Lady Jane Wilde Poems

Wherefore neighest thou so sadly?
Stampest with the hoof so madly?
Speak my steed—why at the tent
With thy stately neck down bent?
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Fatherless and motherless, no brothers have I,
And all my little sisters in the cold grave lie;
Wasted with hunger I saw them falling dead
Lonely and bitter are the tears I shed.
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Oh! might I pass as the evening ray
Melts in the deep’ning twilight away;
Calmly and gently thus would I die,
Untainted by ills of mortality.
Oh! might I pass as the silver star
That glitters in radiant light afar.
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Dead! Dead! Ye are dead while ye live;
Ye've a name that ye live—but are dead.
Neither counsel nor love did ye give,
And your lips never uttered a word
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Air Soul, created in the primal hour,
Once pure and grand,
And for whose sake I left my throne and power
At God’s right hand
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Lonely stream of rushing water,
From the rock that gave thee birth,
Hast thou fallen, O Naiad's daughter!
Mingling with the common earth?
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Far from her Royal lover, by Mondego’s sunny tide,
Does the Lady Inez wander, Don Pedro’s lovely bride;
Her long hair fell around her, like a veil of a golden light,
And the jewelled zone that bound her in the noontide sparkled bright.
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The tedious night at length hath pass’d;
To horse! to horse! we’ll ride as fast
As ever bird did fly.
Ha! but the morning air is chill;
Frau Wirthin, one last goblet fill,
We’ll drain it ere we die!
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O Country, writhing in thy chain
With fierce, wild efforts to be free,
Not seeing that with every strain
The bonds close firmer over thee;
Or grasping blindly in thy hate
The temple pillars of the State,
To hurl them down on friend and foe,
Crushed in one common overthrow
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When mighty passions, surging, heave the depth of life's great ocean
When the people sway, like forest trees, to and fro in wild commotion
When the world‐old kingdoms, rent and riven, quiver in their place,
As the human central fire is upheaving at their base,
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