thus the shadowy phantoms come back from the spirit-
shore,
When I cry in my lonely anguish for the joys now mine no
more.
I thrill with a passion'd yearning for the fuller life to be,
When my tired soul faints in wonder, lost in earth's
mystery!
CHURCH ISLAND, COUNTY DERRY.
"Oh, search with mother-love the gifts
Our land can boast;
Fair Erna's isles—Neagh's wooded slopes—
Green Antrim's coast."—MACCARTHY.
In peerless beauty, flushing, glowing,
O'er broad Lutigh Neagh's breast,
The sunset banner hovers, throwing
Its glory over the West.
And varied banks of glen and wood,
That smile round Neagh's smiling flood,
In this sweet hour seem fitting theme
For Poet's song or artist's dream.
Round the horizon, sternly frowning,
The mountains like a barrier rise,
The purple range, Slieve Gallion crowning,
Towers grimly to the western skies.
Northward Losgh Beg's bright waters play
Round the Church Isle, where, lone and grey.
The ruined pile with ivied walls
To present days the past recalls.
On many a grave the sunset gleams,
Where calmly rest the sleeping dead—
Tired mortals, done with mortal dreams
In other life, whetted they have fled.
E'en now they live! Oh! if tonight
One soul might earthward take its flight,
In awful tones methinks t'would say—
"Prepare for death, oh child of clay!"
Oh, time-worn walls! full many a word
Ye echoed in the Sabbath calm;
Love, warning, blessing, oft ye heard,
And solemn prayer, and chanted psalm;
And funeral dirge, as wild and high'
Rose on the gale the caione-cry,
Borne far and wide, o'er fern and brake,
As passed the cortege o'er the lake.
And legends of the days gone by
Tell that if, when a funeral train
Passed there, dark clouds swept over the sky,
And howled the wind and sobbed the rain,
Such storm was still an omen blest,
And told the spirit's happy rest.
If all were calm—then woe the dead!
Sad rose their wailing, weird and dread!