Classic Poem

Hark, hark that chime! The frosts are o'er!
With song the birds force on the spring:
Thus, Ireland, sang thy bards of yore:
O younger bards, 'tis time to sing!
Your country's smile, that with the past
Lay dead so long — that vanished smile.
Evoke it from the dark and cast
Its light around a tearful isle!

Like severed locks that keep their light
When all the stately frame is dust
A nation's songs preserve from blight
A nation's name, their sacred trust.
Temple and pyramid eterne
May memorize her deeds of power;
But only from the songs we learn
How throbbed her life-blood hour by hour.

Thrice blest the strain that brings to one
Who weeps by some Australian rill,
A worn-out life far off begun,
His country's countenance beauteous still!
That 'mid Canadian's wilds, or where
Rich-feathered birds are void of song,
Wafts back, 'mid gusts of Irish air
Old wood-notes loved and lost so long!

Well might the muse at times forsake
Her Grecian hill, and sit where swerve,
In lines like those of Hebe's neck,
That wood-girt bay, yon meadow's curve,
Watching the primrose clusters throw
Their wan light o'er that ivied cave,
And airs by myrtles odoured blow,
The apple blossom on the wave!

Thrice blest the strain that, when the May
Allures the young leaf from the bud,
When robins, thrushlike, shake the spray
And deepening purples tinge the flood,
Kindles new worlds of love and truth,
This world's lost Eden, still new-born,
In breast of Irish maid or youth
Reading beneath the Irish thorn:

That wins from over-heated strife
Blinded ambition's tool; that o'er
The fields of unsabbatic life
The church-bells of the past can pour,
Around the old oak lightning-scarred
Can raise the untainted woods that rang
When, throned 'mid listening kerns, the bard
Of Oisin and of Patrick sang.

Saturnian years return! Ere long
Peace, justice-built, the isle shall cheer:
Even now old sounds of ancient wrong
At distance roll, but come not near:
Past is the iron age — the storms
That lashed the worn cliff, shock on shock;
The bird in tempest cradled warms
At last her wings upon the rock.

How many a bard may lurk even now,
Ireland, among thy noble poor!
To Truth their genius let them vow,
Scorn the bad Siren's tinsel lure;
Faithful to illustrate God's word
On nature's writ; or re-revealing,
Through nature, Christian lore transferred
From faith to sight by songs heart-healing.

Fair land! the skill was thine of old
Upon the illumined scroll to trace
In heavenly blazon blue or gold
The martyr's palm, the angel's face;
One day on every Muse's page,
Be thine a saintly light to fling,
And bathe the world's declining age
Once more in its baptismal spring!

Man sows: a hand divine must reap:
The toil wins most that wins not praise:
Stones buried in oblivion's deep
May help the destined pile to raise,
Foundations fix for pier or arch;
Above that spirit-bridge's span
To faith's inviolate home may march,
In God's good time, enfranchised man.