Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.
Sweet Innisfallen
By Thomas Moore (1779–1852)S
May calm and sunshine long be thine!
How fair thou art let others tell,—
To feel how fair shall long be mine.
In memory’s dream that sunny smile
Which o’er thee on that evening fell,
When first I saw thy fairy isle.
Who had to turn to paths of care,—
Through crowded haunts again to run,
And leave thee bright and silent there;
But, on the world’s rude ocean tost,
Dream of thee sometimes, as a home
Of sunshine he had seen and lost.
To part from thee, as I do now,
When mist is o’er thy blooming bowers,
Like sorrow’s veil on beauty’s brow.
Thou dost not look, as then, too blest,
But thus in shadow, seem’st a place
Where erring man might hope to rest,—
A gloom like Eden’s, on the day
He left its shade, when every tree,
Like thine, hung weeping o’er his way.
And all the lovelier for thy tears,—
For though but rare thy sunny smile,
’T is heaven’s own glance when it appears.
But, when indeed they come, divine,
The brightest light the sun e’er threw
Is lifeless to one gleam of thine!