Then fill the cup-what is it to us How Time his circle measures? The fairy hours we call up thus Obey no wand but Pleasure's! II. Young Joy ne'er thought of counting hours, Till Care, one summer's morning, A dial, by way of warning. As long as its light was glowing, stole on, And how fast that light was going. So fill the cup-what is it to us How Time his circle measures? The fairy hours we call up thus Obey no wand but Pleasure's. SAIL ON, SAIL ON. Air.—The Humming of the Ban. I. SAIL thou fearless barkWherever blows the welcome wind, It cannot lead to scenes more dark, More sad than those we leave behind. Each wave that passes seems to say, Though death beneath our smile may be, " Less cold we are, less false than they “ Whose smiling wreck'd thy hopes and thee." 6 II. Sail on, sail on-through endless spacem Through calm-through tempest-stop no more ; The stormiest sea's a resting-place To him who leaves such hearts on shore. Or--if some desert land we meet, Where never yet false-hearted men Profaned a world, that else were sweet Then rest thee bark, but not till then. THE PARALLEL. AIR.-1 would rather than Ireland. I. In shame and in sorrow, thy wither'd-up heart- “ Could make us thy children, our parent thou art. II. Like thee doth our nation lie conquer'd and broken, And fallen from her head is the once royal crown; In her streets, in her halls, Desolation hath spoken, And “while it is day yet, her sun hath gone down." + “ " III. Like thine doth her exile, 'mid dreams of returning, Die far from the home it were life to behold; Like thine do her sons, in the day of their mourning. Remember the bright things that bless’d them of old! * These verses were written after the perasal of a treatise by Mr. Hamilton, professing to prove that the Irish were originally Jews. + “Her sun is gone down while it was yet day.”—Jer. xv. 9. IV. Ah, well may we call her, like thee, “the Forsaken,”* Her boldest are vanquish’d, her proudest are slaves; And the harps of her minstrels, when gayest they waken, Have breathings as sad as the wind over graves ! V. Yet hadst thou thy vengeance-yet came there the morrow, That shines out, at last, on the longest dark night, When the sceptre that smote thee with slavery and sorrow Was shiver'd at once, like a reed, in thy sight. VI. When that cup, which for others the proud Golden Cityt Had briunm'd full of bitterness, drench'd her own lips, And the world she had trampled on heard, without pity, The howl in her halls and the cry from her ships. VII. When the curse Heaven keeps for the haughty came over Her merchants rapacious, her rulers unjust, * “ Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken.”—Isaiah lxii.4. + “How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased.” Isaiah xiv. 4. And—a ruin, at last, for the earth-worm to cover The Lady of Kingdoms + lay low in the dust. Drink of this cup-you'll find there's a spell in Its every drop ’gainst the ills of mortality, Talk of the cordial that sparkled for Helen, Her cup was a fiction, but this is reality. Would you forget the dark world we are in, Only taste of the bubble that gleams on the top of it; But would you rise above earth, till akin To immortals themselves, you must drain every drop of it. Send round the cup-for oh there's a spell in Its every drop ’gainst the ills of mortality “Thy pomp is brought down to the grave . . . . and the worms cover thee.”—Isaiah xiv. II. * “ Thou shalt no more be called the Lady of Kingdoms." Isaiah xlvii. 5. 1 |