LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 (pS 35"// 
 
 Cliap. Copyright ^'o. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
ODIN'S LAST HOUR 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY / 
 
 HENRY McD. FLECHER 
 
 Vi 
 
 THE NEELY COMPANY. 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 
 NEW YORK. CHICAGO. LONDON. 
 
 V-. 
 
Library of OonareMsj 
 
 
 IWO COflES RtrEiUfO 1 
 
 
 JAN 15 1901 
 
 
 
 
 
 SECOND COPY 
 
 
 1 
 
 X^-bTll 
 
 
 
 . L^ 8 ^ ^ 
 
 
 /<?»<> 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 
 
 by 
 
 
 H. McD. FLECHER 
 
 
 in 
 
 
 the 
 
 
 United States 
 
 
 and 
 
 
 Great Britain. 
 
 
 AU Rights Reserved. 
 
 
 ^ 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO MY 
 
 NEAREST AND DEAREST 
 
 IN THE GRAVE AND 
 OUT OF IT. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Odin's Last Hour 15 
 
 U. S. A 23 
 
 The European Emigrants 36 
 
 The Texan Dove 39 
 
 Ireland's May 42 
 
 The Unsuccessful Brave 44 
 
 On the Atlantic's Western Shore 46 
 
 The Banshee's Wail 48 
 
 Contrasted Climes 52 
 
 O'Donohue's Love 54 
 
 Saxon Protestant to Catholic Celt 58 
 
 To Ierne^ a Thrall 60 
 
 Home ! Home ! 62 
 
 Conn and Queen Mave 64 
 
 A Vision of the Bereaved 74 
 
 Four on Pisgah 79 
 
 Song from Sorrow 81 
 
 An April Evening (Ulster Scene) 83 
 
 Holy Ground 85 
 
 October Winds 87 
 
 God's Voice 89 
 
 The Isle in a Boundless Sea 90 
 
 Compensative Life 92 
 
 A Cry to the Father 94 
 
 On the Brink of Death 96 
 
 A Cherub's Guidance 98 
 
 Among the Trees 100 
 
 The Bards and the Messiah 102 
 
 The Giant's Ring 105 
 
 The Summer Niqht Breeze ,...,.,,.,, , 108 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To MoiNA 109 
 
 May and Ellen no 
 
 The Far Away 112 
 
 To Garibaldi 114 
 
 "She Dwells by a Daisy-Browed Shtrame" 116 
 
 We Parted Here 118 
 
 The Boy Wf the Horny Han' i ig 
 
 A Houldin' Foriver 121 
 
 MoiNA Loves No More 123 
 
 "I Watched Her Wade the Shooting Corn" 125 
 
 Larry Lee 127 
 
 "O Come, My Beloved'' 129 
 
 Last Eve 130 
 
 The Mowing of the Meadows 131 
 
 Star of My Spirit 133 
 
 Married for Money 135 
 
 The Paicemaker 136 
 
 "Ever Green Be Yon Valley" 138 
 
 Loved Forever, Lost Forever 139 
 
 Love Cannot Die 140 
 
 Jane 142 
 
 Cromla of Caves 143 
 
 The Pain of the World 144 
 
 Bonnie Portmore 145 
 
 "Evermore I'll Love Thee" 146 
 
 Cuan's Lake 148 
 
 Annie Dear 149 
 
 Absent Isabella 151 
 
 Severed and Sundered 152 
 
 How Frown the Wild Skies 153 
 
 The Falls of the Glen. 154 
 
 Sammy's Grave 155 
 
 Maggie Ban 157 
 
 County Down Mary 159 
 
 Phelim 161 
 
 "I Saw the Time" 163 
 
 The Song of the Sower 165 
 
 "Elizabeth Aroon", 167 
 
 Eliza Jane 168 
 
 "Lovely Wee Lough of Portmore"" 170 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Idle Wishes 172 
 
 Sleive Donard 173 
 
 The Delver^s Chant 178 
 
 The Hundredth Birthday (Burns') 181 
 
 Invitation to "Kitty Connor" 184 
 
 On an Irish Small Farm 186 
 
 To the Great Thinkers of the Age 188 
 
 Sonnet to Scotland 189 
 
 Remonstrance of a Condemned Drake 190 
 
 The Consolation of the Grave 193 
 
 The Last Request 195 
 
 Gather Money 197 
 
 Spring's Sadness and Gladness 199 
 
 To the Song Ousel in Winter 201 
 
 The Lorn Widow's Lament 203 
 
 Decadence and Bereavement 205 
 
 The Homeless 207 
 
 Last Words to Moina 209 
 
 To the Young Spring Flowers 210 
 
 To the Loved and Lost 212 
 
 "The Unreturning" 214 
 
 Quarantine 217 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 I offer no apology for the publication of this volume. 
 The constitutional clause that secures liberty of the press 
 to the people of these United States, secures it to me as 
 an Irish-American. 
 
 While science and philosophy appeal pre-eminently 
 to the intellect, the fine arts, of which poetry is chief, 
 appeal pre-eminently to the sensibilities. They may ap- 
 peal with alluring force or commanding power. 
 
 In virtue of the influence poetry exerts over both the 
 feelings and the intellect, it will picture men and natural 
 scenes ideally, that is, consistently, and with just pro- 
 portions. It is therefore used by the finest educators as 
 a means of the highest culture, as well as the purest and 
 loftiest pleasure. 
 
 As is evident, the pieces which compose this little book 
 are very various. Those who do me the honor of 
 perusing it, will find lyrical pieces — some of them in the 
 Ulster patois — several patriotic pieces, having reference 
 either to this country or to Ireland, — some that are 
 pathetic, side by side, perhaps, with others that are 
 humorous. A few are steeped in folk lore, a few take 
 their burdens from history, and a considerable number 
 take their inspiration from religion; besides an addi- 
 tional, unclassed variety. 
 
 I might have arranged them as poems composed in 
 early life, poems of middle age, and poems written 
 
xii A UTROB'S PREFACE. 
 
 since ; but it seemed better to group them with some ref- 
 erence to their subjects. 
 
 The Ulster dialect, in which a few short pieces are 
 written, is nearly a compound of the Scottish dialect, 
 English as it was spoken in Shakespeare's time, and the 
 Irish, or Celtic tongue; the English ingredient, however, 
 prevails. 
 
 In some quarters it may be sternly asked: "Young 
 ladies and gentlemen, why waste time on inferior poets, 
 when there are so many great ones?" Then, perhaps 
 some intelligent young lady will reply, "My dear sir, 
 from Chaucer to Tennyson there are so few great poets 
 that a little child could count them." Even of good 
 minor poets there is no great wealth. People who can 
 *''speak from the heart to the heart with the sweetness 
 of music, are never very numerous. Longfellow justly 
 appreciated the lesser bard as differing from the greater 
 chiefly in the humbleness of his themes when in his hours 
 of weariness he declined the "grand old masters," crying 
 out: 
 
 "Read from some humbler poet. 
 Whose songs gushed from his heart. 
 As showers from the clouds of summer. 
 Or tears from the eyelids start." 
 
 H. McD. F, 
 
ODIN'S LAST HOUR, 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 Odin's Last Hour. 
 
 AN ALLEGORICAL POEM. 
 
 'Twas eventide; all hushed were brake and bower; 
 And I had quaffed the drug* whose magic power 
 The stern control of flesh and blood restrains, 
 And stills the storms of passion in the veins. 
 That hour had visions borne to ancient seers, 
 And brought the patriarchf gleams of future years; 
 While through the gloom fell voices from the skies, 
 And living flames approached his sacrifice. 
 
 Through shades of death, at first, I seemed to stray, 
 Then o'er me broke a new and dazzling day. 
 High soared my soul exulting thus to spring 
 Toward the empyrean on unpinioned wing. 
 Surveying realms she long had yearned to know — 
 Fair regions spread beyond the waves of woe. 
 
 * Hashish. -j- Abraham. 
 
jg 0DI2PS LAST HOUR. 
 
 Freed from the fleshly cloud that veiled my sight, 
 I scanned their shores by immaterial light; 
 And the pure faculties earth's bonds had chained 
 In power, in freedom, and in radiance reigned — 
 The spirit's lamps, whose rays revealed to me 
 What mortal eyes had never dreamed to see 
 More than the mollusk, deep in ocean's bed, 
 Deems argosies are wafted o'er his head. 
 
 High on a vast ethereal ocean buoyed, 
 Where all had seemed a barren cold and void, 
 I saw ten thousand glorious islands rest 
 Like evening clouds upon the gorgeous west — 
 Isles of such grandeur, such resplendent glow. 
 As briny billows never washed below. 
 Faint grew my soul amid the glorious sight 
 With such unbounded, unconceived delight, 
 Such mingled fragrance, such a blaze of dyes. 
 Such seas of bloom and beauty-beaming skies. 
 And wild, sweet, heavenly, harmonizing songs 
 Which spoke the bliss of rapture-breathing throngs. 
 
 Close by, white-robed and iris-girdled, poured 
 A tall cascade which from a summit roared. 
 Whose awful height, as back I bent to view, 
 Mocked my weak sight amid the boundless blue. 
 Its current o'er the lovely landscape strayed 
 Through fairy vale and cherub-haunted glade 
 Now overarched by vast primaeval trees 
 Whose bloom with odors burdened every breeze; 
 Wild winding now through flowery glens that rung 
 With the glad lays eternal summer sung; 
 Or down steep rapids borne in foamy storms, 
 Ov leaping cliffs of strange gigantic forms. 
 
0DI2P S LAST EOVn. 1 7 
 
 Now under mossy rocks it purled along, 
 Humming, unseen, its soft mysterious song. 
 Emerging thence, it moved with flashing sheen 
 Amid broad meads of glad perennial green, 
 Where, viewing those translucent ripples glide, 
 Walked nymphs in rainbow robes along its side, 
 Eyeing its course as far as eye could see; 
 Which seemed meandering to eternity. 
 
 Wide woods, on mountain^ steep, in hollow glen. 
 
 Glittered and waved beyond my narrow ken. 
 
 Whose million tinted fruits and blossoms shone 
 
 With dancing, dazzling light that seemed their own. 
 
 Palms, like tall spires, reared plumy crests so far 
 
 That the perched warbler looked a singing star. 
 
 Here heaths and lonely wildernesses spread 
 
 For those whom sacred contemplation led. 
 
 Where mountains towered savagely sublime. 
 
 Which mocked the molehills of our earthly cllmg, 
 
 Whence glorious forms by whom their heights were trod, 
 
 Seemed stepping upward, star by star, to God. 
 
 Here lakes reposed whose bosoms, strangely bright, 
 
 Showed more of heaven than meets the upward sight ; 
 
 And fadeless bower and undecaying grove 
 
 Witnessed the raptures of immortal love. 
 
 Creatures of every aspect, form and hue 
 
 Crept, walked, or ran, climbed, burrowed, swam, or flew — 
 
 Creatures redeemed from earthly pain and strife — 
 
 The everlasting war of death with life; 
 
 Here they are paid for all their pangs below, 
 
 And freed from "man, their proud usurping foe." 
 
 No ruin, rage, or ruth may venture here; 
 No winter preys upon the blooming year; 
 
X8 0DIN^8 LAST HOUR. 
 
 Yet, like the varying accents of a lyre, 
 Comes every change that longing hearts desire. 
 Now 'tis a landscape clad in vernal green, 
 Now autumn's glories variegate the scene; 
 Now 'tis a forest deep that frowns and glooms, 
 A Paradise now takes its place and blooms; 
 While never change on valley, hill or plain 
 Can come untimely or too long remain. 
 Amid the bounteous scenes which round m^e lay 
 I saw bright bands with human aspects stray. 
 Or sit by silver lakes and living streams 
 'Mid music such as mortals hear in dreams. 
 Bound by no selfish ties in narrow clans, 
 They never knew the names of kings or khans; 
 For the high sense of good that charms and awes 
 Stands them instead of government and laws ; 
 While each, by all unchecked, unfolds his powers 
 Which grow and bloom, God's everlasting flowers. 
 
 While with delight and wonder throbbed my heart 
 A bright-browed being from his race apart. 
 Clothed in a stole of azure, light, and bloom 
 Wrought on the beams of some celestial loom. 
 Asked, smiling sunshine, what I sought on high; 
 But knew my answer ere I found reply. 
 "Long hast thou prayed and pined to learn," he saith, 
 "The mystery beyond the doors of death. 
 Though sealed as yet that deep eternal lore, 
 Pass we, at least, to Gladsheim's utmost shore." 
 He spoke, and raised me by the arm on high. 
 And swift as day-beam, bore me through the sky. 
 Though, like the flash, we flew from isle to isle, 
 Distinct I viewed each lovely feature smile. 
 
ODIN'S LAST EOUB. 19 
 
 Here, shining flocks on purple herbage sleep, 
 Or graze aloft and browse the giant steep; 
 There, gleaming o'er the bright and bowery land, 
 In pearly whiteness dazzling dwellings stand. 
 Mount Zion's fane could scarce in splendor vie 
 With the ten thousand domes that charmed the eye. 
 In amaranthine gardens statues shine, 
 Endowed with grace and majesty divine; 
 E'en Phidias, in despair, had here flung down 
 That chisel which has won a world's renown. 
 
 High o'er the heavens, which seemed one spotless sun, 
 
 Wild wayward splendors, million-colored, run; 
 
 And strangely glorious beings, faintly seen, 
 
 Appeared at times beyond the dazzling sheen; 
 
 Now half revealed, and now withdrawn from sight 
 
 To some high city of excessive light. 
 
 We reach at length, our airy journey done, 
 
 A grove-clad hill betwixt the earth and sun; 
 
 The heavens around were all a golden glow; 
 
 Like a broad moon, my native world below. 
 
 "Repose," said Witur,''' ('twas the stranger's name)' 
 
 Beaming mild love from eyes of starry flame, 
 
 "Here upon Gladsheim's farthest rosy height; 
 
 And strength renew to wing a wilder flight." 
 
 Softly reclining on that mount of bliss 
 
 And gazing forward o'er a vast abyss. 
 
 My vision o'er a strange, stern region falls 
 
 Of frowning fortresses and guarded walls. 
 
 Fair in the midst arose a mighty tower 
 
 Whose height and structure spoke of godlike power; 
 
 * Impersonation of knowledge. 
 
20 ODIN'S LAST HOUR. 
 
 Beside it, all that Babel's builders piled 
 Had seemed the playful labor of a child. 
 High on its summit stood a massive throne ; 
 Resplendent, like a morning sun, it shone; 
 Thereon reposed a crowned and kingly form. 
 Huge as the ocean cloud that bodes the storm. 
 At times he stalked around his diamond chair 
 Scanning his empire with a monarch's care; 
 Nations have bowed and hosts have turned to fly 
 Before the flash of that commanding eye. 
 ''Is he an angel or a god?" I cried. 
 Awed and astonished, to my shining guide. 
 "A god," he said; "all ruling Odin, he, 
 ''Lord of your earth — soil, air, and wavy sea; 
 And, most and worst, the realm of man is strong. 
 That still adores yon prince of crime and wrong. 
 Long-struggling man hath gained but trifling odds- 
 A change of names but not a change of Gods. 
 Licentious Lok* still shrouds mankind in gloom, 
 Still Thorf sweeps nations to a gory tomb, 
 Tyrf urges still the slayer's battle car. 
 And glories when oppression wins the war." 
 
 "But come! let's cross this azure gulf profound, 
 "And view grim Asgard'sJ fortress-girdled bound." 
 Swift as the word we sweep its warlike strand, 
 A vast domain but not a beauteous land. 
 Its ornaments were such as splendor yields — 
 Valhalla's hall roofed o'er with golden shields, 
 
 * Ignorance and sensual pleasure, 
 •j* War and cruelty — all manner of violence. 
 j Odin's dominion; he is the impersonation of tyranny and 
 wrong. 
 
ODIN'S LAST HOTTR. tl 
 
 Castles and palaces of blazing gems, 
 
 And gorgeous kings in robes and diadems; 
 
 Its walls and guardian towers of massive strength; 
 
 Its battle plain ten thousand leagues in length, 
 
 Whither on fierce and fiery coursers rode 
 
 To daily fight, the warriors of the god. 
 
 "Mark well," cries Witur, "each grim, guilty tower; 
 
 "They all must sink, but none may read the hour. 
 
 Villains who killed or kept mankind in thrall 
 
 Quaif glory's cup in gay Valhalla's hall. 
 
 The only merit of the reveling train 
 
 They cringe to Odin, and uphold his reign. 
 
 While millions of the good and true he dooms 
 
 To Hela's chills, where night unbroken glooms. 
 
 Behold yon earth, a half eclipse her gleam; 
 
 No real radiance from her face can beam. 
 
 This realm extends between your world and light, 
 
 And wraps it in the shades of partial night. 
 
 Yon chief of broad and giant build is Thor, 
 King of brute force and never-ceasing war; 
 By him are armies upon armies hurled; 
 He hunts the trail of slaughter round the world; 
 Sacked cities, bloody fields, and dying groans, 
 Furnish the joys his horrid spirit owns. 
 See him come forth by yonder silver door. 
 The banquet done, and all the revel o'er. 
 These bridges Odin's foes have tried to climb 
 From Hela's chills and fiery Muspelheim; 
 But yet, too weak the rounded heights to gain. 
 The heroes hurled them back to homes of pain. 
 But Hugi* now pursues a work sublime — 
 Giving earth's sons the certain means to climb; 
 
 * Science and Wisdom. 
 
22 ODIN'8 LAST EOUR. 
 
 And tempering two-edged blades that cannot fail 
 
 To cut thro' Odin's heroes, plate and mail. 
 
 Thro' mountain obstacles and wild alarms, 
 
 Steady he toils to deal the effectual arms. 
 
 Serosh* has come, brave, wise, and pure, unknown 
 
 Even to him who fills yon lofty throne, 
 
 Earth's grandest son, though noteless and obscure, 
 
 Rich in wise plans and dauntless to endure: 
 
 He comes adorned with nobleness and grace 
 
 To disenthrall the remnant of your race." 
 
 Witur now bears me thro' the void again, 
 
 A sheer descent, to Hela's dismal den. 
 
 Far, far it lay beneath those blest abodes 
 
 Of heroes favored by their partial gods. 
 
 We enter first a waste of dreary gloom 
 
 That seemed some long deceased creation's tomb. 
 
 Where barren shores encircle lifeless seas 
 
 By keel uncleft, unrippled by a breeze. 
 
 Where spirits, strayed from some fair home afar, 
 
 Wander uncheered by sun or moon or star. 
 
 Thence to th' abyss o'er frozen fogs we flew 
 
 Beneath a sky of every dismal hue. 
 
 Blue icy cliffs rose huge and high around, 
 
 A vast hoar sea of frost and mist profound. 
 
 Dreary and wild and waste where human sight 
 
 On not one fair, one hopeful scene, could light. 
 
 Love shuns that shore, and bloom and cheering sound, 
 
 And its chill caves incessant groans resound. 
 
 The banished wretches doomed to linger there 
 
 Were guarded by the monster fiend Despair; 
 
 * Evolution's perfect man. 
 
ODIN'S LAST EOUR. 23 
 
 Ice-cold the architect of every shed, 
 Hunger their board and weariness their bed, 
 While grim Disease his frightful lash applied — 
 A thousand serpents v/rithing side by side. 
 
 Soul-sick to see the woes I could not aid, 
 
 I left these realms of everlasting shade, 
 
 And took a flight, that might a seraph tire, 
 
 O'er the void gulf to Muspell's home of fire. 
 
 A region this of still more horrid pains, 
 
 Where Odin's foes in strong asbestine chains 
 
 Sink, with wild cries of agony and shame, 
 
 In roaring waves of never-ceasing flame. 
 
 Awed by that fiery sea's eternal roar 
 
 And the hell gloom round all its horrid shore. 
 
 Frightened, I fled to Asgard's twilight hill 
 
 And quaffed new strength from Urdar's^'' holy rill. 
 
 The watch was set, and all was silence deep; 
 
 For 'twas the hour when gods and heroes sleep. 
 
 O'er the sun's orb a beauteous cloud was flung, 
 
 Like a silk screen on silver lantern hung, 
 
 Which shaded off the bright eternal noon. 
 
 And left the scene a moonlit eve of June. 
 
 Here Witur fixed that lens before my eyes 
 
 That gives to gods the secrets of the skies. 
 
 Down on earth's disk a long, long gaze I sent. 
 
 While prone I lay in mute astonishment. 
 
 Strange change had come, wild, wondrous scenes were 
 
 there, 
 Terrific fury filled the frantic air; 
 Mad lightnings darted fierce commingled rays. 
 Till the whole firmament was one wide blaze, 
 And cloud to cloud fierce muttered deadly ire, 
 
 * Inspiration. 
 
24 ODIN'S LAST HOUR. 
 
 In giant voices and with tongues of fire; 
 And earthquakes tumbled into gulfs of shame 
 The burning isles and mountains clad in flame; 
 Dominions die, the thrones of monarchs fall, 
 And angry ocean sweeps each royal hall. 
 
 Now first I saw that fair, majestic tree 
 Whose roots explore the past eternity, 
 Whose never fading branches spring sublime. 
 Piercing the firmaments of future time. 
 From its vast trunk a bough had formed a bower 
 Over the roof of Gladsheim's* utmost tower. 
 And thence to Asgard, where it wove a screen 
 Sweet to tired heroes, Vv^th its foliage green. 
 By that strange path ascends the glorious one 
 Waving a falchion bright as noontide sun, 
 Signaling chieftains and brigades to march 
 Up the broad splendor of the rainbow arch. 
 While o'er that bridge avenging Surturf came 
 With Hela's host, and Muspell'sJ breathing flame. 
 Then his loud horn the startled Heimdall§ wound; 
 The wide world shuddered at the fateful sound. 
 Heroes and gods, their blissful slumbers broke. 
 In all their might and majesty awoke. 
 Valhalla's warriors rush to Asgard's plain. 
 As ravenous billows sweep the sateless main, 
 On steeds which toss their glowing manes on high 
 Like boreal lights that burn across the sky. 
 With plumes and purple standards gleaming far 
 And brands that threaten now no sportive war. 
 Thor, Tyr and Lok are Odin's marshals dread; 
 
 * The happy home. 
 
 •|- Ygdrasil (evolution). 
 
 J Just vengeance. 
 
 8 Enlightenment from experience. 
 
ODIN'S LAST HOUR. 
 
 By Surtur,* Lofnir,t Hugi, WiturJ led 
 Serosh's host, with proud and dauntless tread. 
 
 Wide o'er the field the fronting armies stand, 
 Up Witur springs and hastes to his command. 
 Far to the left stands Loki dark and foul. 
 Who bends on Hugi's host his hellish scowl. 
 Thor through the center strides, a moving tower, 
 Grasps his great club and watches Surtur's power. 
 Witur, the free, the true, directs the right 
 And, with a hero's joy, anticipates the fight. 
 
