Poems and Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

Through Wicklow's green glens and wild mountains
I roved at the fall of the year,
When the wildflower droops by the fountains,
And the leaves of the woodland are sere;
When garden and green field no longer
Yield sweets to the wandering bee,
And the cloud-mantled streamlets meander
Through flowerless plains to the sea.

II

As I mused upon Ireland's dark story,
'Mong homesteads and altars despoiled,
Through the ruined walls, weed-grown and hoary,
The wind sang its requiem wild;

But there rose from the heart of its wailing
This low-chanted, cheerful refrain,
Over all its wild sadness prevailing,
“Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

III

Still wand'ring on, pensive and dreary,
Beneath the sad yew-tree's dark shade,
Through the lone ground where, hopeless and weary,
The sons of the Green Isle were laid;
In the twilight a small bird came winging
O'er the graves of the famished and slain,
And I heard the sweet strain in his singing,
“Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

IV

Then I lingered around a lone shieling,
A poor peasant's sorrowful nest,
Where in hunger and heart-stricken feeling
He gathered his brood to his breast;
And I heard as mild evening's soft vesper
Died out on the shelterless glen,
From the wild thatch, a sweet floweret whisper,
“Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

V

Thus musing on Erin's sad story,
As twilight sank down on the lea,
While murmurs of long-faded glory
Came plaintively up from the sea,
I saw, in the daylight's declining,
The bright stars of hope light the main;
And the sweet song stole down in their shining,
“Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

VI

Now the bright sun of justice is rising
In splendour beyond the wide sea;
And Old Ireland, her foemen despising,
At last shall be friendly and free:
She shall rise from her bondage and sorrow;
From her long night of famine and pain,
She shall wake to another glad morrow,
And blossom in beauty again!