BL ANNA ID. 



And viewed the sun, in clustering crowds, 

 Embosomed in his house of clouds, 

 And darting thence his angry glance 

 Upon the ocean's dark expanse, 

 Is one dark form apart, alone 

 Beside a monumental stone, 

 As one who, weary of the tomb, 

 Had left awhile his dreary home, 

 And come, his night of slumber o'er, 

 To view the blessed light once more ! 

 His gaze, ill-omened as the storm, 

 Is fixed upon one lovely form. 

 Of Connor's royal court the pride, 

 Was brave Cuthullin's beauteous bride. 

 The Red Knight thought not of his toil 

 In Tourney, if there beamed a smile 

 From Blannaid of the Western Isle : 

 The novice, 'ere the faulchion bright 

 Had dubbed him consecrated knight, 

 Performed his wondrous feats, nor felt 

 The ardour in his bosom melt, 

 If, as he lowly passed her by, 

 She bent on him her azure eye. 



XX. 



That stranger's step moved onward where 

 The crag three hundred feet in air 

 Hung drooping with its shrubless brow. 

 Full sheer into the gulf below : 

 The ocean sent its boiling tide 

 To roar and burst against its side ; 

 Upon that dizzy height he stood, 

 And gazed adown the tortured flood ; 

 And on the crowd he fixed his look, 

 And from beneath his mantle took 

 A harp, and when its chords were strung, 

 A fun'ral descant thus he sung : 



" There was a time I might have wept 

 O'er beauty's quick decay, 



The tear which once had idly crept, 

 Must now be dashed away ; 



But yet it costs some pain to dry 



That foolish weakness of the eye ! 



" There was a time I might have prayed, 



And bent to earth my brow, 

 And felt that then I might have stayed 



The doom I hasten now. 

 But no ! my head no thought must wear, 

 Save that of deepest vengeance there. 



" My harp ! -thou solace of thy lord, 



I fling thee in the main 

 No other finger o'er thy chord 

 Shall ever stray again, 

 Feircheirtre's eye hath shed the tear 

 For thee, the last that lingers here !" 