 High on his tower, the all-destroying king 
 
 His glorious legions scans from wing to wing. 
 
 Proudly the giant god deports him now, 
 
 His bright plume nodding o'er his gloomy brow; 
 
 Like the red sun above the lowering cloud, 
 
 When Heaven is troubled and the thunder loud. 
 
 Wrath's fearful lightning flashes from his eyes 
 
 At foes he hates but cannot all despise. 
 
 Lo ! gazing up, he views an awful form 
 
 Which, half emerging from the cloudy storm, 
 
 Displays unrolled the scroll of Odin's doom. 
 
 Whereon he reads, "Fell king, thine hour is come." 
 
 Ah! what vast anguish fills that fearful hour 
 
 Which sees him reft of universal power, 
 
 Tho' sworn his hosts o'er all that peopled plain 
 
 From fate to wrest the universe again. 
 
 His proud heart writhes but calms at his command 
 
 The pangs which must not paralyze his hand. 
 
 * Vengeance. j; Knowledge, 
 
 •j- Holiness, 8 Knowledge. 
 
26 ODIN' 8 LAST HOUR. 
 
 He scanned his guards, and bright before him saw 
 Serosh the Sent; and Odin blenched with awe. 
 On thy broad brow, Serosh, no tempests lower. 
 But in thy look lies calm and conscious power; 
 Thine the heroic eye that cannot quail, 
 And thine the arm that must not faint or fail. 
 To Odin thus: "Dread Lord of wrong and crime, 
 Man's fell oppressor since the dawn of time. 
 Too long, stern tyrant^ on thy bloodstained throne 
 Hast thou but mocked the universal groan; 
 Too long that throne by guilt and guile has stood. 
 And hell-sprung superstition's monster brood. 
 But now, like mountain cliffs by earthquake torn 
 From seats they filled ere tribes of earth were born. 
 Ye gods shall sink: your day, your date, are o'er. 
 With woe and violence, for evermore." 
 He rushed on Odin, and, with meteor brand. 
 Sheared the god's weapon like a willow wand. 
 The tyrant flees, and gains his army's head, 
 Down sweeps Serosh to guide his legions dread. 
 Lo! that vast serpent, venomous and vile, 
 That holds the world within his coils of guile. 
 Threatens with towering crest, th' invaders' rear. 
 Nor fears the point of Lofnir's brandished spear; 
 Destruction's ravening wolves unchained from hell 
 Spring on each flank with soul-appalling yell. 
 Fierce grew the fight, and doubtful yet it stood. 
 And fate seemed balancing the ill and good. 
 Odin regains with speed his fortress tower 
 And, wrathful, seats him on his throne of power; 
 Then grasps his thunderbolts, and with a frown 
 That withers nature, hurls his lightnings down; 
 And as heaven's hail beats flat the golden grain 
 Which waved in splendor o'er the harvest plain; 
 
ODIN'S LAST SOTJIt. 21 
 
 So Odin, with the Jove-like shafts he wields, 
 O'erthrows the spears that shag the vanquished fields. 
 
 Now had the glorious strife been waged in vain, 
 And subject nations gnawed the conqueror's chain. 
 When Hugi flew to Gladsheim's utmost shore 
 And seized the polar light's electric store; 
 Ten million darts resistless, keen, white-hot, 
 With hissing fury, thro' the heavens he shot. 
 The monsters fall, Valhalla's armies fly 
 From that last field where gods and heroes die. 
 
 Now he who bore the brilliant meteor sword 
 Up the tall tower pursues its furious lord. 
 Fierce was the fight, the helm of Odin's foe 
 Dinted and shorn, showed many a fearful blow; 
 A moment's pause ; from nature strength he drew. 
 Then pierced the groaning monster thro' and thro'. 
 While mighty woes like lurid hues of hell, 
 A horrid gloom, o'er all his features fell. 
 With one vast heave the dying god was hurled 
 Into the jaws of Hela's dreary world. 
 To sink forever thro' its fogs and gloom, 
 The frozen shades his everlasting tomb. 
 
 Thor swayed his giant's club in demon wrath. 
 And swept whole armies from his gory path; 
 Sire Odin's flight and fall avenging well, 
 Beneath the fiery Surtur's sword he fell. 
 Hugi and Lofnir far on Asgard's coast, 
 Annihilated Loki and his host. 
 Gods, heroes, monsters, mingled, strew the plain, 
 Which seems to groan beneath its heaps of slain ; 
 Those that remain yield up their vanquished swords. 
 And share the mercy of their victor lords. 
 
28 ODIN'S LAST HOUR. 
 
 Sudden, strange signals bode the doom that waits 
 
 The realm abandoned by its guardian fates. 
 
 Swift from that field the victor legions march, 
 
 And, hurrying, thunder down the Iris arch, 
 
 While still from heavenly Gladsheim's hills of green 
 
 I view the close of this tremendous scene. 
 
 Muspell in all the fury of his ire 
 
 Heaves on Valhalla's hall his hoarded fire: 
 
 The ocean flames that long have awed a world. 
 
 Now on wrecked thrones and fallen gods are hurled. 
 
 While star-sown gardens of ethereal bliss 
 
 Begin to bloom where frowned the dread abyss. 
 
 The tyrants' towers dissolve in burning rain. 
 
 Flames wrap Valhalla and its cumbering slain, 
 
 And Asgard, from its airy moorings rent, 
 
 Fell hissing, thundering thro' the firmament. 
 
 World conflagration, whirling, sinking fan 
 
 Until it vanished like a shooting star. 
 
 The sun and moon recoiled in fear and dread; 
 
 And when heaven cleared, the ancient lights had fled. 
 
 Pale, panic-struck, and cold as mortal clay. 
 
 They reeled from sight along the milky way. 
 
 Death, for a space, had spread his pall on high. 
 
 And sickening nature quaked from sky to sky! 
 
 But lo! an Orb in awful beauty's blaze. 
 
 Whose dayspring wakes the tribes of earth to gaze! 
 
 'Tis He, the sire of fates and gods, 'tis he 
 
 Whose beams whose brilliance no eclipse shall see; 
 
 All fair his aspect, and his glorious sway 
 
 Is, was, and shall be — everlasting day. 
 
 In the vast heaven, not half revealed, he glows : 
 
 Ten thousand suns his dazzling throne compose, 
 
 While flows o'er space's many-gleaming isles, 
 
 Eternal gladness, from his blissful smiles. 
 
ODIIPS LAST HOUR. 29 
 
 New lights he kindled of diviner ray- 
 To guide our earth and cheer her path for aye. 
 She, bright and fresh beneath the rising morn, 
 Beamed, a young world, to joy and beauty born. 
 The reign of ill was past for evermore. 
 And sorrow's tears and breaking hearts were o'er : 
 And all the ransomed victims of the past 
 Saw their long sufferings crowned with bliss at last. 
 
 Down to her breast on pleasure's wings I flew. 
 
 And lighted softly as the dawning's dew, 
 
 Where hope made hill and vale with rapture ring, 
 
 In the sweet promise of her beauteous spring. 
 
 Nature in all that wild fresh beauty lay 
 
 Which beams on man in childhood's blessed day — 
 
 That garb of youth so wondrous fair and bright 
 
 Ever rejoicing each admirer's sight. 
 
 Joy from God's fountains o'er the nations streamed 
 
 And Hela's slaves, from frost and flame redeemed. 
 
 Those savage looks that met the loathing eye. 
 
 Like the ill forms our raving dreams descry. 
 
 Fled as distempered visions fade away. 
 
 Or changed to beauty in the new-born ray. 
 
 Now he whose looks unbounded nature scan. 
 
 Whose hand launched earth and lent the bark to man. 
 
 Calls from the vast congratulating throng 
 
 That chief whose falchion smote the prince of wrong. 
 
 He, robed in light, and girt with beauty's zone. 
 
 Truth for his scepter, righteousness his throne. 
 
 Is now proclaimed the new-born age's king. 
 
 To usher in man's long-expected spring; 
 
 His nobles, they whom worth and wisdom dower. 
 
 And love, the engine of his godlike power. 
 
30 ODIN'S LA8T EOUB. 
 
 Healed were old wrongs, and calmed the feuds of yore. 
 And truth and freedom brightened every shore; 
 Crime and disease were only known by name, 
 And death was welcomed since it ripely came. 
 While men unfolding all their soul-born powers. 
 Bloomed and rejoiced, earth's amaranthine flowers. 
 
 'Twas now the golden age of time began. 
 And virtue came and dwelt, the spouse of man ; 
 And more than seers have sung in strains sublime 
 Blessed the bright dawn of that auspicious time. 
 
POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 Sentiments, Emotions 
 
 AND 
 
 Affections 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY McD. FLECHER 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 U. S. A. 
 
 When kings of Europe claimed their thrones 
 As gifts from Heaven to rule the zones; 
 Banished or bound or robbed or slew 
 The nobly brave, the free, the true, 
 A remnant dared th' Atlantic's roar 
 And sheltered on his wild west shore — 
 A remnant all too proud to be 
 Submissive to each vile decree; 
 But England smote with fire and glaive 
 That land they chose for home and grave; 
 Till Freedom's sons, a glorious band, 
 Hunted the tyrants from their strand, 
 Then built an empire, laws, and trade 
 On strong foundations firmly laid. 
 
 Now o'er the Appalachian wall, 
 
 Plains, prairies, lakes, and rivers call; 
 
 But lo ! once more, to cross their ways, 
 
 ,The Pharaoh of these modern days ! 
 
 Till, hurled, defeated, from their shore, 
 
 His visits cease forevermore. 
 
 Columbia, now, with hopes sublime, 
 
 |Men flock to thee from every clime. 
 
 Thy citizens from lands afar. 
 
 Thy wealth in peace, thy strength in war. 
 
 Through the Gulf heats, the mountain snow, 
 
 Brave pioneerS; they bravely go. 
 

 34 TI. 8. A. 
 
 On to the western valleys fair. 
 Their dedal streams, their balmy air. 
 Until, 'mid nature's blandest smiles 
 They touch the Ocean of the Isles. 
 A mighty continent thus rests 
 Between two oceans' heaving breasts. 
 
 The Briton checked, the slave set free^ 
 
 A glorious realm for ever be! 
 
 The Spaniard humbled for his sins,- — 
 
 A bright new day for thee begins. 
 
 Yet, where the hopes that Freedom gave. 
 
 The toiler, still, a hungry slave? 
 
 Wrongs of the past — the Red Man's woe. 
 
 The blood of wounded Mexico — 
 
 Were but the work of ruder years. 
 
 And cost thy best both blood and tears, \ 
 
 Let years of evil pass away; 
 
 Be just, magnanimous to-day. 
 
 Let not a land all glory-bright 
 
 Endure eclipse of truth and right. 
 
 By ladder steps of Augustine 
 
 Rise to the moral heaven's serene, 
 
 Each trodden rung, a trampled crime. 
 
 Scorned and abhorred in this new time. 
 
 Tn coming ages must we bow 
 To ills that darkly threaten now? 
 We shall have rulers strong and wise 
 When light has reached the people's eyes. 
 
 Then hail, O freedom-loving state! 
 Go on : be good as thou art great ; 
 
U. 8. A. 35 
 
 Be strong, be brave, be truly free, 
 
 Till man learn liberty from thee. 
 
 By voice and pen, thy sons of light 
 
 Spread truth and everlasting right. 
 
 Be peace and wealth and learning thine, 
 
 And honor and the life divine; 
 
 For Freedom came from God's right hand 
 
 And chose thee her_ imperial land. 
 
36 TEE EUROPEAN EMIGRANTS. 
 
 The European Emigrants. 
 
 Holding her course on a highway of foam. 
 Freighted with souls that are severed from home. 
 Borne upon ocean's untamable tides, 
 Yon ark of deliverance gallantly rides. 
 Onward ! with hearts that are tender as brave. 
 Onward ! to combat the wind and the wave. 
 Carrying vigorous spirits afar, 
 To the hills which look last on the evening star. 
 
 Plains, where the battles of truth have been fought. 
 
 Scenes of the triumph of science and thought, 
 
 Isles, which are spanned by the rainbow of song. 
 
 Graves of the great, an illustrious throng; 
 
 Shores of proud chivalry, lands of romance — 
 
 Britain, Italia, Germany, France — 
 
 Towers of the tyrant and homes of the free. 
 
 All have evanished like foam of the sea. 
 
 Now for the marvellous wilds of the west ; 
 
 Which deep on the tombs of antiquity rest. 
 
 The Log-hut and lynch-law, the forest-clad swamp. 
 
 And plains, where the braves of the savage encamp; 
 
 Where life is the sport of all perils most dire — 
 
 The prairie wide flaming, the forest on fire ; 
 
 Irresistible flood, irresistible flame, 
 
 And the Boreal blizzard, no labor can tame; 
 
 The cold on the lakes, and the plague on the bay. 
 
 Whole cities the cyclone's and hurricane's prey. 
 
THE EUROPEAN EMIGRANTS. 37 
 
 But these are their sons, who, in ages of eld, 
 Proud Rome **the eternal," triumphantly felled. 
 Before these strong tribes, opposition recedes, 
 As onward and upward their destiny leads. 
 Slav, Saxon, and Celt, with unterrified breast, 
 Like the host of the heavens, move on to the West. 
 And have they not burst from those regions of doom, 
 Whose sad sallow denizens jostle for room — 
 From the factory's bondage, the slum's fetid air, 
 Eviction made poverty grim with despair? 
 From realms where the peasant, low, scorned, in the dust, 
 Is trodden by pride in the harness with lust ; 
 Where the rubbish of wrongs, to be yet swept away, 
 Lies crushing the manhood from millions to-day? 
 Life narrowed, soul blurred, to a land they have fled. 
 Where manhood stalks forth with his fetterless tread. 
 Where the spirit of liberty sings in the gales 
 Cheering the swain at his task in her vales. 
 
 There the exiles of Europe, in freedom's high quest, 
 Like the hosts of the heavens, sweep on to the West. 
 There in that wide and uncircumscribed land — 
 There shall the genius of Europe expand. 
 Souls shall be fetterless, thought shall be free 
 As the winds of the welkin, the waves of the sea. 
 
 Where Europe's conventional narrowness dies. 
 There glory-crowned sages and saints shall arise. 
 And rouse a numb world from its torpor of pain 
 To exult in the radiance on mountain and plain, 
 When the dayspring of liberty, rising sublime. 
 Shall break in full morn on this twilight of time. 
 Then Columbia, in righteousness clothed from above. 
 Shall yield to the Christ her obedience and love. 
 
38 THSl EUBOPEAN EMIGRANTS. 
 
 Then art shall bloom forth as religions unfold, 
 Undreamed in the palmiest ages of old, 
 Till our springtide of Progress, full flowing and strong, 
 Reach the races becalmed and shall bear them along. 
 
THE TEXAN DOVE. 39 
 
 The Texan Dove. 
 
 ON HEARING HER FIRST COOING IN THE SPRING OF 1877. 
 
 ''The voice of the turtle is heard in our land." 
 
 Once more, lone heart, that weird and woe-tuned voice, 
 
 From the deep wood swells like a hopeless wail ; 
 
 Yet sings "the soft south-west;" and the glad sun 
 
 Flames from the cloudless sky, and warms and wakes 
 
 This April landscape to a glowing smile. 
 
 The red bud's purple and the cornel's white 
 
 With the young verdure of the forest blend. 
 
 Cheering her timorous foliage with the news 
 
 Of the glad advent of the queen of joy 
 
 And loveliness and love — ^hope-beaming Spring. 
 
 In many-colored gems that stud her breast. 
 
 The greening prairie's wavy width displays 
 
 The earnest of her coming wealth of bloom. 
 
 The blossomed peaches, all a flowery blaze. 
 
 With an ethereal roseate tint imbue 
 
 The murmurous air, till beauty's joy-flood bathes 
 
 Young, happy hearts deep plunged in being's bliss. 
 
 The tanager, the mockbird, and the blue 
 
 Choir with the harping breezes; yet why those 
 
 Melodious moans and sighs which rise and fall 
 
 Like tired complainings of some broken heart? 
 
 Or wailings of a lorn and wandering sprite. 
 
 Ghost of some victim slain for Aztec gods 
 
40 THE TEXAN DOVE. 
 
 In days more dark than that primeval shade? 
 
 Years fraught with grief have floated down Ufe's stream 
 
 Since first that seeming plaint assailed my soul. 
 
 I, a lone exile on these Texan plains, 
 
 Fancied those notes, mysterious then and strange 1 
 
 Were, somehow, echoes of my heart's despair ; .J 
 
 For I was longing for a far-off land — 
 
 An Isle beloved with fadeless beauty dowered 
 
 Whence cruel circumstance had severed me, 
 
 Perchance forever, giving me to know 
 
 A "death in life," — my land, whose hallowed scenes { 
 
 With memories of my unforgotten dead 
 
 Were haunted ; there I left their tear-dewed tombs, 
 
 Oh! how reluctant! for I had not steered 
 
 Of choice to foreign shores ; I had not come 
 
 To hunt for gold, but Freedom's gifts to share 
 
 Along with mild Columbia's gallant sons. 
 
 To flee the fiery fiend, intolerance. 
 
 And soulless tyrants of my native isle. 
 
 Ah, then how sad my soul ! and that weird voice 
 
 Accorded with its sadness in a plaint 
 
 Such as the groves of Erin never knew. 
 
 Meseemed it sounded like the wail subdued 
 
 Which the lost angel, from Niphates' top 
 
 Might have heaved forth amid his lone despair. 
 
 Sad was my spirit then, but sadder now, 
 
 With deeper ruin whelmed; for they who then 
 
 Loved me and cheered me — ^they ! ah, no ! their graves 
 
 Lie in the gloom whence flows that dirge-like strain. 
 
 And that lament? why, 'tis the wooing dove — 
 
 I know it now — so thrilled with passion's joy — 
 
 Extremes resembling — that his utterance seems 
 
 The publication of a mighty woe ! 
 
 The dear bird's heart seized with delicious pangs 
 
THE TEXAN DOVE. 41 
 
 Born of the rapture of exceeding love. 
 
 But my lorn heart, of love and joy forsaken, 
 
 From heaven's own blue, as 'twere, condenses grief, 
 
 And from the sun's resplendence gathers clouds,. 
 
 Misunderstands the music of delight; 
 
 Sees, hears, without, the woe that dwells within 
 
 Since glory hath departed from the earth. 
 
42 IRELAND'S MAT. 
 
 Ireland's May. 
 
 O ye are glad, my native hills, 
 
 Clothed in your emerald pomp again; 
 
 While Spring with bloom and carol fills 
 The sun-delighted vale and glen. 
 
 Your everlasting heads are crowned 
 By beautj's queen, triumphant May, 
 
 To reign, ah Heaven ! o'er realms around 
 Of freezing want and drear decay. 
 
 The blessed beam of vernal skies 
 Upon the naked roof-tree falls; 
 
 The thousand-tinted flowerets rise 
 Around the cot's deserted walls. 
 
 O'er ruined hearth and wasted floor 
 The red ox rules with stormy brow ; 
 
 O'er many a mirthful scene of yore 
 The voiceless verdure creepeth now. 
 
 The summer-loving cuckoos come 
 To shout their joy o'er hill and dale; 
 
 The swallow finds a happy home 
 From shore to shore of Innisfail. 
 
 Whilst her pale children crowd her strand 
 To 'scape misfortune's shaft and sling, 
 
IRELAND'S MA T. 43 
 
 And seek some free, though far-off land 
 Where they may taste the sweets of spring. 
 
 Fragrance and glory glad the air ; 
 
 Spring-quickened life and beauty smile; 
 Yet, o'er thee hangs a numb despair, 
 
 A hopeless chill, unhappy isle. 
 
 Through childhood's haunts I mope along. 
 Through scenes of bounding boyhood's play; 
 
 But gone are frolic, laugh, and song, 
 The life, the friends of that young day. 
 
 With heart forlorn thy vales I tread. 
 Where I can wake their life no more, 
 
 Nor call the exiled and the dead 
 To gladden thy forsaken shore. 
 
 Were mine the power, thou shouldst rejoice : 
 I can but weep against thy breast — 
 
 The weakest arm, the feeblest voice 
 Of all that yearn to make thee blest. 
 
44 THE UNSUCCESSFUL BRAVE. 
 
 The Unsuccessful Brave. 
 
 What remnant keeps guard on you rampart-crowned 
 height, 
 
 Whose banners so proudly defiant are seen? 
 The defenders of truth, the forlorn hope of right: 
 
 How scant their array, but their souls how serene ! 
 
 By their torn and soiled ensigns undaunted they stand — 
 Those battle-scarred ranks of the faithful and brave — 
 
 Where, like thunder-scathed cliffs on a storm-beaten 
 strand. 
 They await the wild dash of war's red-rolling wave. 
 
 Their country was wronged, they were prompt at her call, 
 And rushed on the edge of a desperate strife; 
 
 At Liberty's shrine they have sacrificed all; 
 Now they bring to her altar the incense of life. 
 
 "O brothers," the chieftains exultingly cry, 
 Their eyes all aglow with a patriot flame, 
 
 "We are here on the breast of our country to die, 
 If we fail to redeem her from bondage and shame. 
 
 "But our cause shall be borne with our history down 
 To the noble, grown strong, in a happier time; 
 
 Then, Freedom shall spring from this pyre of renown 
 To float on the pinions of triumph sublime." 
 
THE UNSUCCESSFUL BRAVE. 45 
 
 What stern "joys of battle," at fate's awful hour, 
 In those hearts of unquailing devotion arise. 
 
 As, grappling like Titans with tyranny's power, 
 They strike for earth's highest and holiest prize! 
 
 Oh, the life of that rapturous hour! it is more 
 Than an age in the sunshine of indolent ease: 
 
 To heroes far sweeter the combat's loud roar 
 
 Than to bards are spring songs on the joy-bearing 
 breeze. 
 
 Hurrah I is it nobler to fall or to crouch ? 
 
 On that proud bed of honor how proudly they lie 
 Who scorned the safe ease of servility's couch, 
 
 Where the slave and the traitor can tranquilly die ! 
 
 Thus ever, let liberty's champions fight. 
 
 Blessed freedom their prize or in life or the grave; 
 
 Then, man shall yet hail the enthronement of right, 
 And the earth cease to cherish a tyrant or slave. 
 
46 ON TEE ATLANTIC'S WESTERN SHORE. 
 
 On the Atlantic's Western Shore, 
 
 Like a lorn shade on Acheron's shore, 
 
 This strand I tread in cureless pain; 
 On rocks unknown those surges roar; 
 
 Lost EirC;, my yearning eyes I strain. 
 Vainly, for one last glimpse — one more — » 
 
 Across this dark eclipsing main. 
 
