FRAGMENT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

———

BY JAMES M’CARROLL.

———

When, in his strength, the monarch of the air

Soars proudly through the azure fields of heaven,

His pinions burning in the noontide glare,

Or flashing in the deep red dyes of even,

He sees the earth receding from his eye,

And looking round him, in his chainless glee,

Utters a loud, a long, wild, piercing cry—

And that’s the joyous shout of Liberty.

But when he leaves those vast ethereal plains,

And falls into the fowler’s hidden snare,

Beneath the icy pressure of his chains,

How soon his sounding wing hangs listless there;—

And oft, as o’er their galling links he broods,

Dreaming of the bright hours when he was free,

He looks up through those shining solitudes,

And shrieks—the bitter shriek of Slavery.

If thus ’tis, from the eagle to the dove,

Say, how can we upon our fetters smile,

Save those that, woven by the hand of Love,

Are round us flung with many a tender wile?

So pure a shrine of Freedom is the soul,

That could our chains lose all their weight and chill,

And, ’twined with light, extend from pole to pole,

We’d sigh and feel that we were captives still.