GERALD GRIFFIN. Ah, love! ah, love! be kind to me; THE BRIDAL WAKE. THE priest stood at the marriage board, With meat the marriage chest was stored, The old man sat beside the fire, The white bride was in gay attire, But her dark eye was dim, Ululah! Ululah! The night falls quick-the sun is set, Her love is on the water yet. I saw a red cloud in the west, Against the morning light, Heaven shield the youth that she loves best From evil chance to-night. The door flings wide! Loud moans the gale, Wild fear her bosom fills, It is, it is the Banshee's wail! Over the darkened hills. Ululah! Ululah! The day is past! the night is dark! The guests sit round the bridal bed, And break the bridal cake, But they sit by the dead man's head, THE MOTHER'S LAMENT. The bride is praying in her room, A fearful call! a sudden doom! Bridal and funeral! Ululah! Ululah! A youth to Kilficheras' ta'en THE MOTHER'S LAMENT. My darling, my darling, while silence is on the moor, Here, while on this cold shore I wear out my lonely hours, They bear to the churchyard the youth in their health away, I know where a fruit hangs more ripe for the grave than they. But I wish not for death, for my spirit is all resigned, And the hope that stays with me, gives peace to my agèd mind. My darling, my darling, God gave to my feeble age THERE stood a city along Cyprus' side, Lavish of palaces, an arched tide Of unrolled rocks; and, where the deities dwelled, Their clustered domes pushed up the noon, and swelled With the emotion of the god within, As doth earth's hemisphere, when showers begin To tickle the still spirit at its core, Till pastures tremble and the river-shore THE PALACE OF PYGMALION. Squeezes out buds at every dewy pore. And there were pillars, from some mountain's heart, That bent with riches; and there stood apart A palace, oft accompanied by trees, That laid their shadows in the galleries Alike too beautiful for life and death, And bodies that a soul of mortal breath Such a house as this Within a garden hard by Salamis, (Cyprus' city-crown and capital Ere Paphos was, and at whose ocean-wall Whose fiery chisel with creation fed The shipwrecked rocks; who paid the heavens again THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. And the men fall aside; nor only pressed A sun-room for him, that his mind had space And none went near; none in his sweep would venture, For you might feel that he was but the centre Of an inspired round, the middle spark ALPINE SPIRIT'S SONG. O'ER the snow, through the air, to the mountain, To the side of the icy fountain, Let me rest on the snow, never pressed |