 Erin machree! here, rent away 
 
 From thy fond heart, thy wandering child. 
 Through a new, 'wildering world I stray 
 
 Whose face, which ne'er like thine has smiled 
 How swift I'd flee, could I to-day 
 
 Repass those hoary billows wild! 
 
 The mother from her firstborn torn. 
 
 The lover o'er the loved one's tomb,,^ 
 Of earth's prime joy and glory shorn;. 
 
 Souls that in purgatorial gloom ) 
 
 Too late their lost probation mourn — 
 
 These shadow forth the exile's doom. 
 
 My household gods, oh! where are they? 
 
 My cold, quenched hearth, my kindred's graves? 
 Too sad my soul to greet the gay. 
 
 Or give the heed life's business craves: — 
 O to sleep calm beneath your play, 
 
 Ye fierce^ dissociating waves ! 
 
ON TEE ATLANTIC' 8 WESTERN SHORE. 47 
 
 Yon city's gain smit crowds I dread, 
 Yon mart's unsympathizing throngs; 
 
 They dwell at home; they never fled 
 Th' oppressor's contumelious wrongs 
 
 Nor, while their own great land they tread. 
 Know how an exile pines and longs. 
 
 Yet am I free; — ^yet I, once more. 
 
 My loved "Hy Brazal of the Blest," 
 
 Shall greet thy dear maternal shore. 
 Upon thy lap of verdure rest. 
 
 And lay, these weary wanderings o'er. 
 My dying head against thy breast. 
 
48 THE BANSHEE'S WAIL. 
 
 The Banshee's Wail. 
 
 In Ireland it has been a belief for ages among a large 
 part of the peasantry, that a spirit called the Banshie 
 (White Woman) utters one or more wailing cries before 
 a death in any of the families to which she is attached. 
 Those families are generally of the Milesian branch of 
 the Celtic race. 
 
 This venerable and poetic superstition is glanced at 
 in the following lines from a Gaelic Bard : — 
 
 ''For the high Milesian race alone 
 Ever Hows the music of her woe.'* 
 
 Our hero, Harry Munro, of Lisburn, who headed the 
 County Down patriots in 1798, and, having been defated 
 and taken prisoner, was executed in his native town, 
 although destitute of the Hibernian O or Mac, his name 
 is, nevertheless, in both roots Celtic. 
 
 Gloomy and fierce had the midnight passed 
 
 Like a demon of wrong on the reinless blast 
 
 And a cloud which scowled like the face of a foe, 
 
 Its shadow a pall on the plain below. 
 
 Fleeted away on the wings of air 
 
 Revealing the welkin cold and fair, 
 
 Asd the east moon wan as an air-borne wraith 
 
 Or a virgin wound in the robes of death, 
 
 While slanted her faintly quivering beam 
 
 On the mirroring breast of Lagan's stream. 
 
TEE BANSEEE'S WAIL. 49 
 
 From a lone ravine that in darkness lay 
 Amid sentinel mountains stern and gray, 
 Whose treasuring caves held lance and brand 
 To avenge the wrongs of an outraged land, 
 A chieftain strode, the brave Munro, 
 Abreast of a hill-born torrent's flow. 
 
 Sudden the tones of a wild weird lay 
 From a lonely rath on his lonely way 
 Thrilled the soul like some witching strain 
 From a pleasure barge on the still blue main 
 Or the "voice and the instrument" wafted o'er 
 A moonlit lake to a silent shore: 
 Now a voiced despair, now the murmurs low 
 Of a wretch resigning her soul to woe; 
 
 Now a muffled moan on the rising breeze 
 
 As it sweeps through the boughs of the spectral trees; 
 
 Now a lost soul's shriek on the groaning gale; 
 
 Now a manaic maiden's hopeless wail. 
 
 It startles the glens so still and deep 
 
 And the echoes of night on each ghostly steep. 
 
 'Tis the weird Banshie, 'tis her warning cry; 
 
 Her white robes gleam 'twixt earth and sky 
 
 As lightly she floats from a fairy thorn 
 
 On the west wind's wings to the land of morn. 
 
 Unmoved by the phantom of future woe 
 Is the resolute heart of the brave Munro, 
 As he sternly prepares for the deadly strife 
 In the glorious cause that demands his life. 
 * ^ * 
 
 A gorgeous eve in the sun-crowned June 
 Smiles blithe to the honey-billed ousel's tune 
 
50 THE BAN8HEE'S WAIL. 
 
 Ana the voices of Lisnagarvy come 
 
 Up Lagan's vale with a joyous hum, 
 
 And the chieftain's couriers wide and far 
 
 Muster the North to the rising war: 
 
 It is Liberty's call, it is Erin's cry — 
 
 "To the battle, ye brave, and be men or die!" 
 
 Sudden a cry that too well he knew, 
 
 An unearthly wail from the welkin's blue! — 
 
 * Hi * 
 
 The hour has come when the hero's glaive 
 Is bathed in the foam of the combat's wave. 
 Now! the fierce joys of the battle begin, 
 For must not the right and the righteous win? 
 "Victorious Erin!" already the goal 
 
 Seems gained in the hopes of his patriot soul, j 
 
 For tyranny trembles at valor's frown j 
 
 From the bristling summits of war-waked Down, | 
 
 Whence sweep the brave like a mountain flood — ? 
 
 But, Freedom falls in her children's blood; i;* 
 
 And, borne away with that current bright, v 
 
 Is carried afar from their fainting sight. \ 
 
 3jC ^ ^ ^t 
 
 Chained and alone as he waits his doom — \ 
 
 From the felon's cell to the felon's tomb — »ii 
 
 That spirit who scans the scrolls of fate. 
 
 And learns the secret of life's last date. 
 
 The dread Banshee, with her boding wail 
 
 Breaks on the gloom of his midnight jail. 
 
 But his soul rose strong and his heart beat high 
 
 For he felt 'twas a pride and a fame to die. 
 
 By the hangman's rope or the hero's brand, 
 
 A forlorn hope slain for his bleeding land. 
 
 And he felt, though the sun of his life went down, 
 
 Jhat a dayspring should come with its bright renown; 
 
THE BANSHEE'S WAIL. 51 
 
 For he knew that no patriot falls in vain ; 
 But a host springs up from his blood again, 
 (As harvests rise from the summer rain) 
 To crush the tyrant and rend his chain. 
 
53 CONTRASTED CLIMES^ 
 
 Contrasted Climes. 
 
 A peach hue, air-borne, quivers o'er the plains, 
 Red bud and cornel"^ bid the forest shine; 
 
 Mock-bird and tanager, in sweetest strains, 
 
 Hail flaming morn and evening's bright decline. 
 
 White, varying cloudlets fleck the noontide skies, 
 The prairie robes herself in tender green ; 
 
 Tall builder pines heave pleasure's ceaselsss sighs, 
 Which solemnize brisk labor's lively scene. 
 
 Young February's flowers, with gladdening smile, 
 Beam on our Texan springtime's infant hours; 
 
 While winter lords it o'er my native isle, 
 
 And, with bleak blasts, invades her vales and bowers. 
 
 Still, still I long and yearn to be away 
 Amid the dancing hail and dazzling snow. 
 
 Or starlit hoar-frosts feathering blade and spray, 
 When the first daisies and the snowdrops blow. 
 
 There should I watch, as once, the gradual spring 
 Clear the dark heaven and deck the dear old sod. 
 
 Hear the loud March his herald trumpet ring 
 For the bright advent of the summer god ; 
 
 Revel in April's flowers, which know no deatfi, 
 Quaff rapture's nectar with exultant May, 
 
 * Dogwood, a species of cornel. 
 
CONTRASTED CLIMES, 53 
 
 Bask in June's glory, feel her balmy breath 
 
 And life's new thrill, with every new-born day. 
 
 This vast, lone prospect, no blue summit breaks, 
 No ivied pile, no cliff-born limpid stream. 
 
 No fairy glens, no sky-reflecting lakes : — 
 Gems which on Erin's breast of beauty beam. 
 
 But, if not beauty's, freedom's realm is here ; 
 
 His race's refuge should the Gael forget? 
 Protectress of her children far and near. 
 
 Brave, generous, great Columbia ! but yet , 
 
 Each blast that o'er this realm of sameness raves 
 Chidingly mutters, "Wanderer, cease to roam: 
 
 Seek once again your kindred's hallowed graves. 
 And the sweet valleys of your young life's home." 
 
54" O^DONOHUE'B LOVK 
 
 O'Donohue's Love. 
 
 The Kerry people have a legend that, in the olden time, 
 one of the lords of Kerry, of the O'Donohue family, a 
 chief of high repute for learning and virtue, was chosen 
 to reign over Tir-na-n'oge, the land of immortal youth, 
 situated beneath the green hills and bright lakes of 
 Erin. Every May-day morning, they tell us, he returns 
 to pay an annual visit to the dear "ouF counthry." On 
 one of these occasions, it seems, he carried back with 
 him a lovely bride to be a partner of his immortal throne. 
 The "Lady's Leap" from which she sprang into \''s 
 arms, is still pointed out to tourists. 
 
 Form of grace, brow of beauty, and soul without stain. 
 Had Fale, the queen lily of lilied Lough Laine,* 
 Lips tinged by the morn, tresses dyed by the night. 
 And eyes whose dark depths held ineffable light. 
 As radiant she stood in the glow of her smile 
 As in summer eve's ray, Innisfallen's fair isle; 
 While round her a beautiful sadness was thrown. 
 Like a vapor-veiled moon 'mid her cloud-woven zone. 
 In her soul were high thoughts and deep feelings en- 
 shrined 
 That drew a response from no answering mind; 
 And her heart was the seat of tmsatisfied fire 
 Amid all that paid court in the halls of her sire. 
 
 An oft going guest of the hind-peopled wold. 
 The swan's crystal palace, the eagle's high hold. 
 
 *Lake of Killarney. 
 
O'DONOHUE'S LOVE. 55 
 
 She wooed for companions the lusmore"^ and ling, 
 Had burrow-housed playmates, and friends on the wing ; 
 Haunted now the gray steep, now the islet's green 
 
 bowers. 
 The thrones of the storms and the homes of the flowers, 
 Rejoicing 'mid scenes w^here her spirit rose free — 
 Weird glen and gay meadow, wild wood and wide sea; 
 Yet by hoarse howling billow or soft singing rill, 
 She felt in her soul a sad vacancy still. — 
 
 'Tis the dawn; and lone roams by Killarney's calm 
 
 waters 
 This sweetest of matchless Mononia's daughters ; — 
 'Tis the dawn of the May-day, and morning's gay 
 
 smiles 
 Light the love-blushing lakes and the bowery isles; 
 Each catkin-clad willow, each rowan and pine 
 Is an orchestra ringing with anthems divine; 
 The cliffs are yet cowled, and huge Mangerton's breast 
 Is hid in the folds of Aurora's white vest; 
 And Echo's freed spirit now gaily rejoices 
 Round cavern and crag in a thousand wild voices. 
 But lo ! amid strains from some fairy-toned lyre 
 That silence m.orn's joy- wakened, love-gladdened choir, 
 A knight with black armor and foam colored steed 
 Skims the crests of the waves with the sea eagle's speed ! 
 
 Fale gazed in a transport of wonder and fear 
 As the knight on his silver-shod charger drew near: 
 One glorious glance on the cliff where she stood. 
 Then he doffed his plumed helmet and paused on the 
 flood. 
 
 * Foxglove flower. 
 
56 O'DONOHUE'8 LOVE. 
 
 'Twas the deathless O'Donohue, gentle and brave, 
 From his realm seen afar through the crystalline wave, 
 Who revisits each year, in the May's holy prime. 
 The scenes that were dear in the long vanished time. 
 She scanned his bright countenance^, lordly and fair, 
 Unshrunken by years and unfurrowed by care; 
 For the chieftain had won, by his virtue and lore, 
 A clime where old age and decay are no more. 
 Where he sways the bright scepter of justice and truth 
 Over fair Tir-na-7i'oge/^ the pure Eden of youth. 
 Oh! sweet was young Fale in that rapturous hour 
 As the delicate, dew-silvered saxifrage flower; 
 And proudly her sunny eye flashed from above, 
 On the hero just formed for a heroine's love. 
 Seven times — and each time when May's rose-winged 
 
 morn 
 Has alit with the sunbeams, and beauty is born — 
 Her knight she must meet on that strand and alone 
 Before she can share the O'Donohue's throne. — 
 One glance like the sunburst — he speeds him again 
 To the regions that own his immaculate reign. — 
 
 Six years glide away like a heavenly song 
 Unmarred by the discords of sorrow and wrong; 
 Six times she has met him alone on that strand 
 And pledged the mysterious monarch her hand; 
 Yet once must the faith of the maiden be tried. 
 Then Fale is the deathless O'Donohue's bride. 
 
 May-eve bringeth mirth to the gray castle walls, 
 And the minstrels are heard in the echoing halls; 
 For a lord has arrived from the cliffs of Kinsale 
 To be wedded next noon to the beautiful Fale. 
 
 * The land of youth — fairyland. 
 
O'DONOHUE'8 LOVE. 57 
 
 He has flocks, he has herds, he has gold in great store — 
 
 Those idols the loveliest ladies adore; 
 
 His acres are broad and his clan not a few 
 
 And his fathers were chieftains who marched with Boru. 
 
 Yet wept she all night till, with hope-bringing dawn. 
 
 She crossed the broad valley like Mangerton's fawn. 
 
 She gains the rock tryst, where the lake spreads before 
 
 her. 
 And a slender arbutus bends lovingly o'er her. 
 She has flung down her pearls and her jewels, and now 
 A wreath of wild May-flowers blooms on her brow; 
 A kirtle of green has been gracefully laced 
 Round her full heaving bosom and delicate waist. 
 
 But hark! for the weird fairy strains are awake; 
 And lo ! the mailed knight is abroad on the lake ! 
 Like a dove, whom the shriek of the eagle alarms, 
 She springs form the crag and alights in his arms. 
 And the Waves of Killarney a moment divide. 
 And O'Donohue's gone, with his beautiful bride, 
 To a realm as serene as the Eden supernal. 
 To bowers where beauty and youth are eternal. 
 Where passion no longer^ nor tyranny, rages, 
 But freedom and peace are for ages of ages. 
 
58 SAXON PROTESTANT TO CATHOLIC CELT. 
 
 Saxon Protestant to Catholic Celt. 
 
 {Inscribed to my late friend, Edward Rogers, of 
 
 Belfast. ) 
 
 Shall we love one another, my Catholic brother, 
 
 Like loyal-souled Irishmen, never? 
 Must the heathenish strife that's consuming our life 
 
 And our country's, keep burning forever? 
 Must the Orange and Green threaten always between 
 
 The hands that should clasp with heart's kindness? 
 Must we still go astray on our forefathers' way 
 
 Which they hedged in their dotage and blindness? 
 
 Oh ! I burn with deep shame that I ever became 
 
 The dupe of your foes for a minute ; 
 But the knaves with their lies threw a spell on my eyes, 
 
 And the hand of the traitor was in it; 
 For they charged you with blood, till, alarmed I with- 
 stood. 
 
 No longer the spoil of our nation! 
 But what could I do when no better I knew 
 
 Than credit the foul accusation? 
 
 O forgive and forget, and our country may yet 
 Over sorrow and shame be victorious 
 
 If with head, heart, and hand we unitedly stand 
 To render her happy and glorious; 
 
8AX0N PROTmTANT TO CATMOLIG CELT. 59 
 
 And old Erin shall rise, if her children be wise. 
 
 To a bliss above human prevention, 
 And the wailing of wrong, become liberty's song, 
 
 If we heal the red wounds of contention. 
 
 My line you may trace to that Sassenagh race 
 
 Who in war and in pillage were traders 
 But, in ages before they had ravaged her shore. 
 
 Your sires had been Erin's invaders. 
 If my barbarous sires spread carnage and fires. 
 
 When their harvests of spoil they were reaping^ 
 You have told me with pride of the thousands who died 
 
 Where the sword of Heremon was sweeping. 
 
 Should I be abhorred though my ancestors' sword 
 
 Shed the blood of the blameless like water, 
 When my very heart bleeds for his terrible deeds — 
 
 Persecution and plunder and slaughter? 
 We are both of one race if the ages we trace; 
 
 We are sons of the same Island Mother; 
 Let us only contest about which can do best 
 
 To serve her and save her, my brother. 
 
 God bless you, I say, hov/soever you pray; 
 
 Your faith shall ne'er meet my derision. 
 Can't we kindly talk o'er such a subject, asthore, 
 
 And ban cursed strife and division? 
 And we'll hate one another, my Catholic brother, 
 
 For race or religion, oh, never ! 
 And the heavenish . strife that's consuming our life, 
 
 We'll quench it forever and ever! 
 
60 TO lERNE, A TEBALL. 
 
 To lerne, A Thrall. 
 
 Round me the voices of the birds 
 
 Make field and forest ring; 
 While Zephyr sweeps his fairy chords- 
 
 The flowery harp of spring; 
 And I have snapped the tyrant's chain 
 
 That bound me soul and limb; 
 Yet my whole heart is one fierce pain 
 
 'Mid Nature's happy hymn. 
 
 Why dwells my spirit still in gloom 
 
 Where e'en the tree and sod 
 Rejoice in verdure, light, and bloom. 
 
 Bright with the smile of God? 
 My lost but unforgotten love. 
 
 What's sun or song to me, 
 The bliss below, the blaze above. 
 
 While fetters clank on thee? 
 
 lerne, fair as fruited vine, 
 
 Chaste as descending snow. 
 Hard are the hearts untouched by thine 
 
 Unutterable woe; 
 Who hold thee bound; a burdencffl slave; 
 
 Who tore me from thy breast, 
 And slew or banished o'er the wave 
 
 The sons that loved thee best. 
 
TO lERNE, A THRALL. 61 
 
 !Ah! when a happy, hopeful boy, 
 
 And life was love and glee, 
 My heart's best blood had poured with joy 
 
 Could that have set thee free; 
 Nay still, though years have flitted by 
 
 And wafted youth away, 
 I, all unchilled, unchanged, would die 
 
 To break thy bonds to-day! 
 
 Why burns my soul to right thy wrong? 
 
 Redress, how vain to seek! 
 Why is the heart so passion-strong. 
 
 The arm of flesh so weak ? 
 Oh ! the wild woe, the maddening pang 
 
 That thrills my throbbing brain 
 Oft as I hear thy fetters clang 
 
 And cannot rend the chain! 
 
 O, I am desolate, my love, 
 
 'Mid all that sing and shine. 
 As yonder mateless, mourning dove 
 
 Lone on the plaintive pine ! 
 The glow which gladdens life and space 
 
 My darkness only shows; 
 And all the smiles of Nature's face 
 
 Suggest my hopeless woes! 
 
ea HOME! HOME! 
 
 Home! Home! 
 
 [The author imagines himself back in his native Ulster 
 after a long exile.] 
 
 Home! home! by the fay-haunted fountains 
 In shamrock-spread valley and grove! 
 
 Home! home! to the loughs and the mountains. 
 And home to the friends that I love! 
 
 [Again 'mid the May-scented bushes. 
 Where Banna the bountiful flows ! 
 
 Again with the linnets and thrushes 
 That sing by the Lake of the Roes!*^ 
 
 Once more with the cliffs and the cloudland 
 
 Of Antrim's magnificent shore! 
 Once more in the peerless and proud land — 
 
 In the Island of Beauty once more! 
 
 Over regions of song and old story, 
 On the pinions of pleasure I'm borne 
 
 To exult amid grandeur and glory 
 
 On the purple-robed shoulders of Mourne. 
 
 Hist ! the lark in high rapture is bearing 
 A hymn through the azure serene 
 
 From Erin, queen Erin, now wearing 
 Her stole of symbolical green. 
 
 * Lough Neagh, 
 
HOME! HOME! 63 
 
 Fit type, in its loveliness vernal, 
 
 Of that spirit no foe can appal. 
 To liberty's conflict eternal 
 
 Springing fresh from each failure and fall. 
 
 As dance from the morn-routed shadows 
 Carmona's* gay, beam-tinted waves, 
 
 lAs heave the fair zephyr-pressed meadows 
 Round hoary old Cromlaf of caves; 
 
 So heaveth my heart in sweet gladness. 
 So dance my light spirits to-day; — 
 
 Behind me! thou Satan of sadness! 
 Ye gloom-haunting demons, away! 
 
 To-day I quaff joy, and joy only. 
 
 Redeemed from that exile afar 
 In the landj where I wandered as lonely 
 
 As her own, her companionless star. 
 
 Ah! the smiles and the welcomes that meet me. 
 Embraces and joy- wakened tears — 
 
 These cead-mille-failtes% that greet me. 
 Are balm for the anguish of years ! 
 
 * Belfast Bay. 
 
 •j- Cave Hill near the bay. 
 
 j Texas, called "The Lone Star State" from her chief emblem- 
 a single star. 
 
 I ( "Kaid-meely-failthy," a hundred thousand welcomes : 
 Irish. 
 
64 CONN AND QUEEN MAVE, 
 
 Conn and Queen Mave. 
 
 Long, long ago when time was yet in youth's rejoicing 
 
 years, 
 And ere our globe had wheeled too far from yonder 
 
 spirit spheres, 
 Whence fays and genii lit at times beneath our hills to 
 
 dwell 
 Or revel nightly o'er the rath and round the haunted 
 
 well. 
 Lived lorn a chieftain's son by fair Lough Erne's o'er- 
 
 shadowed shore; 
 Nor bolder breast than Conn Maguire's had stemmed 
 
 her wave before; 
 Matchless in height and might and mind among the 
 
 Finnian corps 
 He stood as 'mid the isles of Erne reposes Innismore. 
 
 But Conn, the child of lawless love, must bear the scourge 
 
 of scorn 
 From those that reckoned greatness light and named 
 
 him basely born. 
 What booted it that Conn Maguire, the generous, kind 
 
 and brave, 
 A hundred lives from ruin's jaws had snatched by land 
 
 and wave? 
 What booted it that gallant Conn, on battle's bloody day, 
 Was still the foremost in the fight and last to leave the 
 
 fray; 
 
CONN AND Q UEEN MA VE. 65 
 
 The truest eye, the stoutest heart in Uladh's* warrior 
 
 train, 
 The fleetest foot that scaled the cliffs which curb the 
 
 western main? 
 What booted skill and valor spent to meet his country's 
 
 call. 
 To feel himself surpassed by none, yet trodden down 
 
 by all? 
 
