The Prince's Day.[1]

Tho' dark are our sorrows, to-day we'll forget them,         And smile thro' our tears, like a sunbeam in showers:     There never were hearts, if our rulers would let them,         More formed to be grateful and blest than ours.                 But just when the chain             Has ceased to pain,         And hope has enwreathed it round with flowers,                 There comes a new link                 Our spirits to sink--     Oh! the joy that we taste, like the light of the poles,         Is a flash amid darkness, too brilliant to stay;     But, tho' 'twere the last little spark in our souls,         We must light it up now, on our Prince's Day.     Contempt on the minion, who calls you disloyal!         Tho' fierce to your foe, to your friends you are true;     And the tribute most high to a head that is royal,         Is love from a heart that loves liberty too.                 While cowards, who blight                 Your fame, your right,     Would shrink from the blaze of the battle array,                 The Standard of Green                 In front would be seen,--     Oh, my life on your faith! were you summoned this minute,         You'd cast every bitter remembrance away,     And show what the arm of old Erin has in it,         When roused by the foe, on her Prince's Day.     He loves the Green Isle, and his love is recorded         In hearts, which have suffered too much to forget;     And hope shall be crowned, and attachment rewarded,         And Erin's gay jubilee shine out yet.                 The gem may be broke                 By many a stroke,         But nothing can cloud its native ray:                 Each fragment will cast                 A light, to the last,--     And thus, Erin, my country tho' broken thou art,         There's a lustre within thee that ne'er will decay;     A spirit, which beams thro' each suffering part,         And now smiles at all pain on the Prince's Day.