Thus in the Golden and the Emerald stars:
"O Victory! Why gleams thy haughty brow So godlike, 'neath thy earthly diadem ?
Why, on the wings of eagles that grow young, Claim'st thou thy high pavilion? Why proud kings Adore thee, and ambition ever mounts
Thy steed, behind thee on the rubi'd track Of glory's desolation? Thou dost sow The conquerors; but on thy soil their fruit Is not perennial; for their empires long Are sepulcher'd, or thralldom on their necks Insults the memory of thy gory feasts,
And the noon sweats they bore to sup with thee. But thou art well descended, laurell'd Maid! Discern thee who thou art; go teach the brave Which world to conquer: only a little while Earth's glory spurns the dust, and day is done.
"Aghast, she swoons, pierc'd in the mother's breast,
The nurse of saints and heroes: Oh! her wide,
Far wanderings! the world's cold charity
To house, and many a slanderous tongue to mock, Her nakedness! Alas! who now shall care
Thy vineyard in the fruitage, Godly son
Of Calpruin! or forefend the winter blights?" 'Twas thus the golden and the emerald spheres, As with one voice, sidereal music hymn'd; Which thus, alone, the golden choir prolongs:
"Vain glory pass'd, to higher glory call'd; He visit❜th them. How dark the sudden change Ere light! O change, how seeming merciless! God's retribution on Gadelas' sons,
The judgment of the fratricidal race,
From distant ages of remorseless guilt
So long delay'd, hath fall'n. Denounc'd they stand;
Who otherwise, in filial faith so meek,
And household worship to the Temple's Lord,
Their Father, early known and late rever'd,
Had fed the nations and God's table serv'd,
To fill the vacant thrones of Satan's fall With human Seraphs; who, despite the flesh, Replac'd essential spirits there that sate,
And their lost crowns put on. O Heaven! be Thou Her staff and guide! and give to Eire's strife The vict'ry of the spirit; whose tear floods Outdeluge human woe!" Thus mourn'd the just: But Calpruin's godly son, before the throne,
Mindful of Eire's trials, long and harsh, On knees of adoration, with the Angel Of the Great Council, silently commun'd On grace and fortitude; and for the fold And vineyard of his toil, a father's tears, The dews of mercy, suppliant fill'd his eyes. For now the landless Gael, dispersion guides; And Scythian fates, that led great Miled's sons To Inisfail, spir'ts, which good or ill, Follow a noble race, lament aloud
By the round tower at eve, by Druid cirque, By Rath and Brugh, and hero's lofty Cairn And holy Shee, the venerable years; Long memories, thick-cluster'd with the days Of past nobility and fancy's lore,
Shaded for ever: nature mourns the jar, Her first created harmonies impair'd.
Then guardian rivers' (1) foaming mouths gan roar: Tonn Clinda on the Southern coast; to North, Tonn Tuaithe, and East, Tonn Rury's waves, Their direful larum bellow from the deep, And war shouts, like encountering armies raise; And the high mountains, on their darken'd tops,
Moan in dull thunder, that the bardic Gael
They nurs'd from memory's birth, are passing now; And in the funeral knell, they fear their own And time's decrepitude. There stood an isle (2)
Most sacred held, far in the Western foam
Of Lir's dominion, long the mystic seat
Of adoration, where this day, is found The cyclopean ruins and the dust,
Left by the wanderers of the early world: A place of fate and tombs. Thither repair'd The Firbolg in defeat, and rais'd high piles, Dun Angus and Ochaill, when later gods Had spurn'd his altars; where in after years, Bless'd Enda brought the cincture and the psalm, And built where once the eremite had found A burial site, and still the bones repose Mid billowy strife and misty flaws, that waft The sea fowl and the cloud. There on a cliff, Imperious o'er the main, whose arrogance Enrag'd the winds and the outlandish waves; Uttermost bourn of the pursu'd, whose face Bespake no sympathy with want that made The Sea God.
His back her icy bed; yea, there lay one,
Who search'd in vain the Druid oracles,
Which fate had clos'd, and deep ancestral tombs, To suage her agony. Her bodice sweet
Of water lily braids, and kirtle green
Of scented fern, grown on Loch Lena's shore, Down mitr'd to the knee; her shoon of rush, And round her neck, the wild ash berries beaded, Upon her breast sun brown'd, once thought so fair, Change like their seasons with her head so flat Upon the pulseless earth; where with the dust, Mingle her spreaded locks, like throdden gold Under the footfalls of wayfaring feet,
When night obscures the treasure. Perish'd there, Had the first form of nature's plastic grace; Banba, the beauteous evergreen, whom Winter,
With Summer vied to please, and Spring's forethought Assur'd of Summer's mirth and Autumn's store; Gathered by Lir's reluctant waves to depths,
Oblivious and unseen, on earth replac'd
By none so fair. But there was one on foot, For refuge on that isle of gods entomb'd
And cloisters wreck'd, who found her bed and look'd
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