Thomas Moore

From “Irish Melodies”. 91. Oh, Ye Dead!

OH, ye Dead! oh, ye Dead! whom we know by the light you give
From your cold gleaming eyes, though you move like men who live,
         Why leave you thus your graves,
         In far off fields and waves,
Where the worm and the sea-bird only know your bed,
         To haunt this spot where all
         Those eyes that wept your fall,
And the hearts that wail’d you, like your own, lie dead?

It is true, it is true, we are shadows cold and wan;
And the fair and the brave whom we loved on earth are gone;
         But still thus even in death,
         So sweet the living breath
Of the fields and the flowers in our youth we wander’d o’er,
         That ere, condemn’d, we go
         To freeze ’mid Hecla’s snow,
We would taste it a while, and think we live once more!