Faith and Despondency

6'Ierne, round our sheltered hall

7November's gusts unheeded call;

8Not one faint breath can enter here

9Enough to wave my daughter's hair,

10And I am glad to watch the blaze

11Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays;

12To feel her cheek so softly pressed,

13In happy quiet on my breast.

14'But, yet, even this tranquillity

15Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me;

16And, in the red fire's cheerful glow,

17I think of deep glens, blocked with snow;

18I dream of moor, and misty hill,

19Where evening closes dark and chill;

20For, lone, among the mountains cold,

21Lie those that I have loved of old.

22And my heart aches, in hopeless pain

23Exhausted with repinings vain,

24That I shall greet them ne'er again!'

25'Father, in early infancy,

26When you were far beyond the sea,

27Such thoughts were tyrants over me!

28I often sat, for hours together,

29Through the long nights of angry weather,

30Raised on my pillow, to descry

31The dim moon struggling in the sky;

32Or, with strained ear, to catch the shock,

33Of rock with wave, and wave with rock;

34So would I fearful vigil keep,

35And, all for listening, never sleep.

36But this world's life has much to dread,

37Not so, my Father, with the dead.

38'Oh! not for them, should we despair,

39The grave is drear, but they are not there;

40Their dust is mingled with the sod,

41Their happy souls are gone to God!

42You told me this, and yet you sigh,

43And murmur that your friends must die.

44Ah! my dear father, tell me why?

45For, if your former words were true,

46How useless would such sorrow be;

47As wise, to mourn the seed which grew

48Unnoticed on its parent tree,

49Because it fell in fertile earth,

50And sprang up to a glorious birth —

51Struck deep its root, and lifted high

52Its green boughs, in the breezy sky.

53'But, I'll not fear, I will not weep

54For those whose bodies rest in sleep, —

55I know there is a blessed shore,

56Opening its ports for me, and mine;

57And, gazing Time's wide waters o'er,

58I weary for that land divine,

59Where we were born, where you and I

60Shall meet our Dearest, when we die;

61From suffering and corruption free,

62Restored into the Deity.'

63'Well hast thou spoken, sweet, trustful child!

64And wiser than thy sire;

65And worldly tempests, raging wild,

66Shall strengthen thy desire —

67Thy fervent hope, through storm and foam,

68Through wind and ocean's roar,

69To reach, at last, the eternal home,

70The steadfast, changeless, shore!'