XVII.

She oped her lips—­lips of a gentle blush,
  So pale it seem’d near drowned to a white,—­
She oped her lips, and forth there sprang a gush
  Of music bubbling through the surface light;
The leaves are motionless, the breezes hush
  To listen to the air—­and through the night
There come these words of a most plaintive ditty,
Sobbing as they would break all hearts with pity: 

THE WATER PERI’S SONG.

Farewell, farewell, to my mother’s own daughter. 
  The child that she wet-nursed is lapp’d in the wave;
The Mussulman, coming to fish in this water,
  Adds a tear to the flood that weeps over her grave.

This sack is her coffin, this water’s her bier,
  This grayish bath cloak is her funeral pall;
And, stranger, O stranger! this song that you hear
  Is her epitaph, elegy, dirges, and all! 
Farewell, farewell, to the child of Al Hassan,
  My mother’s own daughter—­the last of her race—­
She’s a corpse, the poor body! and lies in this basin,
And sleeps in the water that washes her face.

THE IRISH SCHOOLMASTER.

I.

  Alack! ’tis melancholy theme to think
  How Learning doth in rugged states abide,
  And, like her bashful owl, obscurely blink,
  In pensive glooms and corners, scarcely spied;
  Not, as in Founders’ Halls and domes of pride,
  Served with grave homage, like a tragic queen,
  But with one lonely priest compell’d to hide,
  In midst of foggy moors and mosses green,
In that clay cabin hight the College of Kilreen!

II.

  This College looketh South and West alsoe,
  Because it hath a cast in windows twain;
  Crazy and crack’d they be, and wind doth blow
  Through transparent holes in every pane,
  Which Pan, with many paines, makes whole again
  With nether garments, which his thrift doth teach
  To stand for glass, like pronouns, and when rain
  Stormeth, he puts, “once more unto the breach,”
Outside and in, tho’ broke, yet so he mendeth each.

III.

  And in the midst a little door there is,
  Whereon a board that doth congratulate
  With painted letters, red as blood I wis,
  Thus written,
  “CHILDREN TAKEN IN TO BATE”: 
  And oft, indeed, the inward of that gate,
  Most ventriloque, doth utter tender squeak,
  And moans of infants that bemoan their fate,
  In midst of sounds of Latin, French, and Greek,
Which, all i’ the Irish tongue, he teacheth them to speak.

IV.