Share page | Visit Us On FB |
IRISH SONGS AND LYRICS 491 |
||
Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?
Where is our English chivalry? Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,
And sobbing waves their threnody.
O loved ones lying far away,
What word of love can dead lips send ? O wasted dust! O senseless clay!
Is this the end ? Is this the end ?
Peace, peace ! we wrong the noble dead
To vex their solemn slumber so; Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head,
Up the steep road must England go.
Yet when this fiery web is spun,
Her watchman shall descry from far
The young Republic like a sun
Rise from these crimson seas of war. |
||
HELAS!
T
O drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control ?— Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance |
||