[16] I can speak from experience on this matter, having had in youth an intensely strong local affection for the wilder parts of northern England, a feeling that afterwards extended itself to Scotland, but I remember that when this feeling was strongest, the midland and southern counties were quite like a foreign country to me—a very dull, uninteresting foreign country—and I had no home feeling whatever in London, nor any desire to revisit it.
[17] It is needless to quote Moore, but the reader may thank me for stealing for his benefit a short lyric by an Irish poet, Mr. Robert Joyce, which is full of the tender sentiment of patriotism, associating love and death in the most touching manner with the often-repeated name of one Irish valley—Glenara.
An Irish Poet.
I
O, fair shines the sun on Glenara,
And calm rest his beams on Glenara;
But O! there’s a light
Far dearer, more bright,
Illumines my soul in Glenara—
The light of thine eyes in Glenara.