The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore
Chapter 57 : IMPROMPTU.AFTER A VISIT TO MRS. ----, OF MONTREAL.'Twas but for a moment--and yet

IMPROMPTU.

AFTER A VISIT TO MRS. ----, OF MONTREAL.

'Twas but for a moment--and yet in that time She crowded the impressions of many an hour: Her eye had a glow, like the sun of her clime, Which waked every feeling at once into flower.

Oh! could we have borrowed from Time but a day, To renew such impressions again and again, The things we should look and imagine and say Would be worth all the life we had wasted till then.

What we had not the leisure or language to speak, We should find some more spiritual mode of revealing, And, between us, should feel just as much in a week As others would take a millennium in feeling.

WRITTEN

ON Pa.s.sING DEADMAN'S ISLAND, IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,[1]

LATE IN THE EVENING, SEPTEMBER, 1804.

See you, beneath yon cloud so dark, Fast gliding along a gloomy bark?

Her sails are full,--though the wind is still, And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!

Say, what doth that vessel of darkness bear?

The silent calm of the grave is there, Save now and again a death-knell rung, And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung.

There lieth a wreck on the dismal sh.o.r.e Of cold and pitiless Labrador; Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost, Full many a mariner's bones are tost.

Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck, And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck, Doth play on as pale and livid a crew, As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.

To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast, To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast; By skeleton shapes her sails are furled, And the hand that steers is not of this world!

Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on, Thou terrible bark, ere the night be gone, Nor let morning look on so foul a sight As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

[1] This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the property of Sir Isaac Coffin. The above lines were suggested by a superst.i.tion very common among sailors, who called this ghost-s.h.i.+p, I think, "The Flying Dutchman."

TO THE BOSTON FRIGATE, ON LEAVING HALIFAX FOR ENGLAND,[1]

OCTOBER, 1804.

With triumph, this morning, oh Boston! I hail The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail, For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee, To the flouris.h.i.+ng isle of the brave and the free, And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand Is the last I shall tread of American land.

Well--peace to the land! may her sons know, at length, That in high-minded honor lies liberty's strength, That though man be as free as the fetterless wind, As the wantonest air that the north can unbind, Yet, if health do not temper and sweeten the blast, If no harvest of mind ever sprung where it past, Then unblest is such freedom, and baleful its might,-- Free only to ruin, and strong but to blight!

Farewell to the few I have left with regret: May they sometimes recall, what I cannot forget; The delight of those evenings,--too brief a delight!

When in converse and song we have stolen on the night; When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien, Of some bard I had known or some chief I had seen, Whose glory, though distant, they long had adored, Whose name had oft hallowed the wine-cup they poured; And still as, with sympathy humble but true, I have told of each bright son of fame all I knew, They have listened, and sighed that the powerful stream Of America's empire should pa.s.s like a dream, Without leaving one relic of genius, to say, How sublime was the tide which had vanished away!

Farewell to the few--though we never may meet On this planet again, it is soothing and sweet To think that, whenever my song or my name Shall recur to their ear, they'll recall me the same I have been to them now, young, unthoughtful, and blest, Ere hope had deceived me or sorrow deprest.

But, Douglas! while thus I recall to my mind The elect of the land we shall soon leave behind, I can read in the weather-wise glance of thine eye As it follows the rack flitting over the sky, That the faint coming breeze would be fair for our flight, And shall steal us away, ere the falling of night.

Dear Douglas! thou knowest, with thee by my side, With thy friends.h.i.+p to soothe me, thy courage to guide, There is not a bleak isle in those summerless seas, Where the day comes in darkness, or s.h.i.+nes but to freeze, Not a tract of the line, not a barbarous sh.o.r.e, That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore!

Oh think then how gladly I follow thee now, When Hope smooths the billowy path of our prow, And each prosperous sigh of the west-springing wind Takes me nearer the home where my heart is inshrined; Where the smile of a father shall meet me again, And the tears of a mother turn bliss into pain; Where the kind voice of sisters shall steal to my heart, And ask it, in sighs, how we ever could part?--

But see!--the bent top sails are ready to swell-- To the boat--I am with thee--Columbia, farewell!

[1] Commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas, with whom I returned to England, and to whom I am indebted for many, many kindnesses.

IRISH MELODIES

DEDICATION

TO THE MARCHIONESS DOWAGER OF DONEGAL.

It is now many years since, in, a Letter prefixed to the Third Number of the Irish Melodies, I had the pleasure of inscribing the Poems of that work to your Ladys.h.i.+p, as to one whose character reflected honor on the country to which they relate, and whose friends.h.i.+p had long been the pride and happiness of their Author. With the same feelings of affection and respect, confirmed if not increased by the experience of every succeeding year, I now place those Poems in their present new form under your protection, and am,

With perfect Sincerity, Your Ladys.h.i.+p's ever attached friend,

THOMAS MOORE.

PREFACE.

Though an edition of the Poetry of the Irish Melodies, separate from the Music, has long been called for, yet, having, for many reasons, a strong objection to this sort of divorce, I should with difficulty have consented to a disunion of the words from the airs, had it depended solely upon me to keep them quietly and indissolubly together. But, besides the various shapes in which these, as well as my other lyrical writings, have been published throughout America, they are included, of course, in all the editions of my works printed on the Continent, and have also appeared, in a volume full of typographical errors, in Dublin. I have therefore readily acceded to the wish expressed by the Proprietor of the Irish Melodies, for a revised and complete edition of the poetry of the Work, though well aware that my verses must lose even more than the "_animae dimidium_" in being detached from the beautiful airs to which it was their good fortune to be a.s.sociated.