| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
HIBERNIAN SONGSTER. |
||
|
|
||
|
SUBLIME WAS THE WARNING.
Sublime was the warning which Liberty spoke,
And grand was the moment when the Spaniards awoke
Into life and revenge from the conqueror's chain! Oh! Liberty! let not this spirit have rest Till It moves like a breeze o'er the waves of the west. Give the light of your look to each sorrowing spot, Nor, oh! be the Shamrock of Erin forgot,
While you add to your garland the Oiive of Spain! If the fame of our fathers, bequeathed with their rlghta, Give to country its charm and to home its delights; If deceit be a wound and suspicion a stain; Then, ye men of Iberia, our cause is the same. And, oh! may his tomb want a tear and a name, Who would ask for a nobler, a holier death Than to turn his last sigh into victory's breath,
For the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain! Ye Blakes and O'Donnells, whose fathers resigned The green hills of their youth, among strangers to find
That repose which at home they had sighed for in vala, Join, join in our hope that the flame which you light May be felt in Erin, as calm and as bright; And forgive even Albion while she draws, Like a truant, her sword in the long-slighted cause
Of the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain! God prosper the cause, oh! it cannot but thrive While the pulse of one patriot heart is alive
Its devotion to feel, and its rights to maintain: ■ Then how sainted by sorrow its martyrs will die! The finger of glory shall point where they lie; While far from the footsteps of coward or slave, The young spirit of Freedom shall shelter their grave,
Beneath Shamrocks of Erin and Olives of Spain! |
||
|
MY GRAVE.
Shall they bury me in the deep,
Where wind-forgetting waters sleep ?
Shall they dig a grave for me
Under the green-wood tree?
Or on the wild heath,
Where the wilder breath
Of the storm doth blow?
Or no! 0, no!
Shall they bury me In the palace tombs,
Or under the shade of cathedral domes?
Sweet 'twere to lie on Italy's shore;
Yet not there,—nor in Greece, though I love it more,
In the wolf or the vulture my grave shall I find?
Shall my ashes career on the world-seeing wind?
Shall they fling my corpse in the battle-mound,
Where comnless thousands lie under the ground?
Just as they fall, they are buried so,—
O, no! O, no!
No! On an Irish green hillside,
On an opening lawn,—but not too wide!
For I love the drip of the wetted trees;
I love not the gales, but a gentle breeze
To freshen the turf. Put no tombstone there.
But green sods decked with daisies fair,
Nor sods too deep; but so that the dew
The matted grass-roots may trickle through.
Be my epitaph writ on my country's mind,—
"He served his country, and loved his kind."
On! 'Twere merry unto the grave to go,
If one were sure to be burled so. |
||