| |
| SWEET Innisfallen, fare thee well, | |
| May calm and sunshine long be thine! | |
| How fair thou art let others tell,— | |
| To feel how fair shall long be mine. | |
| |
| Sweet Innisfallen, long shall dwell | 5 |
| In memory’s dream that sunny smile | |
| Which o’er thee on that evening fell, | |
| When first I saw thy fairy isle. | |
| |
| ’T was light, indeed, too blest for one, | |
| Who had to turn to paths of care,— | 10 |
| Through crowded haunts again to run, | |
| And leave thee bright and silent there; | |
| |
| No more unto thy shores to come, | |
| But, on the world’s rude ocean tost, | |
| Dream of thee sometimes, as a home | 15 |
| Of sunshine he had seen and lost. | |
| |
| Far better in thy weeping hours | |
| To part from thee, as I do now, | |
| When mist is o’er thy blooming bowers, | |
| Like sorrow’s veil on beauty’s brow. | 20 |
| |
| For, though unrivalled still thy grace, | |
| Thou dost not look, as then, too blest, | |
| But thus in shadow, seem’st a place | |
| Where erring man might hope to rest,— | |
| |
| Might hope to rest, and find in thee | 25 |
| A gloom like Eden’s, on the day | |
| He left its shade, when every tree, | |
| Like thine, hung weeping o’er his way. | |
| |
| Weeping or smiling, lovely isle! | |
| And all the lovelier for thy tears,— | 30 |
| For though but rare thy sunny smile, | |
| ’T is heaven’s own glance when it appears. | |
| |
| Like feeling hearts, whose joys are few, | |
| But, when indeed they come, divine, | |
| The brightest light the sun e’er threw | 35 |
| Is lifeless to one gleam of thine! | |
| |
