On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;
No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

These lines come from Thomas Campbell’s narrative poem “The Exile of Erin,” a lyric of Irish displacement written in the early Romantic period. Campbell (1777–1844), a Scottish poet, often adopted national and patriotic voices beyond Scotland, and this poem speaks in the persona of an Irishman forced from home. The speaker recalls an earlier, idyllic life on the River Shannon—music, love (“Sheelah”), and companionship (“my poor dog Tray”)—before exile and loss. The stanza’s nostalgic tone and simple songlike cadence reflect the era’s taste for ballad forms and for sentimental evocations of homeland, especially in poems addressing political upheaval and forced migration.

The passage idealizes a vanished domestic happiness: the “green banks of Shannon” stand for a fertile, peaceable Ireland; Sheelah embodies intimate human attachment; the harp signals cultural identity and the sustaining power of art; and the dog Tray represents loyal, unpretentious companionship. By piling up these homely emblems, Campbell heightens the pathos of exile: what is mourned is not abstract politics alone but the ordinary texture of life—place, love, music, and a faithful animal. The speaker’s pride in his harp (“No harp like my own…”) also suggests that cultural expression is both a personal solace and a marker of national belonging, made more poignant by separation from home.