A MANXMAN’S FAREWELL.¹

A MANNINAGH DOOIE, from the clean I was troggit,¹
Close by the foot of the bridge of Cornaa,
Whose keystone was fix’d in the year I was ruggit,²
Three miles and a half from the town of Rhumsaa.³
In this rural spot, at the foot of the mountain,
I pass’d the gay morn of my life’s chequer’d day,
Alike when December in ice bound each fountain,
Or flowers sprung forth at the mild breath of May.

To me seem’d my cot and the green fields around it
The whole of vast Nature’s dominion below,
Tho’ oft the blue ether that archingly bound it
Caused many conjectures its nature to know;
In a circle of joy each moment pass’d daily,
As freely I roved the green meadows or earn,⁴
And sang, in my own native language, so gaily,
The " Kirree-fo-Niaghtey " or " Mylecharane."⁵

But, ah! cruel Fate, in her freak, had design’d me
To traverse the regions of old mother earth,
And leave my dear Mannin with sorrow behind me,
The home of my fathers—the land of my birth!
Full well I remember that day yet with sorrow,
When first from my own Mannin veen I did stray,
And when I beheld her high cliffs, on the morrow,
Fast sinking below the blue waves far away.

I thought of my parents who fondly caress’d me,
And soothed all my sorrows in childhood’s fond years,
And love unrequited, that pang which distress’d me
And forced me away from my Island in tears:
What language can picture my heartfelt emotion,
As flew the gay bark o’er the white-foaming swell,
When I sigh’d to the breeze, in my silent devotion,
"My Mannin, my own Mannin veen, fare-thee well

WILLIAM KENNISH, R.N.

1. Literally—A Manxman true from the cradle I was reared.
2. Born,
3. Manx name for Ramsey.
4 The name of a field.
5. Two popular songs in the Manx language.

THE BARD’S LAMENTATION.

AH, Mannin! dear Mannin! how can I neglect thee?
My unroaming heart closely clings to thy shore,
And while it yet throbs I shall never forget thee,
Tho’ I should behold thee, my Mannin, no more

As clings the young infant, with fondling caresses,
Unto the glad mother to gaze on her smile—
So does my fond heart, ‘midst the world’s sad distresses,
Cling close to the rocks of my dear native Isle.

As pines the wild hart, on Syria’s parch’d mountains,
The murmuring streamlet’s clear waters to see—
Or the green myrtle groves that shade the cool fountains—
So pine I in absence, my Mannin, for thee!

AWAKE, MY MUSE!

AWAKE, my Muse !—together let us sing
Of hills and groves and sweet sequester’d vales—
Of feather’d tribes that make the valleys ring—
And of the gurgling brook that never fails,
But murmurs hoarsely from the depths below,
Swelling in floods within the darken’d dell,
Deep’ning its course for ever in its flow
Thro’ craggy glens, where wizards love to dwell;
Of rugged mountains, clad in mossy vest,
Towering on high their dark gigantic forms,
With far outspreading base and taper’d crest
That’s stood the rage of countless winters’ storms;—
Of North Barrule, nodding o’er Maughold’s plains,
Paying due homage to vast Snaefell’s height,
While Pen-y-Pot o’er Lonan still maintains
Its evening shadows with undoubted right;—
Of Barrule, Rushen, which the South commands,
And kindly shelters from the western blast
The lowland cultured fields and rocky strands,
When stormy clouds the wintry skies o’ercast.

W. KENNISH, R.N.