MANY altars are in Banba, | |
| Many chancels hung in white, | |
| Many schools, and many abbeys, | |
| Glorious in our Father’s sight; | |
| Yet whene’er I go a pilgrim, | 5 |
| Back, dear Holy Isle, to thee, | |
| May my filial footsteps bear me | |
| To that abbey by the sea,— | |
| To that abbey, roofless, doorless, | |
| Shrineless, monkless, though it be! | 10 |
| |
| These are days of swift upbuilding, | |
| All to pride and triumph tends; | |
| Art is liegeman to religion, | |
| Genius speaks, and song ascends. | |
| As the day-beam to the sailor, | 15 |
| Lighting up the wreckers’ shore, | |
| So the present lustre shineth | |
| On the barrenness before,— | |
| But no gleam rests on that abbey, | |
| Silent by Tyrconnel’s shore. | 20 |
| |
| Yet I hear them in my musings, | |
| And I see them as I gaze, | |
| Four meek men around the cresset, | |
| With the scrolls of other days; | |
| Four unwearied scribes who treasure | 25 |
| Every word and every line, | |
| Saving every ancient sentence | |
| As if writ by hands divine. | |
| |
| On their calm down-bended foreheads, | |
| Tell me what is it you read? | 30 |
| Is there malice or ambition | |
| In the will or in the deed? | |
| O no! no! the angel Duty | |
| Calmly lights the dusky walls, | |
| And their four worn right hands follow | 35 |
| Where the angel’s radiance falls. | |
| |
| Not of fame and not of fortune | |
| Do these eager pensmen dream; | |
| Darkness shrouds the hills of Banba, | |
| Sorrow sits by every stream; | 40 |
| One by one the lights that led her, | |
| Hour by hour, were quenched in gloom; | |
| But the patient, sad Four Masters | |
| Toil on in their lonely room,— | |
| Duty thus defying doom. | 45 |
| |
| As the breathing of the west-wind | |
| Over bound and bearded sheaves, | |
| As the murmur in the beehives, | |
| Softly heard on summer eves, | |
| So the rustle of the vellum, | 50 |
| So the anxious voices sound, | |
| So the deep expectant silence | |
| Seems to listen all around. | |
| |
| Brightly on the abbey gable | |
| Shines the full moon through the night, | 55 |
| While far to the northward glances | |
| All the bay in waves of light. | |
| Tufted isle and splintered headland | |
| Smile and soften in her ray, | |
| Yet within their dusky chamber | 60 |
| The meek Masters toil assay, | |
| Finding all too short the day. | |
| |
| Now they kneel! attend the accents | |
| From the souls of mourners wrung; | |
| Hear the soaring aspirations, | 65 |
| Barbed with the ancestral tongue; | |
| For the houseless sons of chieftains, | |
| For their brethren afar, | |
| For the mourning Mother Island, | |
| These their aspirations are. | 70 |
| |
| And they said, before uprising, | |
| “Father, grant one other prayer,— | |
| Bless the lord of Moy-O’Gara, | |
| Bless his lady, and his heir; | |
| Send the generous chief, whose bounty | 75 |
| Cheers, sustains us in our task, | |
| Health, success, renown, salvation,— | |
| Father! this is all we ask.” | |
| |
| O that we who now inherit | |
| All their trust, with half their toil, | 80 |
| Were but fit to trace their footsteps | |
| Through the Annals of the Isle; | |
| O that the bright angel, Duty, | |
| Guardian of our tasks might be, | |
| Teach us as she taught our Masters, | 85 |
| In that abbey by the sea, | |
| Faithful, grateful, just, to be! | |
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