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I've fought for my country — I've braved all the dangers
That throng round the path of the warrior in strife;
I now must depart to a nation of strangers,
And pass in seclusion the remnant of life;
Far, far from the friends to my bosom most dear,
With none to support me in peril and pain,
And none but the stranger to drop the sad tear
On the grave where the heart-broken Exile is lain.
Friends of my youth!
I must leave you forever,
And hasten to dwell in a region unknown :--
Yet time cannot change, nor the broad ocean sever,
Hearts firmly united and tried as our own.
Ah, no!
though I wander, all sad and forlorn,
In a far distant land, yet shall memory trace,
When far o'er the ocean's white surges I'm borne,
The scenes of past pleasures,--my own native place.
Farewell, shores of Erin, green land of my fathers:--
Once more, and forever, a mournful adieu!
For round thy dim headlands the ocean-mist gathers,
And shrouds the fair isle I no longer can view.
I go — but wherever my footsteps I bend,
For freedom and peace to my own native isle,
And contentment and joy to each warm-hearted friend
Shall be the heart's prayer of the lonely Exile!
, written in 1825 at the age of seventeen, and sent by his elder sister Mary for purposes of publication.
The further history of its reception is thus told by
