[From Mona's Isle, 1844]

THE BARD’S LAMENTATION.

REMOTE and unfriended on life’s troubled ocean,
The lone bard of Mannin in sorrow reclines,
And midst the loud tumult of foreign commotion,
O’er the harp at his lonely condition repines,

And sighs for the joys of his own native island,
And Coma the seat of his forefathers’ race,
Whose lowland green meadows, and heather-clad highland,
Nor time, nor affliction, can ever efface

From the mem’ry of him whose heart still grows fonder
As the years of his exile reluctantly roll,
For absence but seems to imprint them the stronger
With time-baffling traces on memory’s scroll.

Ah, Mannin ! dear Mannin ! how can I neglect thee?
My unroaming heart closely clings to thy shore,
And while it yet throbs I shall never forget thee,
Tho’ I should behold thee, my Mannin, no more.

As clings the young infant, with fondling caresses,
Unto the glad mother to gaze on her smile—
So does my fond heart, midst the world’s sad distresses,
Cling close to the rocks of my dear native isle!

As pines the wild hart, on Syria’s parch’d mountains,
The murmuring streamlet’s clear waters to see—
Or the green myrtle groves that shade the cool fountains—
So pine I in absence, my Mannin, for thee!