 His foster parents' home he sought, the chase or com- 
 bat o'er, 
 And closed against th' injurious world that humble 
 
 cabin door 
 Or stalked along the banks of Erne in lone and sullen 
 
 pride, 
 Till glory's trumpet tones again recalled him from her 
 
 side. 
 Yet he could brook the slights of men and measure 
 
 scorn for scorn 
 Till beauty seemed to spurn him too and left his heart 
 
 forlorn. 
 He loved the blue-eyed Banba han^ as only heroes love. 
 And did not dream that Banba han untrue could ever 
 
 prove. 
 She dwelt afar; between them lay broad flood and 
 
 valley lone — 
 Hy Niall's pride, queen flower that graced the bowers of 
 
 Innishowen. 
 Midsummer's eve conveyed the tale — a thunderstroke 
 
 of woe. 
 Which roused such agonies of soul as only heroes know — 
 That ere another sun might sleep beneath the western 
 
 tide. 
 His beauteous Banba should exult a rival chieftain's 
 
 bride. 
 
 * Ulster, t Fair, 
 
66 CONN AND QUEEN MAVE. 
 
 He rushed from out his cabin forth across the wooded 
 plain, 
 
 'Like elk with arrow in his flank which flees the shaft 
 in vain.' 
 
 Where far from human haunts the wolf pursued the 
 branchy deer, 
 
 Urged by the tempest of his soul he sped his wild career ; 
 
 Through sylvan shades and mountain glens he sought a 
 deeper night 
 
 Where Nature mourns in darkest weeds the dear de- 
 parted light; 
 
 Rounding from wood to cairn, he viewed the dappled 
 lake below 
 
 Whose bowery isles looked calmly down upon the crim- 
 son glow, 
 
 As her smooth bosom mirrored forth a hundred blended 
 lights 
 
 Caught from the heal"^ fires blazing on a hundred circling 
 heights. 
 
 Toil-worn he reached a shady rath — toil-worn and woe- 
 oppressed — 
 
 A shamrock-sheeted couch, whereon he flung his limbs 
 to rest; 
 
 Upon its grassy rampart rose the hazel and the sloe 
 
 Whose dewy boughs extended o'er the furze and fern 
 below ; 
 
 The slender sprays of podded broom, the lusmore richly 
 red. 
 
 Like guardian fairies seemed to watch above the sleeper's 
 head ; 
 
 The wild rose flung her fragrance o'er the softly moon- 
 lit scene 
 
 While silver-mantled night hung pearls on earth's rich 
 robe of green. 
 
 * Bonfireg. 
 
CONN AND Q UEEN MA YE. 67 
 
 Whist were the winds, the woods asleep, and not a leaf- 
 let stirred, 
 
 While clamored o'er the echoing meads the harsh- 
 voiced summer bird; 
 
 The insects chirruped through the grass and whirred 
 amid the fern. 
 
 And rose and fell the distant roar of the broad falls of 
 Erne. 
 
 Conn's slumbers breaking ere the moon has climbed the 
 middle skies 
 
 He hears from all the grassy sward shrill, eager whis- 
 pers rise; 
 
 Now in a louder, fiercer tone the crowding voices come 
 
 As when a thousand air-borne beetles raise their evening 
 hum. 
 
 Amid the din his dreamy eyes a beauteous vision saw 
 
 Which rapt his soul in ecstasy and held him dumb with 
 awe. 
 
 Her robe was thickly starred with gems as gossamer 
 with dew; 
 
 She wore a crown of roses culled where thorns, they 
 never grew. 
 
 Around her neck and bosom bright a diamond circle 
 hung 
 
 Like sunlit drops on lily's breast by wing of cygnet 
 flung. 
 
 Her eyes such brilliance beamed as from the queen of 
 starlight glows. 
 
 Her cheeks in softest union bound the white and blush- 
 ing rose; 
 
 Her lips were lines of beauty, traced with brightest rain- 
 bow dyes. 
 
 Her haij: the golden ^lor^ of the ^agtern morning skies, 
 
68 CONN AND QVEEN MAVK 
 
 Her brow was fair as moonshine when it beams on vir- 
 gin snow; 
 Her stature queenly tall; her voice was music soft and 
 
 low: 
 "O fairest youth of mortal mould, behold and pity 
 
 Mave, 
 Queen of the elfin tribes who haunt the moonlit sward 
 
 and wave. 
 To-night the chiefs of Tir-na-n'oge are met in fairy 
 
 ring 
 To aid in lawless enterprise my consort and their kin^. 
 The royal heart that's mine by right and should be miae 
 
 for aye, 
 An earthly princess has enthralled and reft its love 
 
 away. 
 True, she's a gem of lustre pure, a blossom rich and 
 
 rare; 
 But, noble youth, can mortal maid with deathless Mave 
 
 compare ? 
 They wait to mount the waking breeze at midnight's 
 
 witching call 
 To bear her from her castle home to his enchanted hall. 
 But feat like this no fairy host, unnumbered though it be, 
 May dare except through human aid, and aid they look 
 
 from thee. 
 Obey thou must. Thy doom is else ere thirteen moons 
 
 to die; 
 But claim the maid as thy reward, the mightiest must 
 
 comply. 
 O save our race from deadly feud and me from endless 
 
 grief. 
 And thine shall be a priceless meed, my young, my gal- 
 lant chief." 
 
CONN AND qUEEN MAVE. 69 
 
 Cries Conn, "I'd dare a host of fiends for such a radiant 
 
 queen, 
 With but my back against an oak and armed with targe 
 
 and Skene; 
 'Tis only thine to name the deed thou wiliest should be 
 
 done 
 To one who well knows how to die but not the way to 
 
 run." 
 
 Fleet vanished Mave as forward strode a lordly Elfin 
 knight : 
 
 "Hear the commands of deathless powers, thou slumber- 
 ing mortal wight: 
 
 Arise! for soon and swift must thou to Uladh's towers 
 proceed 
 
 Mounted as fits a hero on the mighty Phooka steed; 
 
 And hither, ere the owls go home, its princess must 
 thou bring, 
 
 A matchless maid, as spouse and queen of our immortal 
 king." 
 
 "My Banba!" murmured startled Conn — "stern spirit 
 I obey"— 
 
 And rising, followed through the ranks of Tir-na-n'oge's 
 array. 
 
 Beyond they reined a jet black steed, which pawed the 
 quaking ground; 
 
 His tossing mane the stormy cloud, his neigh, the thun- 
 der's sound. 
 
 "Haste, haste thee," urged his goblin guide, "the noon 
 of night is by ; 
 
 But when heaven's lamp hung fair beneath the roof- 
 tree of the sky, 
 
 I caught this seed of fairy fern, a rare and valued prize ; 
 
 Wear it against thy breast and walk unseen by mortal 
 eyes." 
 
70 CONN AND QUEEN MAYE. 
 
 Conn sprang upon the charger's back and grasped the 
 golden rein 
 
 And glided off, surrounded by the airy elfin train. 
 
 Over the silvered summer woods and rivers' rippling 
 sheen 
 
 Swift as the swallow skims the lake or rounds its mar- 
 gin green. 
 
 Now on the shores of Inishowen alit the flying train 
 
 Where the Hy Niall's towered home o'erlooked the 
 mighty main. 
 
 Unseen, through massive guarded gates and bolted doors 
 
 they pass 
 With steps as softly silent as the creeping of the grass ; 
 The fairy dames by elfin light array the trance-bound 
 
 fair 
 In robes that render Banba's form as viewless as the air. 
 Conn folds her in his stalwart arms; then sudden out 
 
 they fly 
 With rustle like the fitful breeze against the lattice high. 
 Now on the broad-backed Phooka horse, the princess 
 
 borne before, 
 Still guarded by encircling elves, he reached the rath 
 
 once more. 
 Outspoke the king: — "Well, gallant knight, hast thou 
 
 performed this deed, 
 Now let us hear thy utmost wish and claim the highest 
 
 meed; 
 Whether thou ask to rule a realm, in battle's blaze to 
 
 shine. 
 Or to be heir of endless wealth, — whate'er thou wilt, is 
 
 thine." 
 Outspoke brave Conn: — "By all the powers of welkin, 
 
 wave and wood. 
 
CONN AND qUEEN MAVE. 11 
 
 I claim this royal maid I've borne o'er precipice and 
 
 flood." 
 Dark frowned the king like harvest moon beneath the 
 
 dim eclipse, 
 And dark with rage grew all his ranks with fiercely 
 
 quivering lips; 
 Calmly amid the ghostly storm Conn raised his looks 
 
 on high 
 And uttered thrice that mighty name which awes the 
 
 earth and sky; 
 At the dread sound recoiling far they fled with venge- 
 ful cries, 
 A whirlwind swept the rocking rath and lightning 
 
 crossed the skies. 
 
 Calmly and sweetly Banba sleeps against the daisied 
 
 mound 
 Where beautifully negligent her tresses lie unbound. 
 Her face displays the softest tint of roseate light that 
 
 lies 
 Upon the sunless azure of the summer twilight skies; 
 Her hands are paired across her breast and slowly heave 
 
 and sink 
 Like white twin lilies sleeping by the rippling river's 
 
 brink. 
 As Conn on Banba's lovely form mute bent his raptured 
 
 gaze, 
 Mave softly glided up the scarp like morn's ascending 
 
 haze. 
 She stooped to touch the trancebound maid, who oped 
 
 her radiant eyes 
 On him her heart had ne'er disowned, and shrieked with 
 
 glad surprise. 
 
72 CONN AND Q UEEN MA VE. 
 
 Bright smiles the queen on mortals' joy, but heaves a 
 
 fragrant sigh 
 To think that all earth's bloom and bliss must fade 
 
 away and die; 
 Then speaks: — "O princess, love this knight so tender, 
 
 true, and brave. 
 But for whose daring thou wert now an elfin monarch's 
 
 slave. — 
 Love him — a warrior destined yet in Uladh's ranks to 
 
 shine ; 
 A hero, lady, worthy thee, the boast of Heber's line. 
 Love and live both to bless for aye this fairy-haunted 
 
 bower." 
 
 Behold a casket at their feet, a rare and princely dower. 
 Both gold and gems. Mave soared aloft and fleetly 
 
 flashed away 
 Across the purple-gleaming lake upon the morn's first 
 
 ray. 
 Down the green slope the lovers speed and seek the 
 
 sanded shore 
 Whence through the rippled flood their skiff flies fast 
 
 with flashing oar. 
 In Devinish a white-robed priest an hour beyond the 
 
 dawn 
 Gave Conn his Banba, and the pair to Inisoge are 
 
 gone — 
 Green Inisoge whose bowery breast heaves high above 
 
 the flood; 
 Around whose reedy shore the swan attends her downy 
 
 brood ; 
 Whose sloping meads are softly kissed by Erne's il- 
 lumined waves; 
 Whose groves resound with winged bards that chant 
 
 their morning staves. 
 
CONN AND Q UEEN MA VK 'J'3 
 
 Brief bliss ! The Ard-Righ * hurries down ; back comes 
 the Tribal Chief — 
 
 "But why those keenersf why that wail — ^that wildly 
 published grief?" 
 
 "Yon chief returning 'mid his clans has won his latest 
 field, 
 
 For though the 'conquering hero comes/ he comes upon 
 his shield." 
 
 But joy came close in sorrow's wake when great Hy- 
 Niall smiled 
 
 With reconciled and raptured heart on his recovered 
 child, 
 
 As corragh-borne from Inisoge and from its fairy 
 bowers 
 
 Conn leads his bride and kingly sire to Guaire's ances- 
 tral towers. 
 
 On all the heights the bonfires blaze; his sept with full 
 accord 
 
 Hail Conn Maguire their chosen chief and broad Fer- 
 managh's Lord. 
 
 * Head King. 
 
74 ^ V18I0N OF THE BEBEA VED, 
 
 A Vision of the Bereaved. 
 
 Lorn and lone but anguish-haunted, by the booming 
 beach I go, 
 Whilst the wanton winds are stripping of their trap- 
 pings turf and tree, 
 Where the shrieks of dying Nature, harmonizing with 
 my woe. 
 Have their deeep and dread responses from the "many- 
 moaning" sea. 
 
 Here the beetling cliffs rise rugged, there the breakers 
 chafe and rave. 
 Yonder o'er the flashing billows peers the brightening 
 moon afar. 
 Waning, yet in waning queenly, driving darkness to his 
 cave. 
 Quenching on her path of splendor many a fair though 
 feeble star. 
 
 Luckless luminaries! fated like some lesser lights be- 
 low — 
 Lights that softly, sweetly, purely beam with unob- 
 trusive ray, 
 Till they fade before the mighty who in blazing glory 
 glow — 
 Who with overflowing radiance rise and flood their 
 fame away. 
 
 >^ 
 
A VISION OF THE BEREAVED. 75 
 
 Dark and stormy thoughts came thronging o'er my 
 doubt-beclouded soul 
 Where the starry dreams and loves of youth had long 
 been dim and wan, 
 Till the firmament of being was a gloom from pole to 
 pole, 
 Hope, no more, of Luna's rising or the gladdening 
 gleams of dawn. 
 
 Once, methought, a foam-white figure lightly trod the 
 troubled main, 
 But it vanished like the visions of a thousand joys 
 before : 
 Once with ocean's voices blending, rose a sweet seraphic 
 strain ; — 
 Ah! 'twas fancy's music merely: she will sing for 
 me no more. 
 
 Now and then a startled sea-mew shrieking quits her 
 crag of rest 
 Disappearing in the azure of her moon-illumined 
 dome; 
 Like the peace and joy which doubt and sorrow banish 
 from the breast, 
 When they wing their way ethereal to their empyrean 
 home. 
 
 "There are birds of heaven," I mused, "that well escape 
 the frost and snow, 
 Hid secure beneath the brooklets till the wintry war 
 is o'er; 
 Would not ocean's deep asylum shelter me from pain 
 and woe, 
 Where eternal quiet broods below the surge's rage 
 and roar?" 
 
76 ^ VISION OF THE BEREA YED. 
 
 Lo! a curlew's happy whistle thrilled the welkin wide 
 
 and high, 
 Rousing stupefied reflection from his fever dream of 
 
 pain :— 
 "Only man, the puling pet of Nature, dooms himself to 
 
 die — 
 Dies, the fool of all creation, having lived its lord in 
 
 vain/' 
 
 Waked from sorrow's dark delirium to a truer trust in 
 God, 
 Homeward, 'mid the ghostly ravings of the wildly 
 tossing trees. 
 Swiftly through the wizard dingles, by the midnight 
 moon, I trod. 
 Seeking safety from the snow-maned, life-devouring 
 Borean breeze. 
 
 Sad and sighing, lorn and lonely in my solitary chair. 
 Doors and windows barred and bolted for the onset 
 of the storm; 
 Boding stillness, shrouding darkness save the ingle's 
 fitful glare, 
 Riseth, lo ! a stern-eyed phantom of a weird and won- 
 drous form: 
 
 Dim the garment girt about him, snowy white his flow- 
 ing hair; 
 Such, perchance, the spectral prophet Endor's witch 
 awaked from sleep: • 
 Loud the voices of the tempest sprang their anthem in 
 the air; 
 But he chained me to the music of his accents wild 
 and deep. 
 
A VISION OF THE BEREAVED. '71 
 
 "Mourning mortal, has He throned thee lonely lord of 
 sea and land, 
 Only echo's voice responsive to the ravings of thy 
 dole? 
 Has the angel of destruction pierced no bosom with his 
 brand 
 But the lost one thou lamentest with such agony of 
 soul? 
 
 "Hast thou traced the trail of anguish round this pain- 
 encompassed ball — 
 Thou whose selfish sorrow reigneth where compas- 
 sion's throne should be? 
 Seest thou not her snaky windings writhe across the 
 paths of all? 
 Canst thou 'mid the wide earth's weepers only one 
 to pity see? 
 
 "Canst thou free no fettered bondman? break no dun- 
 geon of despair? 
 Has the march of man to happiness attained that goal 
 of God? 
 Have the outcasts of humanity no claim upon thy care, 
 Crushed and crime-stained, writhing helpless under 
 retribution's rod? 
 
 "Hath society not folded fast her polished palace doors. 
 Shutting forth her poor relations lest they stain her 
 stately halls? 
 Teach them how the rock of self-reliance yields its gush- 
 ing stores. 
 Where the might of manly eiifort like the wand of 
 Moses falls, 
 
78 ^ VISION OF THE BEBEA VED. 
 
 "Canst thou aid no generous nation nobly daring law- 
 less power, 
 Fell revenge with car of ruin thundering o'er the true 
 and brave? 
 Glorious duty calls wherever frowns a tyrant's guilty 
 tower — 
 Calls wherever mercy shudders at the groaning of 
 a slave. 
 
 "Go, the erring sons of Adam call from weary wander- 
 ings, back. 
 From the thorny wilds and shingly wastes — their 
 wilderness of sin; 
 Lead them o'er Messiah's highway, in the martyr-trod- 
 den track, 
 Toward the restful home of promise where the tribes 
 may enter in. 
 
 "Raise no more thy petty plaint against the all decree- 
 ing word 
 Which ten thousand whirling universes fraught with 
 life obey; 
 Wouldst thou grapple the resistless arm of boundless 
 being's lord 
 To detain the hand that hurls the spheres along the 
 eternal way?" 
 
 "Hear me, holy prophet!" cried I with an earnest, trem- 
 bling cry. 
 While a flash of hope seemed breaking through the 
 cloud of grim despair; 
 "Give this yearning soul some tidings of a spirit friend 
 on high, — 
 Tell me'" — waking, lo! blank darkness had engulfe(J 
 my wasted prayer. 
 
FOUR ON PISGAH, 79 
 
 Four on Pisgah. 
 
 Old friend with the snowy white hair. 
 Older friend, dim-eyed and bare, 
 Oldest friend, crushed with long care. 
 
 None grieves that the labor's nigh done. 
 
 We plied under many a sun. 
 
 That the race which so toiled us is run. 
 
 Let us clamber this tower-crowned height. 
 Retrospection, from whence our dim sight 
 May roam, ere the day become night. 
 
 First, we traversed yon landscape of morn. 
 Bright flowers, clear streamlets, green corn: 
 A region where beauty is born. 
 
 Lo! the ways are a thousand, which go 
 From that Eden through deserts of woe. 
 Across ice floods and pole-missioned snow. 
 
 Yon Zaara, dear Joseph, you crossed 
 Amid billows that burn, tempest-tossed. 
 Overspread with the bones of the lost. 
 
 You, John, through the flames of the plains. 
 Through the wilds where the tiger still reigns. 
 Have won a sweet calm by your pains. 
 
80 FOUR ON P ISO AH. 
 
 Dear William, your fortune has been 
 By the streamlets of crystalline sheen, 
 In the pastures perennially green. 
 
 Griefs wolves, it was my lot to dare 
 
 On the barrens of frozen despair. 
 
 Where the awfulness frights even prayer. 
 
 Let us hail the last eve and the best, 
 With its heavenly calm and its rest. 
 Though we failed in our struggle and quest. 
 
 Now adieu to life's wading and scaling, 
 
 For the west of existence is paling; 
 
 But the darkness we'll meet without quailing. 
 
 Ere we, in our green wrappings, wind us. 
 Who prays that a new sun may find us 
 With toils like those vanished behind us? 
 
 Secure while the stormy cloud flashes, 
 We'll repose, where no wild billow dashes, 
 In Him who brings beauty from ashes. 
 
80J}fa FROM SORROW. 81 
 
 Song from Sorrow. 
 
 Nay cloud not the cage though it brighten the song, 
 Though the deepest, divinest of melody springeth 
 From the heart of dense darkness — from anguish and 
 
 wrong : 
 There is gloom in the forest when Philomel singeth; 
 Gone are the glow and the glory of day 
 Ere breaks from her bosom that exquisite lay 
 Of soul-charming pathos, of beauty and power 
 Unknown to the strains of the morn-lighted bower. 
 
 Thus oft from the Bard sweetest harmonies flow 
 
 To the heart of the world through the night of his woe. 
 
 What dazzling effulgence of song has arisen 
 
 From minstrels revealed by the gloom of the prison — 
 
 From singers God taught inspiration to borrow 
 
 From exile and penury, blindness and sorrow, 
 
 The hope that had mocked them and left them forsaken, 
 
 Dead loves that no cry from their sleep shall awaken ! 
 
 Death songs, but all deathless, the musical sighing 
 Of Hehion's swans 'mid the cataracts dying. 
 Whom pleasure's swift current bore down unaware 
 Through rapids of rapture to gulfs of despair. 
 While torrents of woe from the heavens were pouring, 
 And round them destruction was rushing and roaring, 
 Ascend through the ages oblivion despising — 
 Sweet spirits of beauty from ruin arising. 
 
82 ^ONG FROM SORROW. 
 
 Yea, nations enraptured have thrilled to the strains 
 Of lyrists who chorded their harps with their chains; 
 And grief-clouded ages of errors and wrongs 
 Woke the soul-swaying notes of lerne's wild songs. 
 
 As thus the grand soul out of dark desolation 
 Calls up some majestic and shining creation, 
 So yet from the pains and the passions of earth 
 Shall harmonics sweet and seraphic have birth ; 
 So yet shall awake from this midnight of time 
 A symphony sacred, immortal, sublime, 
 A melody swelling and pealing on high, 
 A poem of triumph that never can die, 
 The woes of all worlds into blessedness blending 
 And up through the ages of ages ascending; — 
 God's marriage of Mercy to Justice supernal, 
 Hymned wide as the sweep of His scepter eternal! 
 
AN APRIL EVENING. 83 
 
 An April Evening. 
 
 My friend and I st(X)d on a round, green hill 
 
 At eventide in that sweet primrose time 
 
 When the winds cease to bluster from the north, 
 
 And the soft south comes Hke a tender mother 
 
 To April's infant buds, and kindly rears them. 
 
 A shower that seemed to carry from on high 
 
 Heaven's loveliest hue, the living green of spring. 
 
 Had visited the fields, and o'er the meads 
 
 Hung liquid stars on bud and blade and flower. 
 
 Then Iroke the clouds beyond the western heights 
 
 And rolled across the wildly beauteous sky 
 
 In glorious fashion, and in wondrous forms. 
 
 Now seemed they flame-dyed coursers in their flight 
 
 Shaking the sunshine from their amber manes, 
 
 Grand and majestic as imagination 
 
 E'er bodied forth Apollo's fabled steeds. 
 
 Which pulled of yore the chariot of the sun; 
 
 Now metamorphosed into human forms 
 
 They towered and frowned and shook their giant arms, 
 
 Suggesting Scandinavia's monster gods, 
 
 Woden and Thor, or Celtic Loda come 
 
 From out the sun-built, azure halls of heaven 
 
 With ghosts of heroes throned on golden clouds. 
 
 These vanishing, as sank the setting day. 
 
 Around th' horizon lofty summits gleamed 
 
 Of towers and rnountains, cliffs and icebergs vast. 
 
 And all strange shapes, fantastic and grotesque. 
 
 Our raptured gaze now sought the yellow east 
 
84 AN APBIL EVENma. 
 
 Where God had set two rainbows in the cloud. 
 
