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458   ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH.

And bid their hoarded treasuries unclose,
The spoils of time to yield.
Ye hold the gift of immortality;
Bard, sage, and seer, whose fame shall never die,
Live through your ministry.

Noiseless upon your path,
Freighted with love, romance, and song, ye speed;
Moving the world in custom and in creed,
Waking its love or wrath.
Tyrants, that blench not on the battle-plain,
Quail at your silent coming, and in vain
Would bind the riven chain.

Shrines that embalm great souls 
Where yet the illustrious dead high converse hold,
As gods spake through their oracles of old!
Upon your mystic scrolls
There lives a spell to guide our destiny;
The fire by night, the pillar'd cloud by day,
Upon our upward way.


LINES.

(ON READING SOME VERSES ENTITLED "A FAREWELL TO LOVE.")

OH! stern indeed must be that minstrel's heart,
In the world's dusty highway doom'd to move,
Who with life's sunshine and its flower can part,
Who strikes his harp and sings Farwell to Love.

TO LOVE! that beam which covers all our light,
As the red rays illume the light of day,
Whose rose-hue, once extinguish'd from the sight,
Leaves the life-landscape of a dull, cold gray.


ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH.   459

To Love! the ethereal, the Promethean spirit,
That bids this dust with life divine be moved;
The only memory that we still inherit
Of the lost Eden where our parents roved.

Oh! hopeless bard! recall that farewell strain,
Nor from thy breast let this fond faith depart;
Recall that utterance of thy cold disdain,
Thy doubt of Love, the atheism of the heart.


ODE.

(ADAPTED TO THE MUSIC OF THE MARSEILLAISE HYMN.)

A NATION's birthday breaks in glory!
Songs from her hills and valleys rise,
And myriad hearts thrill to the story
Of freedom's wars and victories;
When God's right arm alone was o'er her,
And in her name the patriot band
With sacred blood baptized their land,
And England's lion crouch'd before her!
Sons of the Emerald Isle!
She bids you rend your chain,
And tell the haughty ocean-queen,
Ye, too, are free-born men!

Long has the world look'd on in sorrow,
as Erin's sun-burst* set in night;
Joy, joy! there breaks a brighter morrow,
Behold a beam of morning light!
A ray of hope her night redeeming;
And she greets it, though there lower
England's scaffolds, England's Tower,
And though hireling swords are gleaming.


* The ancient flag of Ireland.

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-29 15:00:20