Softening down to calmer music, round the White Rocks and the
caves,
With a tender, nameless pathos, softly sing the curling waves
To the battlements and turrets, and the old towers, grim and
hoary.
Where the stern Macquillan chieftains reigned in once
unconquered glory.
There Dunluce, in lonely grandeur, frowns in wild, and
deathless pride,
Sentinel of bygone ages, Time-tried warder by the tide.
Grey Dunluce, in concert blending, winds, and waves, and
sounding sea,
Seem to sing a dirge of sorrow for the glory fled from thee,
Rolling onward to the Skerries, wailing far in requiem moan
Till they catch the surf's bold thunder round toe rock at
Innishone,
Where the foam-girt shore re-echoes with the burthen of the
song,
And the angry dashing billows wide and far the cry prolong.
When the moonlight, pale and faintly, gleams on Malin Head's
blue crest,
And its silvery pathway shimmers far across the ocean's
breast;
When the yeasty breakers glisten softly in the shadowy light,
When the rocks seem mystic castles, looming grimly thro' the
night;
Then the solemn songs of Ocean, fraught with precious, new-
found lore
Bring for Fancy unknown treasure, priceless gems for
Thought's great store!
Grand old Ocean! how my spirit longs to catch thy melody
Do thine heart's great pulses quicken with a secret life, oh,
Sea?
Far adown the blue waves, hidden by the hearings of your
breast,
Is there soul to tune your singing, to its ceaseless, wild
unrest?
Oh! thou dread and wondrous ocean, tell these mystic songs to
me
For their cadence, grand and changeful, haunts my path with
mystery.
THE MOONLIGHT.
Silvery moonlight, clear and bright,
Shining down on our earth to-night,
Soft as the touch of an angels' wing,
Tender, beautiful, holy thing!
Seeking the glen where the cool waters flow—
Lighting the bank where the violets grow;
Gilding the crest of the foamy rill;
Falling in silence upon the hill;
Piercing the depths of the forest glade,
Glancing down thro' the leafy shade,
Till the loneliest haunts of the wild wood seem
To rejoice in the light of thy radiant beam!
Glistening out on the trackless deep,
Where the spirits of ocean their revels keep;
Lighting the path over the billows' foam,
As the mermaid glides from her gem-built home,
And the peri's song o'er the heaving sea
Sounds in fitful, plaintive melody!
Pouring down on the mountain pass,
Where, tripping light o'er the dewy grass,
The fairies join in their wild, weird dance,
And the mystic forms thro' the moonbeams glance,
While far and wide on the wind is borne
Through answering echoes, the elfin horn.
Flooding with glory the prairie's breast,
Till, all transformed, in the radiance drest,
The shanty, south of the poplar wood,
Seems a sylvian lodge in the solitude;
And the settler dreams, with a moistened eye,
Of the moonlights and loves of the times gone by.