 The higher dim, the lower bright as hope^ — 
 
 A gay triumphal arch of green-robed Spring. 
 
 They spanned the happy hills which, all day long, 
 
 Had caught from sowers' hands the golden showers. 
 
 At one bow's base a smiling cottage shone 
 
 Decked in heaven's hues, more gorgeous than a palace; 
 
 While from a grove of ancient, ivied trees 
 
 The mellow blackbird poured his evening psalm; 
 
 And the brisk lark, "over the rainbow's rim," 
 
 Sang as if warbling some triumphal glee 
 
 For having gained "the paradise of flowers." 
 
 Our souls responded to the spirit voice 
 That spoke through matter with the ethereal tongue 
 Of cherub April, till we inly felt 
 Our mystic kinship to th' immortal essence. 
 The omnipresent life of holy Nature — 
 That spirit voice which through the unreckoned years. 
 Has always spoken to all listening souls 
 The same pure language, kindling still the same 
 Bright hopes and raptures warm — a language change- 
 less. 
 Except to stronger tones and clearer accents, 
 Amid all changes of this cloud-like world. 
 
 Deep draughts we quaffed from beauty's well of joy. 
 
 Till our full souls o'erflowed with thanks to God 
 
 For all the loveliness of earth and heaven — 
 
 Delightful pictures of His wondrous thoughts. 
 
 Reflections from the azure sea of space 
 
 Of those unseen and undepicted climes 
 
 Where gladness springs and blooms for evermore. 
 
HOLY GROUND. 85 
 
 Holy Ground. 
 
 One sweet November day, with sabbath calm, 
 
 Broods kindly o'er a still, reposing world, 
 
 Ere surly winter come with scowl and rage. 
 
 Through this mild morning Autumn looks farewell. 
 
 Casting from heaven a tender parting glance. 
 
 Like the last smiles of emigrating friends. 
 
 Before the heaving billows rise between 
 
 Us and the loved ones we shall meet no more. 
 
 From this sequestered grove of reverend trees. 
 
 This playground of my boyhood's dreamful days, 
 
 O'er broad Lough Neagh, afar, my glad eye roams 
 
 Rejoicing in the tranquil sacredness 
 
 Of all the restful scene. At this fair hour 
 
 Men worship in ten thousand domes of prayer; 
 
 But none are kneeling in a holier place 
 
 Than this, to me. These beauteous beechen trunks 
 
 Are the live columns of my sky-roofed fane, 
 
 And the soft breeze, through those green feathery firs, 
 
 My all-inspiring psalm on God's own harp, 
 
 And the glad sunshine. His joy-beaming presence 
 
 Filling the space sublime from heaven to earth. 
 
 As the Shechinah Zion's temple filled. 
 
 Amid this deep and lone serenity, 
 
 Such an o'erpowering sense that He is near 
 
 Seizes my soul, I thrill, I start, I tremble. 
 
 Half deeming that I hear His awful whisper; 
 
 And look, for one dread moment, to behold 
 
 The form that walked of yore through Eden's groves. 
 
86 HOLY GROUND. 
 
 Beneath those big gnarled roots, the elfin tribes, 
 
 Old folk-lore taught, make their mysterious homes, 
 
 Whence they emerge to hail the midnight moon. 
 
 Oh! how we children loved the fearsome tale! 
 
 Whether it made the fairies fallen angels, 
 
 Or demons of a past idolatry. 
 
 Yet, was the childish creed mere childishness. 
 
 Or the crude shaping of a truth sublime? — 
 
 That spirits dwell in Nature's myriad forms. 
 
 Ruling her wondrous powers by wondrous laws, 
 
 And working in such strangely beauteous modes 
 
 As baffle scrutiny of sage and seer, 
 
 Now, at God's word, arraying earth in glory. 
 
 Now taking off her robes for that sweet sleep 
 
 Which fits her for the rapturous life of spring; 
 
 And at all times with listening souls communing 
 
 In a harmonious, ever varying strain 
 
 Unheard by human ears, but thrilling all 
 
 The secret heart with holy ravishment. 
 
 And thus may we, where'er our footsteps roam. 
 
 As truly as the saints of olden years. 
 
 Converse with angels, yea, and walk with God. 
 
OCTOBER WINDS. 87 
 
 October Winds. 
 
 Through ravaged vales the victor blast is sweeping, 
 And beauty, stricken, mingles with the clay; 
 
 O'er the cold earth the saddened heavens are weeping 
 For rapture quenched and glory passed away. 
 
 The glowing summer's bright and beauteous tresses 
 With rash and ruthless hand he shreddeth down; 
 
 He desolates the fields which harvest blesseth 
 
 And shatters autumn's gemmed and golden crown. 
 
 The flying foliage rushes to destruction 
 A routed host before the volleyed sleet, 
 
 While yon black sea of clouds in angry fluxion 
 Eddies like waves that warring: whirlwinds meet. 
 
 ^& 
 
 Heaving and racked and rent in fierce commotion 
 As billow drives recoiling billow on, 
 
 A springtide burst from some supernal ocean 
 Wild hissing o'er the blood-red blazing sun. 
 
 And crimson dyes the deepening war of waters 
 Which louder roar in ruin's baleful glee 
 
 Than iron thunders on the plain of slaughters 
 Or booming o'er a gore-empurpled sea. 
 
 Like corps of vast leviathans, the surges 
 
 Rush on the seated rocks to meet their doom. 
 
 While, as the tempest peals their hollow dirges, 
 The ghost-like foam flakes flit across the gloom. 
 
88 OCTOBER WINDS. 
 
 Yet, though, her trappings trampled and degraded, 
 Th' unsheltered earth lies shivering to the storm, 
 
 She only doffs a garment rent and faded 
 
 For robes of glorious hue and beauteous form. 
 
 Rise then, my soul, from saddening retrospection, 
 From sickening thoughts of ravage and decay; 
 
 Beauty but waits her dawning resurrection, 
 The glow and gladness of a God-born May. 
 
 Seeker of truth, then hope; fair Eden's portal, 
 Bold soaring yet, thy venturous soul shall dare, 
 
 Where they receive from God their crowns immortal 
 Who triumph over darkness and despair. 
 
QOD'8 VOICE. 89 
 
 God's Voice. 
 
 Ye have heard the faint notes of the hunter's far horn 
 On the banks of Lough Lene at the waking of morn, 
 How its accents are swelled by the bellowing hills 
 Till they silence the songs of the rock-tuning rills; 
 How, stronger and wider the echoings grow, 
 As up through the cavernous mountains they go, 
 Whence, loud as the guns of an army, they roar. 
 And startle, far rolling, the slumbering shore; 
 Then, aloft, from the cliffs whence the eagles are driven, 
 They burst like a thousand deep thunders of heaven, 
 Till the peasants, aroused by the magnified sound, 
 From their cabins leap forth in the valleys around. 
 
 Thus the voice of Jehovah, long ages ago. 
 
 In the morn of the world, sounded distant and low; 
 
 But from heart unto heart and from mind unto mind 
 
 Rebounding, it rose through the years of mankind, 
 
 And high from the cliffs of the centuries rung. 
 
 While prophets and bards gave its echoes a tongue. 
 
 Thus, thus did that word its wing'd progress pursue 
 
 Till its accents like ocean's strong eloquence grew. 
 
 And the terrible thrill of its thunders sublime 
 
 Roused many a slumbering tenant of time. 
 
 That voice from the infinite swells evermore. 
 
 As roll its deep tones round mortality's shore; 
 
 And, in peals such as broke not through Sinai's dread 
 
 gleams, 
 Calling sloth from his stupor and sin from his dreams, 
 It will yet wake the world to a life that shall then 
 Be pleasing to Heaven, and worthy of men. 
 
90 THE I8LE IN A BOUNDLESS SEA, 
 
 The Isle in a Boundless Sea. 
 
 I dwelt in an isle afar — 
 
 Afar in a boundless sea 
 Where often the elements fiercely jar; 
 And the winds and waters maintain a war 
 
 Around it eternally. 
 
 Its rocky foundations shook 
 
 To the dash of the mountain waves ; 
 And oft did its quivering colonists look 
 For the dreaded but ever expected stroke 
 That should sweep them to ocean graves. 
 
 And yet I had some sweet hours 
 
 In that isle of the infinite main, 
 Where blissful valleys and blooming bowers 
 And songs of birds in the months of flowers, 
 
 Beguiled my sorrow and pain. 
 
 Once thither a virgin fair 
 
 Was borne from a distant clime. 
 Who smote on her harp with an art so rare 
 That its sunny sounds on the clouds of care 
 
 Threw tints of a joy sublime. 
 
 One morn on a green hillside 
 
 Where we breathed the May's perfume, 
 A passion-sick wooer, I tremulous cried, 
 "Come, heavenly maiden, and dwell my bride 
 
 In yon valley of spring-born bloom! 
 
THE ISLE IN A BOUNDLESS SEA. 91 
 
 "For the fount of thy love I pant 
 
 Where the streams of gladness rise; 
 And pain and terror and woe and want 
 Shall flee from the voice of that instrument 
 
 And the glance of those God-lit eyes!" 
 
 She spoke with a smile as sweet 
 
 As the soft farewell of day : — 
 "It cannot be here; but again we'll meet 
 Beyond those waves in a happier seat 
 
 And there FU be thine for aye." 
 
 She passed with a parting kiss, 
 
 That thrilled to my heart's deep core: 
 No more have we met from that moment to this ; 
 But oh! how I yearn for her bower of bliss 
 
 Far over yon ocean's roar ! 
 
92 COMPENSATIVE LIFE. 
 
 Compensative Life. 
 
 The scorners cry, "Where is your God?" 
 And taunt us as Heaven-forsaken, 
 
 Charging the world-ruling rod 
 
 With minds ruined and hearts that are breaking, 
 And the moans of a universe aching. 
 
 From the far, faint amoebiform life 
 
 Through the aeons to reason-crowned man, 
 
 Are error and terror and strife; 
 
 Death wields his unpitying knife — 
 Are we under God's infinite ban? 
 
 From earth's deepest rock-laid foundation. 
 
 To the mould upon yesterday's grave. 
 What signs of a groaning creation ! 
 And lo ! the same dread revelation 
 
 From the rock and the rock-eating wave. 
 
 The devourer howls death from the steeps. 
 
 Beauty shineth while agony shrieks; 
 The monsters unpeople the deeps, 
 
 The wide wasting battle blaze reeks; 
 
 Yet vainly the merciful speaks. 
 
 "If Thou be," one has daringly said, 
 "Thou dwellest too high and too far 
 
 From the terrible games that are played 
 In the glooom of this quenched little star. 
 To note how brutes writhe and men jar." 
 
COMPENSATIVE LIFE, 93 
 
 Another profanely has told 
 That a fiend ever baffles Thy power; 
 
 That love's uncorruptible gold 
 
 Thou canst not unstintedly shower, 
 Heaven's robber so rifles God's dower. 
 
 All perfect we deem Thee, or nought, \ 
 
 All knowing and pitying all; 
 Shall anguish or rapture be wrought 
 
 Or a sparrow unknown to Thee fall? 
 
 Are not evil and good at Thy call ? 
 
 O changeless and infinite Lover 
 
 Of the souls thou hast summoned to be. 
 
 Let the holy hope over us hover, 
 
 That compensative being will cover 
 All time, "as the waters the sea/' 
 
 With a bliss which will owe its completeness 
 
 To the pangs of the ages gone by ; 
 A bliss for which life should want meetness, 
 
 Were no sacrifice called for on high; 
 
 Did creation not travail and die. 
 
94: A CRY TO THE FATHER. 
 
 A Cry to the Father. 
 
 O Thou that, up yon azure steep 
 And o'er the vast ethereal plain. 
 
 Calm leadest, like a flock of sheep. 
 The hosts of heaven, a burning train; 
 
 Fain, fain this trembling soul would dare, 
 O mine and nature's sceptred Sire, 
 
 A hope that Thou wilt hear her prayer 
 Amid Thine everlasting choir. 
 
 For Thee, Thou blessed One, I've pined. 
 Fluttering against earth's prison bars. 
 
 Since childhood's yearning sought to find 
 The throne of God among the stars. 
 
 That glorious Presence shall I seek 
 
 In vain? in vain for ever cry. 
 An infant on a desert bleak. 
 
 Abandoned and exposed to die? 
 
 Can He who gave this being birth 
 Leave me where ruin's whirlpools rave, 
 
 l^^aunched in this little skiff of earth 
 On space's shoreless, soundless wave? 
 
 Has Titan law Thy rule undone — 
 
 Brute force enthroned for evermore? — 
 
 Die, fading stars and failing sun. 
 But oh ! th^ i;^rd of Ipve restore ! 
 
A CRT TO THE FATHER. 95 
 
 Though far beyond my yearning gaze, 
 Thine arm extend, O pitying Power, 
 
 O Thou of the eternal days, 
 To me, the insect of an hour !* 
 
 Let light on this dark spirit fall 
 
 From light's exhaustless fount above; 
 
 Come Thou, all fair, all mighty, all 
 My heart can trust, adore, and love, 
 
 Thy tottering weakling haste to save, 
 (Lost in grim wilds of doubt and care). 
 
 From ruin deeper than the grave — 
 The hell of fathomless despair! 
 
 * Tennyson wrote "Sixty Years After" twenty yearsafter I had 
 written this : he uses the same phrase — ^"insects of an hour." 
 
96 ON TEE BRINK OF DMATK 
 
 On the Brink of Death. 
 
 {Written after recovering from a sudden and apparently 
 
 fatal illness.) 
 
 Grim shadows from the region of the dead 
 Wave their black wings across my darkening eyes; 
 
 The dizzy earth reels back beneath my tread. 
 And heaven, like tempest-driven vapor, flies. 
 
 Lord of my life, all mighty and all good. 
 E'en should creation sink in ruin's waves 
 
 And I be "carried off as by a flood," 
 I cannot go beyond the arm that saves. 
 
 I fling my wrecked existence on Thy breast 
 Where life's dark storms can reach me never more; — 
 
 Haven of calm and everlasting rest 
 
 Beyond the sea where time's wild billows roar. 
 
 All, all is safe in boundless mercy's clasp, 
 
 Eternal right, eternal wisdom planned: 
 Living or dead, I'm still within His grasp, 
 
 Still in the hollow of the Almighty's hand. 
 
 Ye doubts that long upon my heart have preyed, 
 Now shall ye cease to torture; now shall shine 
 
 Truth uneclipsed, and all my soul pervade — 
 No mists to dim the effluence divine. 
 
ON TEE BRINK OF DEATB. 97 
 
 Ye dearly loved and cherished ones, farewell ! 
 
 Would God ye shared with me the sheltering tomb! 
 Who now will shield you from mischances fell, 
 
 Stripped thus to storms and left in life's chill gloom? 
 
 Ah ! but for 3^ou how glad my spirit free 
 
 Would soar from all the bonds that bind below 
 
 To the bright climes of immortality 
 Beyond the clouds of ignorance and woe! 
 
98 A CHEBUB'a QUIDANCB, 
 
 A Cherub's Guidance. 
 
 A strong, sweet angel bore my soul 
 To the high heaven, the sphere of lov€J, 
 The bliss that burns and beams above 
 
 The star-crowned, blue, ethereal pole. 
 
 Where is the glory of delight 
 
 That wrapped me, soul and spirit then? 
 
 Oh, let the dayspring rise again 
 And make beclouded nature bright. 
 
 Or, did a bright enchanted dream 
 
 Throw rainbow spells around my soul, — 
 Spells broken now by sounds of dole, 
 
 Which woke me like an owlet's scream J 
 
 Or was it Eden's incense borne 
 
 By some stray breeze from Paradise 
 Where rapture's fadeless blossoms rise. 
 
 By sorrow's whirlwinds never torn? 
 
 O love, heaven's everlasting flower, 
 For earth too delicately fair. 
 Thou diest on these wastes of car^ 
 
 Or fallest by the scythe of power. 
 
A CHERUB' 8 GUIDANCE. 99 
 
 The bloom is shed, the vision gone, 
 Inward and outward darkness now 
 Have cast eclipse on heart and brow5 
 
 !A.s though a joy had never shone. 
 
 Has irremediable gloom 
 
 Usurped the heavenly vision's place? 
 
 Or, shall we ever know His grace. 
 Who gave the trees of life their bloom? 
 
 LoiC. 
 
100 AMONG THE TREES, 
 
 Among the Trees. 
 
 Bright beams the ray-robed lord of noon, 
 
 Yon awe-compelling sky 
 His sapphire throne, where queenly June 
 
 Hath seated him on high. 
 These breeze-swept boughs are harps in tune 
 
 [That charm me :where I lie. 
 
 Kn elfin dance of shade and light 
 
 Flits o'er the grassy sheen 
 From arching leaves all greenly bright — 
 
 Their young and gladsome green; 
 While the blue heaven's unfathomed height 
 
 Shows purely fair between. — 
 
 God of the sunshine and the shade. 
 
 Green earth and azure heaven, 
 Like a wide love to all displayed 
 
 This summer glow is given; 
 Thy beauty as a balm is laid 
 
 On hearts with anguish riven. 
 
 I thank thee for earth's loveliness. 
 Though but a shade that spreads 
 
 Beneath unwithering boughs of bliss. 
 Which, o'er immortal heads. 
 
 Wave by the wells of happiness 
 In the eternal meads; 
 
AMONG TEE TREES. 101 
 
 Yea though, amid sweet spring's giad flowers, 
 
 And summer's glorious glow. 
 And golden autumn's gorgeous bowers. 
 
 And winter's winged snow, 
 I wander yearning alll my hours 
 
 For something not below. 
 
 Thou who, on desert drear and gray, 
 
 Or olive shadowed hill. 
 Wast found when Jesus knelt to pray, 
 
 O let Thy presence still 
 Be my weak heart's almighty stay 
 
 And aid my beter will ! 
 
 Dread Sire, alone with thee I bow 
 
 As Jesus bent alone 
 In wilds where round His victor brow 
 
 Was wreathed His fadeless crown; 
 Help me, ev'n me, great Father now 
 
 To tread my Satan down! 
 
102 THE BAMBS AND THE ME88IAH. 
 
 The Bards and the Messiah. 
 
 The stars of song have shed a fame 
 Each, on the land that owns his lyre, 
 Till by the light of glory's fire 
 
 The world can read his country's name. 
 
 The very air of Greece to-day 
 In fancy quivers to the strains 
 Which haunt the holy hills and plains. 
 
 Whence soared the old Arcadian lay. 
 
 Each myth-draped isle, each art graced shore, 
 Though spoiled, profaned, degraded long, 
 Hallowed by heaven-descended song, 
 
 Are consecrate for evermore. 
 
 Italia's beauteous landscapes beam 
 
 With bardic bloom that shall endure — 
 Unfading loveliness, and pure 
 
 As rays that from her azure gleam. 
 
 Old England's castles, cliffs, and oaks 
 
 In luminous relievo stand 
 
 On Shakespeare's friezes fair and grand. 
 Defying time's incessant strokes. 
 
 E'en Scotia's "bleak, majestic hills," 
 
 Her Burns has spangled o'er with flowers: 
 His wand of song raised Eden bowers 
 
 To smile along her fairy rills. 
 
TEE BARDS AND THE MESSIAH. 103 
 
 Eire* sad and sweet, Germania strong, 
 Chivalric and heroic France, 
 Columbia, Freedom's foremost lance. 
 
 All glory in their chiefs of song. 
 
 But the great Sun, whose gladdening rise 
 Was mirrored first in Jordan's streams, 
 Has robed in fadeless beauty's beams 
 
 The universal earth and skies. 
 
 He came, no minstrel of an isle, 
 No laureate of a clan or clime: 
 All scenes, for all succeeding time. 
 
 He tinged with Heaven's hope-quickening smile. 
 
 Where'er the spring's young grass is green. 
 Where lilies bloom, where sowers sow. 
 By sand-girt lakes where fishers row. 
 
 The footsteps of the Christ are seen. 
 
 He stamped His universal soul 
 
 On the broad earth where lingers still 
 The impress of His God-swayed will, 
 
 A sacred seal on nature's scroll. 
 
 The desert mute, the wild-voiced sea, 
 
 The showers and suns which come for all. 
 The fowls of heaven that cannot fall 
 
 But by the Sire-of-heaven's decree. 
 
 * Ireland. 
 
104 THE BABDS AND THE MESSIAH. 
 
 The still, lone mount, His nightly shrine. 
 The dusty road, the crowded square. 
 The cottage hearth, the dome of prayer. 
 
 Recall His words and works divine; 
 
 Till lofty peak and lowly sod, 
 
 The homeless wild, the haunts of men. 
 More mightily than tongue or pen 
 
 Preach immortality and God. 
 
THE GIANT 8 MING. 105 
 
 The Giant's Ring, 
 
 {A Fragment.) 
 [A Druidical monument, County Down, Ireland.] 
 
 Is this the hallowed temple where, of yore. 
 Rude tribes adored their gods with blood and fire? 
 
 Its broken walls, grass-curtained earth, no more 
 Conceal those rites mysterious, dark and dire; 
 
 Yet did they once, like ramparts tall, aspire 
 
 To screen and guard the sacred circle's bound 
 From earth-born objects quickening vain desire, 
 While silence reigned o'er solitude profound; 
 
 Its roof the vast high heaven, its floor the grassy 
 ground. 
 
 Perhaps yon three blue summits peered afar, 
 Where holy hermits dwelt next door to God; 
 For the hill tops to child and savage are 
 
 Bright, hallowed spots, which angels' feet have trod 
 
 Descending earthward from the star-paved road. 
 The glorious clouds beyond them set and rise 
 
 Sweeping away to some unseen abode,. 
 
 As though across th' unfathomable skies 
 They ferried souls to shores unseen by mortal eyes. 
 
 Still, in the midst, the huge gray cromlech^ stands; 
 Around it safe the browsing oxen low; 
 
 To-day they fall not by the Druids' brands. 
 Those music bells proclaim full sweetly now 
 A purer prayer. Here kneeling let me bow. 
 
 * Bock Altar. 
 
106 THE GIANTS BINa. 
 
 Eternal God, it was religion's shrine; 
 Rude were the rites, yet, not disdainful Thou 
 Toward seekers of the deathless and divine, 
 Though slow they clomb the years along a zigzag line. 
 
 Methinks I view that congregation wild 
 
 On some far Beltine tide assembling here, 
 Clad in coarse mats, and skins ^/ith gore defiled, 
 
 Their warriors rudely armed with club and spear. 
 
 The stoled and hoary-bearded priests appear 
 Round the dread cromlech massive, grim, and strong; 
 
 The noonday sun lists, in his lofty sphere, 
 To the wild strains of fierce devotion's song; 
 Drums sound and weapons clash amid th' excited throng. 
 
