THE SUMMER sun is falling soft on Carbery’s hundred isles, | |
| The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel’s rough defiles: | |
| Old Innisherkin’s crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird, | |
| And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard: | |
| The hookers lie upon the beach; the children cease their play; | 5 |
| The gossips leave the little inn; the households kneel to pray; | |
| And, full of love, and peace, and rest, its daily labor o’er, | |
| Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore. | |
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| A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there; | |
| No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth, or sea, or air! | 10 |
| The massive capes and ruined towers seem conscious of the calm; | |
| The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm. | |
| So still the night, these two long barques round Dunashad that glide, | |
| Must trust their oars, methinks not few, against the ebbing tide. | |
| Oh, some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the shore! | 15 |
| They bring some lover to his bride who sighs in Baltimore. | |
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| All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky street, | |
| And these must be the lovers friend’s, with gently gliding feet— | |
| A stifled gasp, a dreamy noise! “The roof is in a flame!” | |
| From out their beds and to their doors rush maid and sire and dame, | 20 |
| And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabre’s fall, | |
| And o’er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl. | |
| The yell of “Allah!” breaks above the prayer, and shriek, and roar: | |
| O blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore! | |
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| Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword; | 25 |
| Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was gored; | |
| Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching wild, | |
| Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled with the child: | |
| But see! von pirate strangled lies, and crushed with splashing heel, | |
| While o’er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian steel: | 30 |
| Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store, | |
| There’s one heart well avenged in the sack of Baltimore. | |
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| Midsummer morn in woodland nigh the birds begin to sing, | |
| They see not now the milking maids,—deserted is the spring; | |
| Midsummer day this gallant rides from distant Bandon’s town, | 35 |
| These hookers crossed from stormy Skull, that skiff from Affadown; | |
| They only found the smoking walls with neighbors’ blood besprent. | |
| And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went, | |
| Then dashed to sea, and passed Cape Clear, and saw, five leagues before, | |
| The pirate-galley vanishing that ravaged Baltimore. | 40 |
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| Oh, some must tug the galley’s oar, and some must tend the steed; | |
| This boy will bear a Sheik’s chilbouk, and that a Bey’s jerreed. | |
| Oh, some are for the arsenals by beauteous Dardanelles; | |
| And some are in the caravan to Mecca’s sandy dells. | |
| The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey: | 45 |
| She’s safe—one’s dead—she stabbed him in the midst of his Serai! | |
| And when to die a death of fire that noble maid they bore, | |
| She only smiled, O’Driscoll’s child; she thought of Baltimore. | |
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| ’Tis two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band, | |
| And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand, | 50 |
| Where high upon a gallows-tree a yelling wretch is seen: | |
| ’Tis Hackett of Dungarvan—he who steered the Algerine! | |
| He fell amid a sullen shout with scarce a passing prayer, | |
| For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there. | |
| Some muttered of McMurchadh, who brought the Norman o’er; | 55 |
| Some cursed him with Iscariot, that day in Baltimore. | |
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