(‘Music shall outlive all the songs of the birds.’
—Old Irish)
I’ve heard the lark’s cry thrill the sky o’er the meadows of Lusk,
And the first joyous gush of the thrush from Adare’s April Wood;
At thy lone music’s spell, Philomel, magic-stricken I’ve stood,
When, in Espan afar, star on star trembled out of the dusk.
While Dunkerron’s blue dove murmured love, ’neath her nest I have sighed,
And by mazy Culdaff with a laugh mocked the cuckoo’s refrain;
Derrycarn’s dusky bird I have heard piping joy hard by pain,
And the swan’s last lament sobbing sent over Moyle’s mystic tide.
Yet as bright shadows pass from the glass of the darkening lake,
As the rose’s rapt sigh will soon die, when the zephyr is stilled;
In oblivion grey sleeps each lay that those birds ever trilled,
But the songs Erin sings from her strings shall immortally wake.
Alfred Perceval Graves.