 Shrieks of doomed victims mingle with the din, 
 
 Outstretched and thong-bound on the cromlech hoar 
 To expiate accumulated sin; 
 
 While reeks to heaven a cataract of gore ; 
 
 Flames mount, strange prayers ascend, and all is o'er — • 
 Their homage to the Lord of earth and skies; 
 
 Yet it was worship, still, and that is more 
 Than we slay men for, when we feast the eyes 
 Of coarser crowds, that jeer while wretches agonize. 
 
 Thus prayed the Celtic sires of Ireland's isle; 
 
 Thus man, in every clime he calls his home. 
 Beneath heaven's roof or in the pillared pile. 
 
 In shadowy forest or by ocean's foam. 
 
 With rites as various as in yon blue dome 
 The vapory forms, has worshiped the Unseen 
 
 Far back as history's piercing glance can roam; 
 Till crowding ages interpose between 
 Us and our race's youth their all impervious screen. 
 Some god adoring; who, dread, dimly known, 
 
 Ix)omed through the mists of vast infinity, 
 
TBE GiANrs nma. loi 
 
 Ev'n with the graven aid of wood and stone; 
 
 Has man, slow rising, gained the heights we see, 
 
 Pursuing his immortal destiny 
 By faint lights dawning on him, ray by ray. 
 
 Till sprang the morning Star of Galilee, 
 The beauteous herald of a brighter day 
 Than ever yet had beamed on life's bewildered way. 
 
 So, age by age some hero spirit rose. 
 
 Some God-anointed prophet, priest, or king. 
 
 To rend the veil, or break the bonds of those 
 Whose souls enthralled had never soared to sing 
 Through freedom's heaven; but, who, with timid 
 wing, 
 
 Dizzy and dazzled with the empyreal flare. 
 
 Soon stayed their flight; as the tamed falcons spring 
 
 But to the regions of the middle air. 
 
 Nor through the boundless blue the distant quarry dare. 
 
 And still we linger on the path of right 
 Languidly feeble as we falter on. 
 
 Like weary wayfarers through a starless night, 
 Or reeling, sleep-smit wanderers of the dawn. 
 Just as our race through all the past has gone; 
 
 Yet, sons of men, yet freedom dawns — arise! 
 
 Old lights wax dim before the radiance new; 
 As there neglected that rude altar lies, 
 
 So shall the rites and fanes beloved by you. 
 
 Sweet isles of faith are brightening to the view, 
 Where purer shrines and fairer temples glow; 
 
 And brighter still shall rise if men pursue 
 The ocean streams of truth and onward go. 
 As progress rolls his tide in everlasting flow. 
 
108 THE SUMMER NiaHT BUEEZE. 
 
 The Summer Night Breeze. 
 
 Soft whisper the boughs with the breezes of June 
 While the flowers sleep pale in the beams of the moon, 
 And all through the valleys the songs of the streams 
 Blend weirdly capricious, like music in dreams. 
 
 Now in sighings afar, now in murmurings near, 
 Bland Zephyr appeals to the charm-taken ear 
 Like a voice to the soul from some heavenly place 
 Away, far away, over fathomless space. 
 
 An invisible breast seems to labor and heave 
 With some truth of high import the world should re- 
 ceive — 
 Some message borne down to the tenants of time 
 From the dwellers aloft in eternity's clime. 
 
 Thus love, through the chords of the heart as he sings. 
 Like that mystical breeze on her summery wings. 
 Wild thrilling the soul with his magical lay, 
 Hints a holier loveliness far, far away. 
 
 While waking a joy the divinest below, 
 He whispers of beauty we never shall know 
 Till he waft to a paradise walled from decay 
 The soul, on his pinions, away, far away. 
 
TO MOINA. 109 
 
 To Moina. 
 
 Sweet is earth*s gladness, when the sun first looks 
 
 With renovated radiance from on high; 
 When azure-clear are trout-rejoicing brooks, 
 
 And gloom has fled the lark-delighting sky; 
 Sweet are the firstling flowers which, laughing, spring 
 
 From founts of beauty veiled from mortal eyes; 
 Sweet the first notes the wooing throstles sing 
 
 As glen and grove to love and rapture rise; 
 Sweet the mild breeze whose soothing spirit-voice 
 
 Tells the freed earth the reign of storm is o'er. 
 And bids the waiting, weary heart rejoice, 
 
 Since hope and beauty bless the world once more: 
 Thy smiles, to me, at every season bring, 
 The sun, song, bloom of all rejoicing Spring. 
 
110 MAY AND ELLEN. 
 
 May and EUenT 
 
 Up the hills of herds I ramble, 
 
 Down the braes of whin and bramble. 
 
 Through the groves with rapture ringing. 
 
 Where the very leaves are singing: 
 
 Yet the thousand joys of May 
 
 Sadly on my spirit weigh. 
 
 Round me shine, my soul in shadow. 
 Gushing glen and gowaned meadow. 
 Flowerets from the herbage glancing. 
 Streamlets o'er the pebbles dancing; 
 And the gnats at song and play 
 In the blissful beams of May. 
 
 Yonder crescent climbing weary. 
 
 From the azure looketh dreary. 
 
 She, like me, through glare and gladness, 
 
 Walks in solitary sadness; 
 
 Heaven and earth are keeping May; 
 
 We are dark where all are gay. 
 
 Roaming lorn at noon benighted 
 
 Lo! like wanderer morn-delighted. 
 
 View I, through yon hawthorn blowing, 
 
 Ellen's graceful kirtle flowing; 
 
 Now, my evening star of May, 
 
 Evening's shadows flee away ! 
 
:j mat and ELLEN. Ill 
 
 What's Avoca's vale at noonday. 
 In a glowing, glorious June day; 
 What's that matchless fairy valley, 
 By the love-lit soul of Ellie, — 
 Soul as pure as dew of May 
 Trembling in the twilight ray? 
 In the light of looks endearing, 
 Nature now is glad and cheering, 
 Homeward o'er the meads returning, 
 Bright I view the crescent burning; 
 Bright my heart, as o'er my way, 
 Beams that crystal lamp of May. 
 
112 THE FAB AWAY. 
 
 The Far Away. 
 
 O'er the grass-robed prairie roaming 
 When the breeze has stilled his play. 
 
 Memories throng the hush of gloaming- 
 Thoughts from far away. 
 
 Where are now my friends, the cherished 
 Gladdeners of my early day? 
 
 Some are faded, some have perished, 
 All are far away. 
 
 Some inhabit vales of Erin, 
 
 Some, the narrow house of clay; 
 
 Dead and living, worn and wearing, 
 All are far away. 
 
 They whose smiles, like April flowers, 
 Made the spring of childhood gay 
 
 Glowing through its clouds and showers; 
 All are far away. 
 
 They who saw my summer glory. 
 Shall they cheer my autumn gray? 
 
 Some are grief-bowed, some are hoary, 
 All are far away. 
 
THE FAR AWAY. 113 
 
 Dazed and aimless, lone and weary. 
 
 In a stranger's land astray, 
 Friends, my severed lot is dreary: 
 
 Ye are far away. 
 
 Ere I seek — a last endeavor — 
 
 Through the kingdom of decay, 
 Loved ones missing, shall I never 
 
 Meet the far-away? 
 
114 TO GABIBALDL 
 
 To Garibaldi. 
 
 ON HEARING THAT HE WAS INVITED TO THE COMMAND 
 OF THE FEDERAL FORCES OF NORTH AMERICA, l86l. 
 
 (^A Fragment.) 
 
 Forsake not the realm that you found as a wreck 
 
 When you burst through her gloom like the mar- 
 iner's star, 
 
 Now, with liberty's haven just seen from her deck, 
 To beam on the banners of mammon-raised war. 
 
 Will you fling down your quiver on Italy's shore 
 
 Whence the young royal tiger you chased like a hare, 
 
 While a limb of her writhes from the tusks of yon boar 
 That makes in the meads of the Danube his lair? 
 
 That shore which enfoldeth her sanctified clay— 
 The fond, the devoted, the heroine wife. 
 
 Who followed your fortunes in climes far away 
 And gave in your Italy's quarrel her life. 
 
 Italia the grand whose gray Apennine rocks 
 Are types of her heroes' unperishing fame 
 
 [Triumphant o'er change, unimpaired by its shocks- 
 Revolution, invasion, and slaughter and flame. 
 
TO GARIBALDI. 115 
 
 Old Grsecia Magna, whose story divine 
 
 Lights the billows of time from the beacons of yore; 
 Whose language and lofty achievements shall shine 
 
 While Tyrrhenum's blue surges resound on her shore. 
 
 Once more on her plains must you marshal those ranks 
 That already such deeds of high daring have done: 
 
 With the seat of the Cesars a fort of the Franks 
 But half is her sceptre of nationhood won. 
 
 O'er the stormy Atlantic is heard the dread clash 
 
 Of the sword with the bowie knife, startling the 
 world ; 
 
 And still shrieks the Ethiop under the lash 
 
 Though the far-boasted "flag of the free" is unfurled. 
 
 But you, summon Sicily's heroes again. 
 Let Italy's tyrants give freedom or blood. 
 
 Let the world hear the crash of Venetia's chain 
 Returned by the isles of old Adria's flood. 
 
 And your ashes must sleep on loved Italy's breast 
 Where your day of heroic exertion begun; 
 
 With her bright and her brave what a glorious rest 
 In the lap of that mother, her liberty won! 
 
116 SHE DWELLS BY A 8HTBAME, 
 
 She Dwells by a Daisy-Browed Shtrame. 
 
 Oh, she dwells by a daisy-browed shtrame 
 
 In one of the purtiest valleys ! 
 That girl I'm not goin' to name; 
 
 But she's none of your Essys or Allys; 
 So ye sha'n't throw a slur or a slight 
 
 On Derry's wee, blossomin' daughter 
 That's as pure to my heart and as bright 
 
 As the sun on the breast of Foyle water. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Her lip, it's the rose of my spring; 
 
 Her eye, it's the light of my life: 
 By the Vergin, I pity the king 
 
 That he'll niver get her for his wife! 
 
 Wee birds in the bushes all roun' 
 
 So merrily whistlin' an' singin,' 
 Wee calves skippin' over the groun' 
 
 Where the shamrog an' daisy is springin'. 
 Your time appears almost as fine 
 
 As your gran-dams' an' daddies' in Aiden; 
 But your pleasures are nothin' to mine 
 
 By the side of my beautiful maiden. 
 
 Chorus repeated. 
 
*<8HE DWELLS BY A 8HTRAMEV 117 
 
 Her cheek colors red an' then white 
 
 When up the green loanin' I'm comin'; 
 For she blabbed out a sacret one night 
 
 By the star that shines first in the gloamin'. 
 Iver since it, by night an' by day 
 
 I'm more 'an half crazy wi' gladness; 
 An' faith, I've heerd somebody say 
 
 That love's jist a beautiful madness. 
 
 Chorus repeated. 
 
 Not a blot on her brightness I see: 
 
 She's the goold of purfection all over; 
 But her faults would look lovely to me 
 
 If a fault I had eyes to discover. 
 This evenin' down by the spring. 
 
 Where the moon at her shodda is gazin'. 
 We'll meet when the bat's on the wing, 
 
 An' the crakes clamor over the grazin'. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Oh! her lip, it's the rose of my spring. 
 An' her eye, it's the light of my life : 
 
 By the Vergin I pity the king 
 
 That he'll niver get her for his wife! 
 
118 WJS PARTED BEBSl. 
 
 We Parted Here. 
 
 We parted here : a holier eve 
 
 Than all succeeding years have given 
 
 Sat in yon purple west to weave 
 
 Gold hangings for the halls of heaven. 
 
 Around us breathed the honeyed flowers. 
 Above us bloomed that fairy thorn; 
 
 Does he recall those blessed hours? 
 Bears he a heart like mine, forlorn? 
 
 The whistling fisher moored his craft 
 
 Where wavelets kissed the shining shore; 
 
 The merry milkmaids sang and laughed. 
 As home their frothing pails they bore. 
 
 The craiks are clamorous through the corn ; 
 
 In Murray's grove the ousel sings ; 
 The larks with gloaming's dew return; 
 
 The dun bat flits on dusky wings. 
 
 Scenes long withdrawn, but oft unrolled 
 By memory's hand to fancy's eye 
 
 Bright in the beauteous hues of old. 
 When love was young and hope was high. 
 
 Has he forgot our plighted troth 
 On far Columbia's bustling shore? 
 
 Dear Heaven! that angel-witnessed oatH 
 Must bind me ever, evermore ! 
 
TEE BOY F7' TMB EOBNT RAW, 119 
 
 The Boy Wi' the Horny Han'. 
 
 My purty wee belle wi' the hazel eyes, 
 O nivir despise him — niver despise 
 
 The boy wi' the horny han', love; 
 For he labors all day, an' at night, his pay 
 
 He carries it home like a man, love^ 
 He carries it in — ^his wee bit of tin — 
 
 To plenish the pot an' the pan, love. 
 
 It's thrue the oul' bailiff one day come down. 
 An' scatthered my cabin all over the groun' 
 
 Like a seedin' of ruin an' woe, love; 
 An' sorra's the bed he left undher my head. 
 
 For he canted the very oul' sthrow, love: 
 He canted me out, ay, ivery clout 
 
 But the duds on the carcage of Joe, love! 
 
 But don't be frightened, my purty bloss, 
 
 I 'ave now a wee fiel' at the edge of the moss. 
 
 An' the price of a pig an' a cow, love; 
 An' a new clay cot on a nate wee spot. 
 
 Where you'll sing like a bird on the bough, love- 
 Where you'll sing wi' joy to your happy boy 
 
 Comin* in from the spade or the plough, love. 
 
120 THE BOY WI' THE HORNY HAN\ 
 
 So, purty wee belle wi' the hazel eyes, 
 Niver despise, O niver despise 
 
 The boy wi' the horny han', love; 
 Won't he labor all day, and at night, his pay 
 
 Carry home in his fist like a man, love? 
 He'll carry it in — his wee bit of tin — 
 
 To plenish your pot, an' your pan, love. 
 
A EOULDIN' FOBIVEB. 121 
 
 A Houldin' Foriver. 
 
 Oh ! there's nothin on earth Hke a shaid of one's own 
 
 On a fiel' that's a body's foriver; 
 It's there ye hev courage to ''lay down yer bone"* 
 
 An' give thanks to the bountiful Giver. 
 I wud rather be lord of one rush-covered bay 
 
 Than be tenant-at-will of a castle; 
 An' I'm happier here in my humble wee way 
 Than an emperor's wealthiest vassal. 
 Foriver! foriver! my houldin's foriver, 
 
 As nate a wee spot as ye'U see: 
 I envy no throne with this cot of my own 
 For Betty, the childher^ an' me. 
 
 Not a masther to plaze, not a mortal to fear, 
 
 Not a want if we're steady at labor; 
 But all we hev need of all days of the year. 
 
 An' a bite for a hungery neighbor. 
 Home of p'ace, where my daddy lived p'aseful before. 
 
 No bailiff to spy or to plundher, 
 We drain it an' dig it an' sile it galore, 
 
 Till the craps are the counthery's wondher: 
 Foriver! foriver! bekase it's foriver 
 We work with a will, do ye see? 
 We envy no throne with a shade of our own — 
 Dear Betty, the childher, an' me. 
 
 * Do your best. 
 
122 A HOULDIN' FOBIVEU. 
 
 When driven in bunnels like wethers an' goats. 
 
 Poor cotthers crowd in at elections, 
 The landlord may scare from the crathurs their votes; 
 
 But conscience gives me my directions. 
 The sarvant's a snool an' the t'iler's a slave, 
 
 Dalers dodge, an' the lawyers palaver; 
 But I needn't knuckle to tyrant or knave; 
 I'm "king of my castle" foriver. 
 
 Foriver! foriver! I houl' them foriver — 
 
 As purty wee fiel's as ye'll see: 
 I envy no throne with these acres my own 
 For Betty, the childher, an' me ! 
 
MOINA LOVES NO MORE. 123 
 
 Moina Loves No More 
 
 All day and night the skies are bright — 
 
 The skies of genial June, 
 And field and meadow dance in light 
 
 To zephyr's pleasant tune; 
 All night the crakes by Lagan's side 
 
 Resounding basses pour ; 
 But there in dreary dreams I glide, 
 
 For Moina loves no more. 
 
 Yon silver moon, once heavenly fair, 
 
 Is brass to hopeless eyes: 
 The wreaths young June delights to wear. 
 
 With all their scents and dyes, 
 Have lost — those flowery garlands — now 
 
 The loveliness of yore 
 Beneath the clouds of Moina's brow — 
 
 Since Moina loves no more. 
 
 Thou beauty-garnished earth below, 
 
 Ye dazzling pomps above, 
 Vain, vain is all your glorious glow 
 
 Without the light of love; 
 Oh! dearer far than these, than all 
 
 Is she I yet adore; 
 Life's honey-dew is turned to gall 
 
 Since Moina loves no more. 
 
124 MOINA LOVES NO MORE. 
 
 The lip, the cheek, that shame the spring. 
 
 The soulful brow and eye. 
 Awake the pangs no song can sing 
 
 As, tranced, I gaze and sigh. 
 'Twas rapture pure and half divine, 
 
 A "rainbow dream" that's o'er: 
 A rayless gloom instead is mine, 
 
 And mine forevermore! 
 
«/ WATCHED HER WADE,'* 125 
 
 "I Watched Her Wade the Shooting Corn. 
 
 I watched her wade the shooting corn. 
 
 And flax with azure blossom. 
 Till, bursting through the march of thorn. 
 
 She panted on my bosom. 
 
 We glided down the bushy brae. 
 Whose rounded summit swelling 
 
 Rose, crowned with bloom of whin and broom. 
 To hide her wakeful dwelling. 
 
 The bed that held the dozing day. 
 
 Behind the cairns of Divis, 
 Was decked with all the colors gay 
 
 The bow of hope could give us; 
 
 And fair, on winged cloudlets borne. 
 
 The yellow moon's appearing, 
 As o'er the "golden spears" of Mourne, 
 She soars sublime and cheering. 
 
 The dew impearled the woodbine bowers 
 And gemmed the leaflets o'er us; 
 
 While, in the breeze, the fairy flowers 
 Danced up and down before us. 
 
 » 
 
126 "-^ WATCHED HEB WAJDE.^\ 
 
 The willow wren sang down the glen, 
 The crake, through scented meadows; 
 
 Each wandering wight rejoiced in light. 
 But we, in checkered shadows. 
 
 Life of my heart, no more we'll part ! 
 
 There's death in separation; 
 For me, for me, there's none but thee 
 
 Through all the wide creation! 
 
 I've sworn by love, that deep, divine 
 Headspring of rapture's river. 
 
 No heart but thine shall throb on mine 
 Till mine shall cease forever! 
 
LABBT LEE 12'J 
 
 Larry Lee. 
 
 Brother Billy thraitens; 
 
 Shall he frighten me — 
 Me, that stud three baitens 
 
 All for Larry Lee? 
 Man I'll niver marry — 
 
 Use your whip an' rod — 
 But my darlin' Larry, 
 
 While he's on the sod. 
 
 There's a beau from college 
 
 Puts me in a pout ; 
 Though they tell me knowledge 
 
 Is the best thing out. 
 Listen to his jargon, 
 
 Watch his skamin' looks. 
 While he drives his bargain 
 
 In the words of books. 
 
 Here's a counter-hopper 
 
 Comin' to propose, 
 Smellin' out my copper 
 
 With his fox's nose. 
 Change your boose, my honey. 
 
 Take your hat and hap 
 I'll not lave my money ; 
 
 In so dear a shap. 
 
128 LARRT LEE. 
 
 Rich our farmer clinkin' 
 
 Pocketfulls of tin,* 
 I'm not made, I'm thinkin' 
 
 To be so tuck in. 
 Father dear, an' mother, 
 
 You may like the pelf | 
 But ye'll hev some bother 
 
 Ere I sell myself. 
 
 Other weemen's ortinsf 
 
 Shan't be Sally's pick, — 
 Coortiers huntin' fortunes, 
 
 Up, an' cut yer stick! 
 All that love or hate me, 
 
 Money, power, an' pride, 
 Shall not separate me 
 
 From my Larry's side. 
 
 * Money, f Leavings. 
 
COME^ MY BELOVED. 129 
 
 O Come, My Beloved. 
 
 O come, my beloved! O haste to my side! 
 We are wedded in soul, we are bridegroom and bride; 
 While the moments of summer are balmy and bright. 
 Let us feast on their fragrance and breathe their delight. 
 'Tis the June of our lives and the June of the year : 
 Love's Paradise gates are unbolted and near; 
 Joy's river there sparkles ; we'll drink of its wave 
 Ere it sink from our sight in the cavernous grave! 
 
 The glory of heaven hath scattered all gloom. 
 
 Soft murmurs the breeze through the blade and the 
 
 bloom, 
 The happy bees hum on the thyme-scented hill, 
 And the herds in the sycamore's shadows are still; 
 Old Earth, see her bask in the warmth and the glow. 
 As pleasure sweeps down on his mission below; 
 But the pleasure I feel and the beauty I see. 
 My Lyda, my love, have their fountain in thee. 
 
 Come away ! let us rove where the roses are born, 
 
 And the zephyrs are bending the billowy corn; 
 
 Or, afar from the buzz and the bustle of men, 
 
 Seek the furze of the brae,"^ or the broom of the glen; 
 
 There I'll fold thee, my Lyda, my life, to my breast 
 
 With a rapture — ay, even in song unexpressed! 
 
 We'll drink a deep draught of love's life-giving wave 
 
 Ere it leap from our lips to the cavernous grave. 
 
 II — I — »< 
 
 *Brow of a hill. 
 
130 LAST EYE. 
 
 Last Eve. 
 
 Last eve as I wandered alone 
 
 I heard the light foot of my love; 
 I beckoned ; she smiled and was gone 
 
 As a Spink darts away to the grove. 
 
 She passed the dim bourne of my sight 
 
 As a meteor fades in the skies^ 
 Like the day carried off into night, 
 
 Like a hope that eludes us and flies. 
 
 And she left me more lorn than before, 
 Like a wretch, all abandoned and drear. 
 
 Who has gazed from a desolate shore 
 On the vanishing sail that was near. 
 
 O Moina! in thee would this heart 
 
 Repose from its anguish and strife; 
 Ah! wherefore so coldly depart, 
 * Thou sunbeam that brightenest life? 
 
 O, come, let us bask as we may 
 In the love which enraptures and warms — 
 That light of our life's winter day. 
 
 Gleaming out through its gloom and its storms. 
 
TEE MOWING OF THE MEADOWS. 131 
 
 The Mowing of the Meadows. 
 
