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THE KING’S SONG – Hugh Alexander 1910

On the death of his favourite Bard

Times of the Danes Circa 800AD

 

Your voice that once enraptured me

With all its magic power of sound;

Your songs of love and bravery,

The hills no longer echo round.

Your harp hangs silent on the wall,

I gaze at it through blinding tears.

Oh! How those strings to me recall

The faded joys of other years;

For when you woke the Harp to life,

You could lull a babe to sleep;

Could make an army mad for strife,

Or cause them all to sigh and weep.

But death has dimmed your fiery eye,

And hushed the music of your tongue;

Among the heroes now you lie,

Of whom in other days you sung.

And now your strain shall thrill no more

My heart in war or banquet hall;

Which I had valued more than all.

Sleep in peace! You cannot see,

The gloom that falls on Erin’s Isle;

The stranger comes to bind the free,

To steal, to murder, and defile.

To Godless foreign foes a prey,

Her glorious day is nearly run;

A thousand years shall pass away

Before the rising of her Sun!

 

Hugh Alexander 1910

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