 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
ORMOND'S LAMENT;
OR, THE FOE TURNED FRIEND.
I
There clung a mist about mine eye,Or else round him a mist there clung:
From war to war the years went by,
And still that cloud between us hung:
That, that he was I saw him not,
Old friend, old comrade, fellow-man:
I saw but that which chance had wrought;
A rival house, a hostile clan.
II
In vain one Race, one Faith were ours:A common Land, a common Foe:
Vainly we chased through Lorha's bowers,
In boyhood paired, the flying roe:
Sea-caves of Irr! in vain by you
Our horses stemmed the heaving floods
While freshening gales of morning blew
The sunrise o'er the mountain woods!
III
Ah spells of Fate! Ah Wrath and Wrong!Ah Friend that once my dearest wert!
Where lay thine image hid so long
But in the centre of my heart?
Thou fell'st! a flash from out the past
One moment showed thee as of yore:
And that fair crest was seen no more.
IV
Ah, great right hand, so brave yet kind!Ah, sovereign eyes! ah, lordly mirth!
Thy realm to-day—like me—sits blind:
And endless winter chills thy hearth.
This day I see thee in thy spring,
Though seventy winters make me grey:
This night my bards thy praise shall sing:
This night for thee my priests shall pray.
In Ireland there were occasions when the chief who had pursued an ancient enemy to the death became his sincerest mourner. A chronicler of the seventeenth century affirms that an instance of such a change was found in the Earl of Ormond of Elizabeth's time, called ‘Black Thomas.’ ‘Now, good reader, let there be truce to words, and listen to the whistling of the lash.—.... There was then in Ireland Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, who changed his religion in the court of Elizabeth. Brooding over the seandal he had given by his apostacy, he resolved to be reconciled to the Church in his last days. He therefore made his peace with God, edified all by his piety, and soon after, losing the ineffable blessing of sight, was gathered to his fathers. Now, ere he died, he was heard to lament two actions of his life—first, that he had ever renounced that holy religion in his youth which in his old age he was not able to succour; and, secondly, that he had taken up arms against the Geraldines of Desmond, who were ever the strenuous champions of the Faith, and the bulwarks of their country's liberty. Oh, good God! why did Ormond conspire to ruin them?’ (‘The Rise, Increase, and Exit of the Family of the Geraldines, Earls of Desmond, and Palatines of Kerry.’ Written in Latin by Brother Dominicus de Rosario O'Daly, in the seventeenth century, and translated by the Rev. C. P. Meahan.)
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |