Yet hold me not forever in thine East:
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground:
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave;
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
Alfred Tennyson.
THE WOMAN OF THREE COWS.
(From the Irish.)
O woman of Three Cows, agragh! don't let yourtongue thus rattle!
O don't be saucy, don't be stiff, because you may have cattle!
I've seen—and here's my hand to you, I only say what's true—
A many a one with twice your stock not half so proud as you.
Good luck to you! don't scorn the poor, and don't be their despiser;
For worldly wealth soon melts away, and cheats the very miser,
And Death soon strips the proudest wreath from haughty human brows;
Then don't be stiff, and don't be proud, good Woman of Three Cows!
See where Mononia's heroes lie, proud Owen More's descendants,—
'Tis they that won the glorious name, and had the grand attendants!
If they were forced to bow to Fate, as every mortal bows,
Can you be proud, can you be stiff, my Woman of Three Cows?
The brave sons of the Lord of Clare, they left the land to mourning;
Movrone! for they were banished, with no hope of their returning.
Who knows in what abodes of want those youths were driven to house?
Yet you can give yourself these airs, O Woman of Three Cows!
O think of Donnell of the Ships, the chief whom nothing daunted,—
See how he fell in distant Spain, unchronicled, unchanted!
He sleeps, the great O'Sullivan, where thunder cannot rouse;
Then ask yourself, should you be proud, good Woman of Three Cows?