Enjoys that, in communion sweet,

The living and the dead can meet :

For, lo! to love-lorn fantasy,

The hero of her heart is nigh.

IV.

Bright as the bow that spans the storm,
In Erin's yellow vesture clad,

A son of light -- a lovely form,

He comes and makes her glad ;

Now on the grass-green turf he sits,

His tassellid horn beside him laid ;

Now o'er the hills in chase he fits,

The hunter and the deer a shade!

Sweet mourner! those are shadows vain,

That cross the twilight of her brain;

Yet she will tell you, she is blest,

Of Connocht Moran's tomb possess'd,

More richly than in Aghrim's bow'r,
When bards high praised her beauty's pow'r,
And kneeling pages offer'd up
The morat in a golden cup.

V.

• A hero's bride! this desert bow'r,

It ill befits thy gentle breeding:

And wherefore dost thou love this flow'r

• To call “My love lies bleeding?"

• This purple flow'r my tears have nursed; ' A hero's blood supplied its bloom :

• I love it, for it was the first

* That grew on Connocht Moran's tomb.

"Oh! hearken, stranger, to my voice !

• This desert mansion is

my

choice!

And blest, though fatal, be the star

· That led me to its wilds afar:

For here these pathless mountains free

• Gave shelter to my love and me;

* And ev'ry rock and ev'ry stone

• Bare witness that he was my own.

VI.

• O'Connor's child, I was the bud

• Of Erin's royal tree of glory;

' But woe to them that wrapt in blood

• The tissue of my story!

• Still as I clasp my burning brain,

• A death-scene rushes on my sight;

• It rises o’er and o'er again,

: The bloody feud — the fatal night, • When chafing Connocht Moran's scorn,

* They call'd my hero basely born ;

And bade him choose a meaner bride

* Than from O'Connor's house of pride. • Their tribe, they said, their high degree,

• Was sung in Tara's psaltery ;d • Witness their Eath's victorious brand,

• And Cathal of the bloody hand;

<

Glory (they said) and pow'r and honour

Were in the mansion of O'Connor :

• But he, my lov'd one, bore in field 'A meaner crest upon his shield.

VII.

Ah, brothers ! what did it avail,

* That fiercely and triumphantly

• Ye fought the English of the pale,

And stemm'd De Bourgo's chivalry?

And what was it to love and me,

• That barons by your standard rode; • Or beal-fires for your jubilee,

• Upon an hundred mountains glow'd ?

* What though the lords of tower and dome

· From Shannon to the North-sea foam,-

« Could break the knot that love had tied ?

• No : - let the eagle change his plume,

• The leaf its hue, the flow'r its bloom ;

f Fires lighted on May-day on the hill tops by the Irish. Vide the note on Stanza VII.

But ties around this heart were spun,

• That could not, would not, be undone !

• And I, beside the lake of swans,

• Shall hunt for thee the fallow-deer;

* And build thy hut, and bring thee home
• The wild-fowl and the honey-comb ;
« And berries from the wood provide,

' And play my clarshech by thy side. * Then come, my love!" - How could I stay? • Our nimble stag-hounds track'd the way,

* And I pursued, by moonless skies,

• The light of Connocht Moran's eyes.