 When the meadows were a-mowing 
 And the fairy-iingers/^ growing 
 On the whinny dykes, were blowing; 
 
 And the rich warm sky. 
 Heaven's palace of delight. 
 Was a glory day and night, 
 With its cloudy hangings bright 
 
 Floating far on high ; 
 
 It was then amid the hay 
 Dark-haired Maggie duvhf MacVeigh 
 Thrilled me like the lightning's ray 
 
 To the deep heart's core: 
 Ah! those eyes of glowing jet! 
 They were stars that long have set; 
 But their light is on me yet. 
 
 There to dwell evermore. 
 
 Oh! I love the very place 
 Where I first beheld her face 
 Full of brilliancy and grace, 
 
 Like a new-born day, 
 By her side through morning hours, 
 Tedding swaths of grass and flowers. 
 Resting under broomy bowers 
 
 From the noontide ray. 
 
 ^ I'oxglQY^, I V^xk\ proeQuuced dUoo, or (Xhu, 
 
132 THE MOWING- OF TEE MEADOWS. 
 
 I'll remember till I die 
 
 How with quivering lip and eye 
 
 I could only sit and sigh, 
 
 And no more dared do, 
 Hearing flute-voiced Marget speak, 
 Viewing through her tresses sleek 
 Creamy neck and blooming cheek. 
 
 Till my heart faint grew. 
 
 Oh! I flew on pleasure's wings 
 For her drink to hillock springs. 
 And I brought her brilliant strings 
 
 Of sweet strawberries wild; 
 And to her the spoils I bore 
 Of the moss-roofed honey store. 
 Feeling richly paid and more 
 When her ripe lips smiled. 
 
 Many suns have soared and set 
 Since those happy morns we met; 
 But they're living with me yet. 
 
 As they shall live long; 
 For my heart upon them dotes 
 As th«ir memory's music floats 
 Ever round me like the notes 
 
 Of an old love song. 
 
8TAR OF MY SPIMIT. 133 
 
 Star of My Spirit. 
 
 Ah! leave me not, star of my spirit, so soon 
 
 To the sorrows that over it roll; 
 For, of all in the smile of that pearl-girdled moon, 
 
 Thou only canst pilot my soul. 
 
 Not the glories above, not the splendors below 
 With the fullness of beauty can shine. 
 
 Unless when they mingle their heavenly glow 
 With those love-lighted glances of thine. 
 
 Let Nature rejoice in her summer-born dyes. 
 Thou art queen of all beauties that are; 
 
 When my soul kindles up at the beams of those eyes. 
 What then is the beam of a star? 
 
 They say that of old, in our green Inisfail, 
 
 The May-day in glory just born, 
 A saint met a snow-tinted bird of the vale 
 
 And followed her strains through the morn. 
 
 She allured him far up the green, heavenward hill. 
 
 Lough Lene in its glory below ; 
 And he basked in the song and the sunshine until 
 
 High noon had the world in a glow. 
 
134 STAR OF MT SPIRIT. 
 
 But, his soul all intent on that rapturous song. 
 
 Whole ages had fleeted away; 
 And yet, so unfelt had they glided along, 
 
 They seemed but the half of a day. 
 
 So here by thy side, I would listen and gaze 
 
 In the spell of devotion sublime. 
 While cycles should dwindle away into days. 
 
 And days into moments of time. 
 
MABBISD FOB MONET. 135 
 
 Married for Money. 
 
 I married for money, I married for Ian' ; 
 I got what I married, an' missed a man; 
 I have lashins* to Hve on, an' little to do, 
 A sheelahf for mate an' a life to rue. 
 
 Oh ! I was a saucy, exthravagant belle, 
 
 An' I jilted the laddie I loved so well 
 
 For one that cud keep me up idle an' gay; 
 
 An' now I may cry salt tears my day. 
 
 He's a sneevelin hypocrite, worshipin' pelf. 
 An' niver loved sowl but his own sweet self, 
 A bully with weemen, a coward with men — 
 How different this from my own brave Ben ! 
 
 Betther wrapped in a rug on a bain-sthrow bed 
 By the boy of your fancy to boulster your head 
 Than be curtained with satin an' nestled in down 
 Where it isn't by love but the law you're boun'. 
 
 O girls, be warned by your comarade Ann, 
 An' marry no mortal for money or Ian' ; 
 What's lashin's to live on an' little to do 
 With a sheelah you hate, an' a marriage you rue? 
 
 * Plenty. t Womanish man. 
 
136 THE PAIGEMAKER. 
 
 The Paicemaker. 
 
 One day big Darby of Derrymacashin 
 Wuz givin' his purty wee wifie a thrashin'. 
 When in A* ram-stammedf in the blaze of a passion 
 At seein' a woman misused in that fashion: — 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Right toor aloor alee ! 
 
 Right toor aloor aladdie ! 
 The end of most battles must be 
 That somebody meets with his daddie4 
 
 A charged his rair, an' A knocked him down; 
 But what wud ye think the nixt minute A foun'? 
 Why, boys, she bed sprung like a flash from the groun' 
 An' stuck her ten talons right into my crown: — 
 
 Chorus repeated. 
 
 An' she hel' her grip till the oul' boy rose 
 An' blackened my eyes an' blooded my nose, 
 But, boys, A did then what A mustn't disclose — 
 A wuz one again' two of unmarciful foes: — 
 
 Chorus repeated. 
 *A for 1 not emphatic. f Avent blindly. ^Superior. 
 
THE PAIGEMAKER. 137 
 
 A lucked, when my feet hed got free of the sad, 
 An' there they wor linkin', an' laughin' like mad. 
 But A carried the tokens a bit, bedad. 
 Of the blessed reward that the paicemaker had: — 
 
 Right toor aloor alee ! 
 
 Right toor aloor aladdie! 
 The end of most battles must be 
 
 That somebody meets with his daddie. 
 
13S EVER GBEEN BE TON VALLEY. 
 
 Ever Green Be Yon Valley. 
 
 Ever green be yon valley where me an' my Sallie 
 
 Through hazel an' holly one summer eve strayed, 
 When she gave me her promise that, afther ould lammas. 
 
 She'd marry her Thomas — my beautiful maid. 
 Then the sun from the top of Sleive Gullion* was glowin' 
 On lovesome Lough Neagh in broad majesty flowin'. 
 Where wild duck an' diver were dippin' an' rowin' 
 While happy wee waines on the sand margin played. 
 
 She milked among rushes an' bloomin' thorn bushes. 
 While blackbirds an' thrushes were warblin' a tune, 
 
 Where bards of ould Folaf had praised Derryola, 
 But ne'er in a holier, happier June; 
 
 Then she flashed through the canavans, trippin' as lightly 
 
 As bounds the young doe that the spring has made 
 sprightly : 
 
 While she glanced at me timidly, tenderly, brightly, 
 I caught my first kiss by the light of the moon. 
 
 As sweetly we wandered, a stramelet meandered. 
 
 Where lafy boughs renderd our pathway unseen; 
 Their journey's end nearin', by music were steerin' 
 The wee vv^aves careerin' through shodda" an' sheen. 
 Oh ! many's the time since I won my heart's treasure 
 We've recalled the dear scene overbrimmin' with pleasure 
 The gloamin' we drunk of delight without measure. 
 And "made up the match" in that valley so green. 
 
 * A mountain west of Longh Neagh. 
 •j- An ancient name of Ireland. 
 
LOVED FOREVER^ LOST FOREVER. 139 
 
 Loved Forever. Lost Forever. 
 
 Loved forever, lost forever! 
 
 O to quaff of Lethe's river 
 
 One deep draught to quench this fever 
 
 Kindled heart, whose doom is never 
 
 Cool or calm again to be 
 
 All through all eternity! 
 
 Can ye glean, ye saints and sages, 
 
 Lore so dread from sacred pages, 
 
 That a loveless vow engages 
 
 Spouse to spouse through endless ages?* 
 
 Then are joy and peace to me 
 
 Lost through all eternity! 
 
 Loved forever, lost forever! 
 Shall e'en Paradise's river 
 Spirits love-attracted sever? 
 Eden can be Eden never, 
 But a desert, wanting thee. 
 Drear through all eternity! 
 
 Once — then, long, sad separation — 
 "One fond kiss," sole consolation 
 For my holiest hope's prostration — 
 Hope past hope of renovation 
 In the soul that lorn must be 
 All through all eternity! 
 
 * Some divines have taught that marriage binds here and here- 
 after. 
 
140 LOVE CANNOT DM 
 
 Love Cannot Die. 
 
 Ah ! would'st thou quench that living coal 
 
 From altar fires above, 
 Which feeds through all my glowing soul 
 
 The heavenly flame of love? 
 
 And would'st thou cloud the gladsome light 
 That blessed my hopeless care, 
 
 That chased the phantoms of my night — 
 The specters of despair, 
 
 And the chilled heart with rapture fired, 
 
 As Nature, newly born, 
 Thrilled, by the glorious blaze inspired 
 
 Of Eden's seventh morn? 
 
 Forget! oh, yes! when yonder sun 
 
 Forgets his golden way; 
 When, quenched and cold, his race is run, 
 
 And, dead, earth's latest day. 
 
 Forget! that bounty-strewing sky 
 May cease his gladd'ning rains, 
 
 And seal the dewy founts on high 
 Against the gasping plains; 
 
LOVE CANNOT DIE. 141 
 
 Sweet Spring, love's own beloved queen, 
 
 May cease her realm to cheer, 
 And fail to wrap her robe of green 
 
 Around the rising year ; 
 
 The streams may stop ; the summer breeze 
 
 May cease to waft along 
 The winding shores and wavy seas 
 
 Her spirit-soothing song; 
 
 Love cannot die: in yon fair clime 
 
 Of "never withering flowers," 
 Its bloom, unmarred by death or time, 
 
 Shall grace the eternal bowers ! 
 
142 JANE, 
 
 Jane. 
 
 O sad is my soul when you're gone, Jane — 
 Ay, sad is my soul when you're gone; 
 
 As a lonely flower in the midnight hour 
 That longs for the distant dawn, Jane. 
 
 But glad is my heart when you're near, Jane — 
 Ay, glad is my heart when you're near; 
 
 As the vales that ring with the lilts of spring 
 When the bloom of the May is here, Jane. 
 
 The clouds that o'ershadow the mind, Jane, — 
 The fear-laden clouds of the mind, 
 
 All wing their flight from your smiles of light. 
 And leave not a streak behind, Jane. 
 
 Then tarry not long away, Jane, 
 
 O tarry not long away, 
 Till you shine on my soul as the wintry pole 
 
 Is rejoiced by the rising ray, Jane. 
 
CBOMLA OF CAVES, 143 
 
 Cromla of Caves. 
 
 •3f 
 
 The bees had their musical feast on the heather, 
 
 The cattle browsed calm on the shamrog below, 
 And Hessie and I sought the mountain together 
 
 Where the wild thyme and ling with the heath were 
 in blow. 
 The clouds of Belfast from the valley ascended. 
 
 The white-winged ships flew across the blue waves ; 
 The coo of the dove with the throstle's note blended. 
 
 And loud was the lark over Cromla of Caves. 
 
 And the faint-tinted cheek of my charmer grew brighter. 
 
 Here kissed by the breezes of mountain and sea; 
 And her steps the white butterfly chasing, were lighter 
 
 Than frolicking fawns on yon emerald lea. 
 Oh! glad shone the sun in his afternoon glory, 
 
 When toil, for a space, had unfettered our slaves; 
 But, with Hessie, those cliffs, rising, rugged and hoary. 
 
 Were brighter than sun-brightened Cromla of Caves. 
 
 My blue-eyed and pearl-browed young Hessie, how 
 queenly. 
 
 She gazed from the cliffs of Mac Art on the scene : — 
 The hills of old Ullin rise glistening greenly. 
 
 And the waters gleam wide in their summery sheen. 
 Here, I thought with the warrior king, is an island 
 
 To wake up invaders' or patriots' glaives; 
 Were it mine she should reign over valley and high- 
 land, 
 
 The m^aiden I wooed on old Cromla of Caves. 
 
 * Cave Hill, near Belfast, Ireland. Ossianio name. 
 
144 THE PAIIi CF lilE WORLD. 
 
 The Pain of the World. 
 
 When my soul broods o'er all the wrongs of men, 
 
 And all the woes that breaking hearts endure, 
 While I can nought effect by voice or pen. 
 
 Muscle or mind, the world's deep wounds to cure- 
 On fraud triumphant, want's unceasing cry 
 
 In vain appeal to unresponding Heaven, 
 The noble crushed, the weak self-slain, who die 
 
 By grief or pain to desperation driven ; 
 Oh! I would stretch me on the hallowed grave 
 
 Of her who taught me first to lisp a prayer. 
 And thus, the unprofitable life she gave. 
 
 Yield to the serpent fangs of fell despair, 
 Did I not hope earth's Lord will one day show 
 Right hewn from wrong and happiness from woe. 
 
BONNIE POBTMOBE. 145 
 
 Bonnie Portmore. 
 
 Ould Jacky, all thrimmelin' an' stoopin' an' gray. 
 They drew from the walls of his fathers away — 
 Away in life's fall to the farriner's shore, 
 From sweet Ballinderry an' bonnie Portmore. 
 
 "Happy home," he cried, sabbin' an' breakin' his heart, 
 ''If again I cood own ye, we niver shud part: — 
 Oh, I played by that lough wi' the comrades of yore 
 Through the reeds an' bulrushes of bonnie Portmore. 
 
 ''My bonnie Portmore, but, you shine where you stan'! 
 Dark, dark afther you is the farriner's Ian' — 
 Your darlin' green fiel's that I loved long before 
 I dhramed of bin dhragged from you, bonnie Portmore. 
 
 "When this weary oul' heart it grows still in my breast 
 It will niver lie now on your bosom to rest : — 
 Farewell, lonely graves, that I weekly wept o'er! 
 Adieu, Bollinderry, an' bonnie Portmore!" 
 
 The ship took him far with his sorra an' pain; 
 But he died in the midst of the desolate main. 
 An' the graves an' the gardens he niver saw more 
 Of sweet Bollinderry an' bonny Portmore. 
 
146 EVEBMORE I'LL LOVE THEE. 
 
 Evermore FU Love Thee. 
 
 Oh, by every joy that sprung 
 Where GlencoUin's finches sung, 
 When our honeymoon was young 
 
 Beaming bright above thee; 
 Constant as returning day, 
 Warm as noontide's fervid sway. 
 Pure as evening's starry ray, 
 
 Bessie dear, I love thee. 
 
 Where the flag her kisses gave 
 To the bright embracing wave, 
 Where the thrush's morning stave 
 
 Charmed the hazel bowers. 
 Sacred seemed the place and time, 
 Scene and song and sunny prime; 
 I had won thy love sublime, 
 
 Rose of Ullin's flowers. 
 
 Where beneath the twilight beam 
 Danced and sang the dimpling stream 
 To the moon with gladsome gleam 
 
 Peeping o'er the mountains, 
 When I clasped thee to my breast, 
 When thy love-ripe lips I pressed. 
 Oh! I envied not the blest 
 
 Eden's fruits and fountains! 
 
EVEBMOBE I'LL LOVE THEE. 147 
 
 Bessie, dear, thy love-lit eye 
 Is the star Fm guided by 
 When misfortune's wintry sky 
 
 Darkly scowls above me; 
 Joy may blow or cease to bloom, 
 Still, through glory and through gloom, 
 To the portals of the tomb, 
 
 Evermore I'll love thee. 
 
148 CUAN'B LAKE, 
 
 Cuan's Lake. 
 
 'Tis morning's dewy dawn, my love. 
 The gloom of night is gone, my love^, 
 
 O let us roam by Cuan's foam 
 As the tidal wave comes on, my love; 
 When the waning moon is still high, aroonf 
 
 And the May-flower opens her eye, aroon, 
 And the daisy is yet with her night tears wet. 
 And the morning star is in the sky, aroon. 
 
 As hand in hand we wander, love, 
 Where bright green waves meander, love. 
 
 My Flora's blush will flout the flush 
 That suffuses the orient yonder, love. 
 
 Where the whim bloom feeds the bee, aroon. 
 
 As I rest in its shadow by thee, aroon,. 
 All the tints of the skies, in the light of thine eyes. 
 
 Will be total eclipses to me, aroon. 
 
 Come forth, the lark is singing, love. 
 The cuckoo's call is ringing, love. 
 
 And hill and dale have doffed the veil 
 That hid their flowerets springing, love. 
 
 Since the last inspiring kiss, aroon, 
 
 I've sighed for a meeting like this, aroon. 
 When love, 'mid the dearth of delight upon earth, 
 
 Gives a taste of the heavenly bliss, aroon. 
 
 * Secret treasure of the heart. 
 
ANNIE BEAU. 14^ 
 
 Annie Dear. 
 
 The loosened winds are howling loud 
 
 Across the wintry plain, 
 The moon is hid by cloud on cloud 
 
 That sling the sleety rain; 
 And, looming high against the sky. 
 
 The ghost-like hills appear — 
 Let gloaming scowl or tempest howl, 
 
 I'll meet you, Annie dear! 
 
 Last Christmas night the bogs lay white 
 
 In winding-sheets of snow 
 Whose treacherous foldings, smooth and bright. 
 
 Had death concealed below. 
 One love-lit smile repaid my toil, 
 
 Fatigue and risk and fear: 
 I heard no more wild winter's roar 
 
 Beside you, Annie dear ! 
 
 For, oh! when white-armed Annie's nigh 
 
 The weary world's forgot. 
 As love and joy illume her eye 
 
 And light the dear old cot. 
 Her needles go, her dimples glow. 
 
 The peat light twinkling near — 
 Ye tempests brawl till heaven fall, 
 
 I'll seek my Annie dear! 
 
150 ANNIE DEAR. 
 
 When summer decked sweet Collin glen 
 
 And made old Divis smile, 
 'Twas heav'n on earth to meet her then 
 
 By Anghrim's ivied pile. 
 She gladdens mountain, moor, and vale; 
 
 Without her, life were drear — 
 Rage icy gale, love cannot quail; 
 
 I'll meet my Annie dear! 
 
 And ere this youthful year shall wear 
 
 His locks of leafy pride. 
 Or spring-born blossoms wreathe the hair 
 
 Of May his beauteous bride, 
 A nymph will come to make my home 
 
 One summer all the year. 
 Her eyes and tongue my sun and song, — 
 
 My Annie, ever diear! 
 
ABSENT ISABELLA. 151 
 
 Absent Isabella. 
 
 Awake with April's merry morn, 
 I roam across the dewy plain; 
 
 But o'er my spirit lone and lorn, 
 The rising radiance breaks in vain. 
 
 I miss fair Isabella's form — 
 
 The spring, the dawn of joy tO' me; 
 
 I miss her smile more bright and warm! 
 Than summer's sun on Cuan's* sea. 
 
 The gauzy cuckoo flowerets peer 
 Beneath the hedge's budding green. 
 
 The gay marsh-marigold is dear 
 
 To yonder streamlet's rippled sheen; 
 
 The lowly thrush, the lofty lark 
 
 Sing hallelujahs to the day; 
 But all my soul is sad and dark 
 
 That lately danced in rapture's ray. 
 
 The emerald earth, the sapphire sky 
 Rejoice in loveliness and love; 
 
 Yet I survey with listless eye 
 
 The grace below, the glare above; 
 
 For gone is she, and all is gloom; — 
 My life's own life is far away; 
 
 Then what to me is song or bloom. 
 Or shimmering morn, or shining day? 
 
 * Lough Cuan — Strangf ord Lake in Ulster, 
 
152 SEVERED AND SUNDERED, 
 
 Severed and Sundered. 
 
 They have severed us at last — 
 They have sundered us forever: 
 I shall never see him — never! — 
 
 Till the bourne of life is passed — 
 Till we cross the mystic river. 
 
 O my Brian, brave and mild. 
 With a kingly spirit grander 
 Than their boasted Alexander, 
 
 And the sweetness of a child. 
 Guileless, innocent, and tender; 
 
 Ebon locks that curling hung 
 O'er a brow of brilliant fancies, 
 Soulful eyes with gladdening glances. 
 
 And that eloquence of tongue 
 
 Which all maidens' hearts entrances; 
 
 Ever, prized and princely boy. 
 
 While my days of doom I number 
 Thee shall Kathleen's heart remember 
 
 Through the autumn of its joy. 
 Till its deathful, dark December. 
 
 One sweet hope soothes even me ; 
 Round my soul her whispers hover 
 Saying, that when earth is over 
 
 We shall meet, and thou shalt be. 
 Then, my everlasting lover. 
 
BOW FROWN TEE WILD SKIES. 153 
 
 How Frown the Wild Skies. 
 
 How frown the wild skies when November is howling, 
 With ravage and ruin o'er woodland and lea! 
 
 But a tempest of anguish still darklier scowling 
 Assails my lone spirit dissevered from thee. 
 
 Thou present, thy smiles are my sunshine which steepeth 
 In glory and gladness hill, valley, and plain; 
 
 Thou gone, I am lorn as the wrecked one that keepeth 
 Sole watch on the darkening, desolate main. 
 
 Then speed to this bosom, my brightest and purest — 
 Sweet soother, till all its wild throbbings are o'er, 
 
 Till Fate send the arrow last, keenest, and surest, 
 Whose wound can be healed by affection no more. 
 
154 TEE FALLS OF THE QLEN. 
 
 The Falls of the Glen. 
 
 Tall Collin* is gilt by the evening ray, : 
 
 The breeze is perfumed with the breath of the hay, \ 
 And the valley where Lagan bears wealth in his flow 
 Lies spread like a beautiful picture below, 
 And echo flies down from the dwellings of men 
 While I seek my lone haunt by the falls of the glen. 
 
 While a vapory shroud wraps the plain and the vale. 
 From the groves of Glencollin the wood-pigeons wail; 
 And the deep solemn voice of the cataract seems 
 A plaint for the flight of my vanishing dreams, 
 Fair visions swept far, to return not again. 
 Like sun-tinted foam in the falls of the glen. 
 
 O Love, to possess thee the universe sighs; 
 Desire of all hearts and delight of all eyes; 
 But thou mockest the stripling's impetuous chase, 
 Or meltest to air in thy captor's embrace: 
 Love visits the burrow, the nest, and the den; 
 But I am forlorn by the falls of the glen. 
 
 Oh, where are the beings of beauty and light 
 That flit around boyhood and dazzle his sight? 
 Do they soar from our manhood to happier spheres 
 Where youth shall bloom on through eternity's years? 
 And the love shall be found that's now far from our 
 
 ken. 
 When we mix with the spirits of mountain and glen? 
 
 *A conical hill five miles from Belfast. 
 
8AMMY'3 GUAVE. 153 
 
 Sammy's Grave. 
 
 O, sad is your song this night, wee Rabin — 
 
 O, sad is the song this night I hear! 
 By Sammy's bed of clay, with broken heart, sabbin', 
 
 Lone I'm sheddin' the scaldin' tear: 
 
 Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! 
 
