[From Poems from Manxland,1868]

POEMS.

PART I.

ELLAN VANNIN.*

To THE ISLE-to the fairy-isle over the seas,
Where spangles are bright on its musical breeze;
Where the skies they are dappled with shadows that gleam,
And the nights are alight with the shooting-stars' stream,
And gorse with its gold, and the heather-bells group
On the heights of th' rock whence th' dark eagles swoop,
Where scarlet-capp'd moss, and the feather-cut fern
Have mantled, for ages, the warrior's cairn.

And Baal-fires crackle, blaze and leap
Over the hills where the Druids sleep,
Under the bush on the mountain side-
The whin-bush-where the wizards hide.
And tiny things that frolic above
Our fairy-rings are hand and glove
With the Storm-King, driving his trackless steeds
O'er fens and breaks and tangled weeds,
Till the caverned earth and crooning sea
Are wild with their mad revelrie.

To Mannanan's⁺ isle-sitting alone
On her iron-grey cliffs' up-lifted throne,
While the flashing sky, high over head,
And the curling main around her spread
Guard with a watchful jealous care
The realm of old Mannan' Beg Mac-y-Lheir,
And wreathe their purest diamond sheen
Into a crown for the rock-throned Queen.

* The Isle of Mann.

+ Mannannan Beg Mac-y-Lheir. The earliest Manx legislator.