Poems eBook

Denis Florence MacCarthy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 119 pages of information about Poems.

Poems eBook

Denis Florence MacCarthy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 119 pages of information about Poems.
He counts his scars, and tells what deeds were done. 
   Go, with old Thames, view Chelsea’s glorious pile;
And ask the shatter’d hero, whence his smile? 
Go, view the splendid domes of Greenwich—­Go,
And own what raptures from Reflection flow. 
   Hail, noblest structures imag’d in the wave! 
A nation’s grateful tribute to the brave. 
Hail, blest retreats from war and shipwreck, hail! 
That oft arrest the wondering stranger’s sail. 
Long have ye heard the narratives of age,
The battle’s havoc, and the tempest’s rage;
Long have ye known Reflection’s genial ray
Gild the calm close of Valour’s various day. 
   Time’s sombrous touches soon correct the piece,
Mellow each tint, and bid each discord cease: 
A softer tone of light pervades the whole,
And steals a pensive languor o’er the soul. 
   Hast thou thro’ Eden’s wild-wood vales pursued [a]
Each mountain-scene, majestically rude;
To note the sweet simplicity of life,
Far from the din of Folly’s idle strife: 
Nor there awhile, with lifted eye, rever’d
That modest stone which pious Pembroke rear’d;
Which still records, beyond the pencil’s power,
The silent sorrows of a parting hour;
Still to the musing pilgrim points the place,
Her sainted spirit most delights to trace? 
   Thus, with the manly glow of honest pride,
O’er his dead son the gallant Ormond sigh’d. [b]
Thus, thro’ the gloom of SHENSTONE’S fairy grove,
Maria’s urn still breathes the voice of love. 
   As the stern grandeur of a Gothic tower
Awes us less deeply in its morning hour,
Than when the shades of Time serenely fall
On every broken arch and ivy’d wall;
The tender images we love to trace,
Steal from each year a melancholy grace! 
And as the sparks of social love expand,
As the heart opens in a foreign land;
And, with a brother’s warmth, a brother’s smile,
The stranger greets each native of his isle;
So scenes of life, when present and confest,
Stamp but their bolder features on the breast;
Yet not an image, when remotely view’d,
However trivial, and however rude,
But wins the heart, and wakes the social sigh,
With every claim of close affinity! 
   But these pure joys the world can never know;
In gentler climes their silver currents flow. 
Oft at the silent, shadowy close of day,
When the hush’d grove has sung its parting lay;
When pensive Twilight, in her dusky car,
Comes slowly on to meet the evening-star;
Above, below, aerial murmurs swell,
From hanging wood, brown heath, and bushy dell! 
A thousand nameless rills, that shun the light. 
Stealing soft music on the ear of night. 
So oft the finer movements of the soul,
That shun the sphere of Pleasure’s gay controul,
In the still shades of calm Seclusion rise,
And breathe their sweet, seraphic harmonies! 
   Once, and domestic annals tell the
Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Poems from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.