Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

157
That can make thee rouse for it?
Does thy land's reviving spring,
Full of buds and blossoming,
Fail to make thy cold heart cling,
Breathing lover's vows for it?
With the circling ocean's ring
Thou wert made a spouse for it!
Hast thou kept, as thou shouldst keep,
Thy affections warm for it,
Letting no cold feeling creep,
Like the ice breath o'er the deep,
Freezing to a stony sleep
Hopes the heart would form for it--
Glories that like rainbows weep
Through the darkening storm for it?
What we seek is Nature's right--
Freedom and the aids of it;--
Freedom for the mind's strong flight
Seeking glorious shapes star-bright
Through the world's intensest night,
When the sunshine fades of it!
Truth is one, and so is light,
Yet how many shades of it!
A mirror every heart doth wear,
For heavenly shapes to shine in it;
If dim the glass or dark the air,
That Truth, the beautiful and fair,
God's glorious image, shines not there,
Or shines with nought divine in it:
A sightless lion in its lair,
The darkened soul must pine in it!
Son of this old, down-trodden land,
Then aid us in the fight for it;
We seek to make it great and grand,
Its shipless bays, its naked strand,
By canvas-swelling breezes fanned.
Oh! what a glorious sight for it!