Sing, Sweet Harp

By Thomas Moore

Sing, sweet Harp, oh sing to me
Some song of ancient days,
Whose sounds, in this sad memory,
Long buried dreams shall raise;
Some lay that tells of vanish'd fame,
Whose light once round us shone;
Of noble pride, now turn'd to shame,
And hopes for ever gone.
Sing, sad Harp, thus sing to me;
Alike our doom is cast,
Both lost to all but memory,
We live but in the past.

How mournfully the midnight air
Among thy chords doth sigh,
As if it sought some echo there
Of voices long gone by;
Of chieftains, now forgot, who seem'd
The foremost then in fame;
Of bards who, once immortal deem'd,
Now sleep without a name.
In vain, sad Harp, the midnight air
Among thy chords doth sigh;
In vain it seeks an echo there
Of voices long gone by.

Could'st thou but call those spirits round,
Who once, in bower and hall,
Sate listening to thy magic sound,
Now mute and mouldering all;
But, no; they would but wake to weep
Their children's slavery;
Then leave them in their dreamless sleep,
The dead, at least, are free!
Hush, hush, sad Harp, that dreary tone,
That knell of Freedom's day;
Or, listening to its death-like moan,
Let me, too, die away.