Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

99
Hail, spotless Virgin! mildest, meekest maid--
Hail! purest Pearl that time's great sea hath borne--
May our white souls, in purity arrayed,
Shine, as if they thy vestal robes had worn;
Make our hearts pure, as thou thyself art pure,
Make safe the rugged pathway of our lives,
And make us pass to joys that will endure
When the dark term of mortal life arrives.[59]
'Twas thus, in hymns, and prayers, and holy psalms,
Day tracking day, and night succeeding night,
Now driven by tempests, now delayed by calms,
Along the sea we winged our varied flight.
Oh! how we longed and pined for sight of land!
Oh! how we sighed for the green pleasant fields!
Compared with the cold waves, the barest strand--
The bleakest rock--a crop of comfort yields.
Sometimes, indeed, when the exhausted gale,
In search of rest, beneath the waves would flee,
Like some poor wretch who, when his strength doth fail,
Sinks in the smooth and unsupporting sea:
Then would the Brothers draw from memory's store
Some chapter of life's misery or bliss,
Some trial that some saintly spirit bore,
Or else some tale of passion, such as this:
THE BURIED CITY.
[The peasants who live near the mouth of the Shannon point to a part of
the river within the headlands over which the tides rush with
extraordinary rapidity and violence. They say it is the site of a lost
city, long buried beneath the waves.--See Hall's "Ireland," vol. iii. p.
436.]
Beside that giant stream that foams and swells
Betwixt Hy-Conaill and Moyarta's shore,
And guards the isle where good Senanus dwells,
A gentle maiden dwelt in days of yore.
She long has passed out of Time's aching womb,