IRELAND--1849. AUTUMNAL DIRGE. Then die, thou Year--thy work is done: The work ill done is done at last. Far off, beyond that sinking sun, Which sets in blood, I hear the blast That sings thy dirge, and says--"Ascend, And answer make amid thy peers, (Since all things here must have an end,) Thou latest of the famine years!" I join that voice. No joy have I In all thy purple and thy gold, Nor in the nine-fold harmony From forest on to forest rolled: Nor in that stormy western fire, Which burns on ocean's gloomy bed, And hurls, as from a funeral pyre, A glare that strikes the mountain's head; And writes on low-hung clouds its lines Of cyphered flame, with hurrying hand; And flings amid the topmost pines That crown the steep, a burning brand. Make answer, Year, for all they dead, Who found not rest in hallowed earth, The widowed wife, the father fled, The babe age-stricken from his birth. Make answer, Year, for virtue lost; For Faith, that vanquished fraud and force, Now waning like a noontide ghost; Affections poisoned at their source: The labourer spurned his lying spade; The yeoman spurned his useless plough; The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid, Obtruded once, exhausted now. The weaver wove till all was dark, And, long ere morning, bent and bowed Above his work with fingers stark; And made, nor knew he made, a shroud. The roof-trees fall of hut and hall, I hear them fall, and falling cry-- "One fate for each, one fate for all; So wills the Law that willed a lie." Dread power of Man! what spread the waste In circles, hour by hour more wide, And would not let the past be past?-- The Law that promised much, and lied. Dread power of God! whom mortal years Nor touch, nor tempt; who sitt'st sublime In night of night,--O bid thy spheres Resound at last a funeral chime. Call up, at last, the afflicted Race Whom Man not God abolished. Sore, For centuries, their strife: the place That knew them once shall know no more.