And then, oh! mavourneen, in grey distance flying
The present, the real, grows dimmer, and dies,
See but the moonbeams, but hear the winds sighing,
And bask, fancy bound, in the light of your eyes.
My own! though the years in the gloom of their sadness
Stand, frowning, 'tween me and the light of my star,
And memory can feel the wild might of loves madness,
Or scoff as rude Time its first sweetness would mar.
Again, by the banks where Moyola is flowing
We stray as the moonbeams smile sweet through the dell
Unheeded the moments, unmarked in their going,
Nor dreamed we of woe in the sound of "farewell."
Is it lost—all the light of the fair morning vision?
Is spirit to spirit unanswering, cold?
No, it never shall die, while in memory's Elysian
It lingers in beauty and brightness untold.
Love is love, and though Fate blasts our hope vines may sever
From the stay which their tendrils in fondness entwine
Yet the past of our joy we must cherish forever
And spirit meet spirit at memory's shrine.
A MEMORY.
"Indulgent Memory wakes, and, lo! they live!"
—RODGERS
Deathless, while the years are flying,
And all lesser hopes are dying.
To my widowed heart near lying
By a life-time's love embalmed,
Is a memory, dear and tender,
And in dreams its bygone splendour
Sweetest, holiest, balm can render
To my grief, by Time uncalmed.
In life's morning, young and early
Glistening fair through dew-drops pearly,
Burst a bud that promised fairly
Through the length of future days.
Ah! it charmed my passion'd dreaming,
Bathed in beauty's brightness, beaming
Fadeless still, and deathless seeming
In fond Hope's delusive haze.