[From Mona Miscellany second series Manx Soc vol 21]

FAREWELL TO MONA.

By the Rev. J. L. PETIT.

MONA, farewell! the bark is manned,
To bear me to another strand,
And other scenes, and other skies,
By morn’s grey dawn must greet my eyes;
Yet shall my memory love to dwell
On the lone isle of rock and dell,
Chafed by the ocean’s whirling foam,
Within whose deep secluded home
The busy world is all unknown;
Or marked by distant peaks alone,
To him who haply gazes round,
From giant Sneafell’s topmost mound.
What time the morning’s ruddy light,
Gleams fresh on Cronk-na-Irey’s height,
When the brisk sea-breeze, clear and cool,
Sweeps o’er the crest of bold Barrule,
And circling round Slieauwhallin’s falls,
The tutelary mist dispels.
If nature’s charm, and fancy’s thrill,
Can chase the spirit’s cheerless chill,
If records of the past can bear
Our minds from present scenes of care;
If the rude cross and sculptured stone
Brings visions of an age unknown,
If Peel’s grey towers and ruined walls
A wondrous train of saints recall;
If yet the fairy loves to dwell
On the green brink of Maughold’s well,
O let me often roam again
Through thy brown heath and rugged glen.
Or list to Foxdale’s fitful roar,
Or wrapt in legendary lore.
Linger at eve and muse awhile
In Trinian’s dark and ruined aisle,
Where the stout tailor undismayed,
Throughout the twilight’s deepening shade,
In spite of goblin, fiend, or witch,
Plied boldly the creative stitch,
E’en in the very face of him,
Whose spectral image, swart and grim,
Scares the lone wanderer on his path,
And heedless of his threatened wrath,
A neat habiliment began,
And finished, for the nether man;
Then fled unscathed, and refuge found,
Beyond the streamlet’s mystic bound.
But hark! I hear the warning bell,
Land of the rock and glen, farewell,
And if thy bard should tempt again,
The perils of the stormy main,
O let his welcome be as free
As that which he hath met from thee;
May kindly heart and friendly smile
Receive him back to Mona’s Isle.