SONG.

SONG.

"In the gloaming Oh, my darling."

  Oh! green-bosomed Isle, as the summer day's gloaming,
    Lies dreamy and dun on the prairie's wild breast
  There my worn, wayward heart o'er the wild waves is roaming
    Far, far to the scenes that are dearest and best.

  As by bluff and by woodland, by swamp and by meadow,
    The gloom gathers round in its dim, mystic pall,
  Then my fancies come forth, spirit-children of shadow,
    Slow gliding from haunts where the lone night-birds call.

  When the wind, ardent lover, in songful caressing,
    Speaks low to the grasses that bend to his breath,
  And the dew woos the rose with the balm of its blessing
    And steals it with love from the shadow of death.

  Then I seek the wild glen, when the new moon is beaming
    All weirdly and wan, through a cloud's fleecy haze,
  'Till I stand, young and free, in the land of my dreaming,
    Clasping hands with the phantoms of happier days.

  And then, oh! mavourneen, in grey distance flying
    The present, the real, grows dimmer, and dies,
  See but the moonbeams, but hear the winds sighing,
    And bask, fancy bound, in the light of your eyes.

  My own! though the years in the gloom of their sadness
    Stand, frowning, 'tween me and the light of my star,
  And memory can feel the wild might of loves madness,
    Or scoff as rude Time its first sweetness would mar.

  Again, by the banks where Moyola is flowing
    We stray as the moonbeams smile sweet through the dell

  Unheeded the moments, unmarked in their going,
    Nor dreamed we of woe in the sound of "farewell."

  Is it lost—all the light of the fair morning vision?
    Is spirit to spirit unanswering, cold?
  No, it never shall die, while in memory's Elysian
    It lingers in beauty and brightness untold.

  Love is love, and though Fate blasts our hope vines may sever
    From the stay which their tendrils in fondness entwine
  Yet the past of our joy we must cherish forever
    And spirit meet spirit at memory's shrine.