 But sweetly you chirmed on ouF May mornin'. 
 
 An' sweetly you bizzed, wee happy bee, 
 When partin' with him last, no freet givin' warnin' 
 
 Woe was comin' on him an' me: 
 It's oghanee-anee ! 
 
 That traicherous day so bright an' smilin', 
 The lough* an' the sky both calm an' clear, 
 
 He started for your bowers, bonnie Ram's Island — 
 Now the willey weeps o'er him here: 
 
 Dear Christ ! oh, dear ! oh, dear ! 
 
 O red was your cheek as the row'n-tree berry. 
 An' black was your eye as the autumn sloe — 
 
 The beauty and the pride of brave Ballinderry, 
 There he's lyin' alone an' low: 
 My heart ! ogho ! ogho I 
 
 * Lough Neagh, like many other lakes, is subject to sudden 
 squalls. 
 
156 SAMMY'S GRAVE. 
 
 I prize from his grave this wee, wee blossom 
 Over all the gay posies worlds could grow; 
 
 For, flower of my sowl, my heart's on your bosom 
 Where I'm prayin' I soon may go: 
 Augh! aughanee-nee oh! 
 
 *N0TE. — In Mrs. Hall's "Ireland," the air of this lyric is given 
 as — "It's pretty to be in Ballinderry, It's pretty to be in Aghalee." 
 
MAGGIE BAN. 157 
 
 Maggie Ban. 
 
 The Mont-yea Moss is black and bare 
 
 But ogh! it's there I love to be 
 Since Maggie come, last Lurgan fair. 
 
 An' brought my dinner maile to me. 
 Me Maggie! she's the dearest girl 
 
 That iver warmed the heart of man — 
 My threasure thrue, my precious pearl. 
 
 My joy of joys, is Maggie Ban. 
 
 Colcannon buttered, graced the ling. 
 
 Rich milk that fragrant table bore; 
 List'nin' my lively linnet sing, 
 
 I ate an' drunk an' laughed galore; 
 An' then I coaxed her to my knee, 
 
 While bouncin' bate the heart of Dan; 
 For more than Ireland's isle to me 
 
 Without her, is my Maggie Ban. 
 
 An' there we set an hour and more. 
 
 An' sometimes talked a word or two ; 
 Then viewed the lough's white sandy shore 
 
 An' cots that skimmed its bosom blue. 
 The whirlgigs dance upon the pools; 
 
 Saft waves the snow-white canavan 
 In the sweet breeze, that kindly cools 
 
 The blushin' brow of Maggie Ban.^ 
 
158 MAOGIE BAN. 
 
 The lapwing's "peeweet" overhead, 
 
 The martins roun' the turf-stacks fly. 
 The lark, sprung from his brackin' bed. 
 
 Wild warbles up the sunny sky. 
 My lips once touched her bloomin' cheek, 
 
 Her neck as white as altar lawn — 
 ",You love me, Mag?" she didn't speak; 
 
 But silence toul' on Maggie Ban. 
 
 The wild bees shake the foxglove bells. 
 
 An' o'er the banks of heather drame; 
 The yalla saggan sinks an' swells; 
 
 The silver' isier sups the strame : 
 Sweet things ! but sweeter Maggie's kiss : 
 
 All through my heart it's lightnin' ran — ' 
 "O love, be mine;" she whispered "Yes*- 
 
 Ye darlin' dear ye, Maggie Ban. 
 
 I'm here a sunburnt sarvint boy, 
 
 An' from a clay-built cabin sprung. 
 That wudn't swap young Meg McCoy 
 
 For ladies gay with grandheur hung. 
 I'll work to win a cot an' cow; 
 
 For this is wise wee Maggie's plan; 
 Manetime we'll coort as we do now ; 
 
 An' then, I'll marry Maggie Ban. 
 
COUNTr DOWN MART, 159 
 
 County Down Mary. 
 
 Hail, ye corn-clad hills of Down, 
 
 Girt by fairy-haunted dells! 
 Never there may famine frown — 
 
 There my gentle Mary dwells. 
 Every spot's a sacred sod, 
 
 Sheltered vale or summit airy. 
 Where the lissom step has trod 
 
 Of my fleet and fawn-like Mary. 
 
 Ye have heard my Mary's voice, 
 
 Softer than the songs of Spring, 
 When your thymy braes rejoice. 
 
 And your violet valleys ring. 
 Spotless as the virgin bloom 
 
 Sweetly robing sloe and cherry. 
 Bright as rapture after gloom, 
 
 Is my rare and radiant Mary! 
 
 Oh, my Mary's matchless charms. 
 
 Beauty-stricken hearts adore! 
 One short minute in her arms 
 
 Weighs a life of joy before! 
 See her flash from place to place! 
 
 Talk about your sylph and fairy- 
 Nothing moves with half the grace 
 
 Of my blithe and buoyant Mary. 
 
1(30 COUNTY DOWN MART. 
 
 Ye that gaze on Mary's eyes — 
 
 Eyes where soul is melting througH 
 Hues like heaven's, when Summer skies 
 
 Wear their soft and sunny blue — 
 Know ye Mary's noble heart, 
 
 Warmth and worth which cannot vary? 
 Then ye know what magic art 
 
 Binds forever mine to Mary. 
 
PEELIM. 161 
 
 Phelim. 
 
 They have doomed us to part; — 
 Shall we bear it, my Phelim? 
 
 They must shiver this heart 
 Ere they tear it from Phelim! 
 
 My angel, my guide. 
 
 Up the steep of love's heaven, 
 Shalt thou from my side 
 
 By the soulless be driven? 
 
 Thou, who, like God's light 
 In the dawn of creation, 
 
 Didst break on the night 
 Of my heart's desolation. 
 
 As April-born flowers 
 
 In the green meadow springing. 
 As a morn without showers 
 
 To the joyous lark singing, 
 
 As her perch to the dove 
 
 When the gloamin' is nearing, 
 
 So the smiles of thy love 
 Are soul-thrilling, heart-cheering. 
 
 For these the soul burns 
 In Mononia's lorn daughter 
 
 As the hunted roe yearns 
 For the crystalline water. 
 
Xe2 PHELIM. 
 
 All joy may depart 
 
 From this bosom forever; 
 But thee, from my heart, 
 
 They shall sunder, oh, never'! 
 
 On its altar shall glow 
 Each emotion for Phelim 
 
 Till death overthrow- 
 Its devotion to Phelim! 
 
 t-<->.' 
 
I SAW THE TIME. 163 
 
 I Saw the Time. 
 
 I saw the time, young proud one 
 
 — Time dead and buried now — 
 When frowned no chilling cloud on 
 
 That spirit-kindled brow; 
 When o'er my heart your passion 
 
 Glowed like a summer morn; 
 Though now, O child of fashion. 
 
 That love is changed to scorn. 
 
 Ah! false and transient shining 
 
 Whose rainbow ray is o'er. 
 Which paled and left me pining 
 
 For hopes that come no more. 
 Ah! may you yet remember 
 
 The love that's passed away 
 And change my drear December 
 
 To bright and brightening May. 
 
 Is it because that round you 
 
 Wealth flings a tinseled fame 
 And flattery's gauze, hath wound you. 
 
 You spurn my humbler name? 
 Wealth, vilest hands may use it 
 
 And wield its vulgar power 
 And traffic's lords may lose it 
 
 Jn one unlucky hour. 
 
164 I SAW THE TIME. 
 
 O shun weak fashion's minions 
 
 And burst their base control 
 Nor deem that golden pinions 
 
 Have ever raised a soul. 
 Ah! may you yet remember 
 
 The love that's passed away 
 And change my drear December 
 
 To glad and gladdening May. 
 
THE 80Na OF TEE 80WER. 165 
 
 The Song of the Sower. 
 
 Let the harrows sough over the rigs, my boys. 
 Our coats on the grass or the twigs, my boys; 
 There's no time for delay to the men that must pay 
 For coronets, mithres, an' wigs, my boys; 
 Then, on while the sweat from our foreheads is rainin' 
 It butters no bread to stan' idle complainin'. 
 
 While the yallow corn's hailin' before us, boys, 
 
 An' the clouds of white dust flyin' o'er us, boys, 
 
 An' the lark an' the thrush from the sky an' the bush 
 
 The hum of our labor they chorus, boys. 
 
 We too shall go merry, we'll sing an' we'll whistle. 
 
 Nor value hard labor the jag of a thristle. 
 
 There's the agent gone by in his chaise the day ; 
 
 We work while he lolls at his aise the day; 
 
 But I wouldn't bear his back-burden of care 
 
 For the wealth of the lord he obeys the day: 
 
 Content, it's a dainty they niver get tastin' 
 
 That's grabbin' an' grindin' for grandther an' faistin'. 
 
 As I heven't a lase o' this life, my boys, 
 
 Ere I'll seed it with envy an' strife, my boys, 
 
 I'll eat praties an' kale to a salt herrin's tail 
 
 With divil a fork or a knife, my boys: 
 
 While goold-huggin' folk are wi' jealousy snarlin', 
 
 I'll dance my day in with a different darlin' ; 
 
166 THE BONO OF THE SOWER. 
 
 For when evenin' jewels the flowers, boys, 
 An' the moon frorn the mountain top glowers, boys, 
 My Maggie I'll meet in yon valley so sweet 
 Where the blackbird's delightin' the bowers, boys: 
 Augh, love^ it's life's lily — the fairest plant given 
 To bloom on this side o' the gardens of heaven! 
 
 No doubt we're most terribly boun', my boys, 
 
 An' the taxes an' rents houl' us down, my boys, 
 
 Yit we'll speel the world's height like boul' Sampson 
 
 that night 
 When he carried the gates o' the town, my boys — 
 We'll speel Independence, that rock right before us, 
 Where nobody under the heav'n shall be o'er us. 
 
 An' if landlords they rack us with rent, brave boys. 
 Or a set of bad summers be sent, brave boys, 
 The vergin sile waits in the Merricky States 
 Till our company makes it content, brave boys: 
 It's there the grim bailiff shall bother us niver; 
 We'll hour the broad acres on lases for iver. 
 
 These bucks wi' big salaries, dear me, boys. 
 How they're bowin' an' bobbin' in fear, my boys, 
 While we bow to none but the Maker alone 
 For our incomings year by year, my boys — 
 To Him who will pay us this corn we have lent him, 
 Next harvest again with a thousand per centum. 
 
 Then hurrah, for the trade of the former, boys! 
 
 But the sun an' the sile's growin' warmer, boys; 
 
 An' savors arise, as the bacon it fries, 
 
 Proclaimin' the cook an oul' charmer, boys ; 
 
 Then jingle away with the nags to the stable; 
 
 We'll meet where the murphies smile white on the table. 
 
ELIZABETH ABOON. 167 
 
 Elizabeth Aroon.* 
 
 Severed! sundered! and forever! 
 
 Me, thy smiles must glad no more. 
 Me, thine accents thrill, ah! never 
 
 Till life's lonely woes are o'er. 
 
 Ocean gales afar have borne thee. 
 Us, the waste of ocean parts: 
 
 Hopeless and forlorn, I mourn thee, 
 With a world between our hearts. 
 
 Ever, 'mid my restless roaming 
 
 Through the cloudly clime of tears, 
 
 Have the soothing smiles of woman 
 Beamed like starlight o'er my years. 
 
 Thee, I turned my gladdened eyes on — 
 Thee, my radiant rising moon: 
 
 Drear is now my blank horizon, 
 O, Elizabeth aroon! 
 
 From the brakes of sorrow bleeding, 
 Whence I bear a thousand scars, 
 
 Lo! the portals of my Eden, 
 
 Fate has closed with brazen bars. 
 
 *Mid the wilds of life I weary. 
 Yearning for that lamp of love 
 
 Whose extinction leaves me dreary 
 Through a trackless gloom to rove. 
 
 *An Irish word — "secret treasure of my heart." 
 
168 ELIZA JANE. 
 
 Eliza Jane. 
 
 The harvest queen of the cloudless sky 
 Was gliding in glory serene and high ; 
 The swallow had flown to her clay-built nest. 
 And the reaper had gone to his cabin of rest: 
 There was none to hear, on the moonlit plain. 
 The tale I was telling Eliza Jane. 
 
 I folded with tremulous arm her waist, 
 
 As slowly the grass-fringed lane we paced, 
 
 Where over us hung the haw-bent thorn. 
 
 And round us rustled the ripening corn, 
 
 And the night wind whispered to hill and plain 
 
 The tale I was telling Eliza Jane. 
 
 From the ivied ruin, cloven and gray, 
 
 We gazed on the glitter of far Lough Neagh; 
 
 Bright was the wave, but still more bright 
 
 Was the rapturous hope of our hearts that night, 
 
 As the west wind wafted across the plain 
 
 The tale I was telling Eliza Jane ; 
 
 And the muttering voice of the autumn breeze, 
 Through briery knolls and aspen trees. 
 Seemed whispering fays from climes above 
 Stealing down to a tryst with an earthly love; 
 But none can they meet upon cloud or plain 
 More purely loved than Eliza Jane, 
 
ELIZA JANE. 169 
 
 Oh! brightlier kindled the bright moonshine 
 As her fragrant whispers declared her mine, 
 As the living bloom of her lips I pressed, 
 And the heart beat high in my raptured breast: 
 That moon never smiled from her azure plain 
 On a dearer maid than Eliza Jane ! 
 
170 LOVELY WEE LOUGH OF POBTMOBE. 
 
 Lovely Wee Lough of Portmore. 
 
 O lovely wee lough of Portmore, 
 You'll fade from my memory niver ; 
 
 For my pleasure Vv^as born on your shore. 
 And the pain that will haunt me for iver. 
 
 Augh once, through your glitterin' flood 
 I thought I could gaze intil Aiden; 
 
 For an angel along wi' me stood 
 In the shape of a beautiful maiden. 
 
 What a heaven with Hannah to stray 
 
 Through your meadows all dotted wi* flowers. 
 
 When the purty wee blossoms of May 
 Had sprung from the Aperil showers! 
 
 An* roun' the ouF ruins to rove 
 
 Where I pulled her the lilies an' cresses, 
 
 An' many a pramise of love 
 
 Was saled wi' the purest of kisses! 
 
 Where the waterfowl fed wi' their young 
 Among murmurin' reeds an' bulrushes; 
 
 An' the green salley islands they rung 
 
 Wi' the songs of the rabins an' thrushes! — 
 
tOVELT WE^ LOUQJS OF POUTMOBK 111 
 
 O my pink o' Portmore, had you died 
 I'd hev hoped for to jine you in heaven; 
 
 But — ^to slink from your thrue lover's side 
 
 .Where your pledge an' your pramise was given! 
 
 Do you laugh at the fand one you fooled? 
 
 Or, has conscience too speedily spoken? 
 And are you, in spite of his goold, 
 
 Disappointed, like me, an' heart-broken? — 
 
 My lovely wee lough of Portmore, 
 
 I must bid you farewell; for the morra 
 
 I'll fly from your evergreen shore. 
 An' wander the world wi' my sorra ! 
 
173 IIILE WISHMS. 
 
 Idle Wishes. 
 
 O, for the life of a bard of old 
 
 Untrammeled by carking care! 
 Who blithely caroled and blithely strolled. 
 Where the green glen bloomed or the bright lake rolled, 
 
 Like a bird of the boundless air ; 
 
 Who, even when winter had withered the earth, 
 
 And the nights grew drear and long, 
 Lit the chieftain's hall and the yeoman's hearth 
 With passion-born flame or the lightnings of mirth — 
 
 The glow of his glorious song. 
 
 O, for the life of a hunter red 
 
 And his hut by the prairie rill! 
 Who bows to no master his manly head 
 As he sweeps his wilds without doubt or dread. 
 
 And follows his lordly will. 
 
 Here, servile and selfish and cold and lone, 
 
 Where mammon and pride hold sway. 
 On the treadmill of trade we chafe and groan. 
 Or the fields we till that we never may own, 
 
 Till manhood is slaved away. 
 
 Far, from the labor-lord's harsh control, 
 
 And the fashion that awes and binds, 
 O, to follow the reinless soul 
 Where the green wood spreads, or the white waves roll, 
 
 As free as the mountain winds! 
 
SLEIVE BONAMD. 173 
 
 Sleive Donard.* 
 
 {Ascended with Rev. David Thorns on ^ Belfast, Ire- 
 land, and Rev. John Fox, Manchester, England.) 
 
 Majestic mount, 
 Whose robes are clouds and crown the sapphire heaven. 
 Who, all unmoved on thy Plutoman throne, 
 Unlike the ancient king that fled the waves, 
 Laughest to scorn the billow and the blast. 
 Thou on whose lordly summit I have gazed 
 With longing admiration since the days — 
 The fairy days of childhood, when I dreamed 
 That from the tips of Mourne's sky-piercing spears, 
 A man might grasp an angel's down-stretched hand; 
 Thy heights at length are conquered. I have heard 
 Of loftier steeps and grander elevations; 
 But towering here sublime, and gazing down 
 On forty granite peaks, and owning none. 
 As far as thy cerulean front is seen. 
 For peer or rival, thou sufficest me 
 
 With beauty and with grandeur. Sacred hill, ' 
 
 On whose high-heaving bosom saints reposed 
 In faith-fraught ages, how we tread thy heights. 
 With soul exultant, breathing inspiration 
 From the pure breeze which wings these fleecy cloudlets. 
 And whispers, now, to these eternal hills, 
 But may, to-morrow, voice the roaring storm! 
 
 * The highest mountain in Ulster. 
 
174 SLEIYE DO^''AMB. 
 
 Truth-loving mount which, springing from the plain, 
 Bearest us toward that 'Vast infinitude," 
 That boundless, endless wilderness of nature, 
 The baffled thought is yearning to explore. 
 
 Monarch of hills ,upon thy solitudes, 
 
 The roar of business dwindles into silence, 
 
 As ocean's surge, against thy granite base. 
 
 Is heard but as a soft continuous sigh; 
 
 And the sweet sunshine falling on the bloom 
 
 Which mantles thee, the humming of the bees. 
 
 The murmur of the rillets down the rocks. 
 
 Soothe the sad heart and calm the pulse of care. 
 
 With joy we gaze o'er yon vast, varied landscape — 
 
 The grove-girt castle and the cottage home, 
 
 Heights, hedgerows green, rich, generous field and farm. 
 
 The rolling billow and the rising tide. 
 
 Sea, bay, and channel and their misty isles. 
 
 When thou didst spring from ocean's darksome depths 
 
 Tossing the billows from thy craggy crest, I 
 
 I know not ; but thou standest here to-day 
 
 A mighty petrifaction of the past, ; 
 
 A granite gnomon pointing to the skies, 
 
 To man suggestive of the eternal cycles. 
 
 His deathless hopes and godlike aspirations. 
 
 Here hast thou stood, in strength a rock of ages. 
 
 Innumerable years amid all storms 
 
 Of change and time, which bore on dreaded wings 
 
 Woe and destruction to the tribes of men. 
 
 Hence hast thou calmly viewed race follow race; 
 
 Rushing o'er earth in wild and strange succession 
 
 From the abyss of past eternity; 
 
 Whose awful gloom no memory can fathom, 
 
 Into the dread impenetrable future; 
 
8LEIYE DONABD. 175 
 
 Whose misty realm no human lore illumes. 
 
 Beneath thee has the sea been red with blood 
 
 In human quarrels ; and the soil around 
 
 Has reeked with gore. These winds of heaven have 
 
 climbed 
 Thy rugged cliffs^ oppressed with slavery's sighs, 
 And the death groans of superstition's victims, 
 And the wild shrieks that spoke the spoiler's havoc. 
 But happily not always hideous sounds 
 Have greeted thee; sweet hymns of heavenly joy 
 Have fanned thy breast, as holy voices swelled 
 In prayer and praise from these rude rocks to God. 
 Deeds of self-sacrifice have graced the cell 
 Nor have been absent from the combat's fury. 
 For in the most abandoned lives and times 
 Are some redeeming hours, and some bright tints 
 Gleam from the deepest gloom of human story; 
 Else might we toll the knell of hope for man. 
 
 And now in progress of the shifting scenes. 
 The starry science of the nineteenth age 
 Finds thee a monarch still, but finds, alas ! 
 The land thou standest on a very slave, 
 Wearing the shackles of three hundred years. 
 While orbs have risen, that flout the lights of yore. 
 And gild the mountain tops of other lands, 
 Still round our island hang the mists of night. 
 And hide from millions freedom's radiant dawn, 
 And all her revelations of the true. 
 
 But, as thy shadow, which, at morning tide, 
 Darkened the land, now falls across the deep, 
 So these dark days shall pass and brighter spring, 
 When virtue's bloom shall freedom's fertilize. 
 
176 8LEIYE DONARD. 
 
 And men shall pluck the golden fruit of justice. 
 
 Then solitary selfishness no more 
 
 Shall reign, the chief inspirer of exertion. 
 
 Man swayed by charity and wisdom's power. 
 
 Consulting well the general happiness, 
 
 V/ill each secure his own. Then those sweet vales 
 
 And corn-crowned hills still fairer shall become, 
 
 The darling haunts of peace and kind affections 
 
 And thriving industry and blooming joy. 
 
 Thus age shall bury age and leave thee long 
 
 Where others left thee — lord of Uladh's hills — 
 
 In stern and lofty grandeur, as if God 
 
 Had made thy days eternal like His own. 
 
 We too shall pass away, shall melt from earth 
 
 Like the frail dewdrops from the blossomed heath. 
 
 Which morn drinks up and day beholds no more. 
 
 And thou — yea, thou — O mighty granite giant. 
 
 Crushed by innumerable years, shalt perish 
 
 As certainly as we: re-plunged beneath 
 
 The threatening surge or leveled to the plain 
 
 By stream and breeze, or borne, a viewless vapor, 
 
 Through boundless space, thou shalt be king no more. 
 
 Shall aught in us survive this utter ruin? 
 
 Outlive thy witness of a thousand wrecks 
 
 Of generations, dynasties, and creeds? 
 
 Thou answerest only with thy hollow echo, 
 
 O mocking mountain, and the heavens are silent. 
 
 We of that race who wield the sv/ord of thought, . 
 
 Conquerors of mountains and of mountain waves. 
 
 We with the consciousness to thee unknown. 
 
 These hopes which never heaved thy flinty breast, 
 
 Shall we — God's work destroyed ere well begun — 
 
 Sink sighing for the ungained good; and thou 
 
8LEIVE DONABD. l'J'7 
 
 Boast a duration all but everlasting? 
 Must we, the failure of eternal wisdom, 
 Perfection's germens blasted in our souls, 
 Take all our boundless yearnings to the dust, 
 Thou laughing at the force that crushes us? 
 Or, shall we soar triumphant over death 
 With spirits who perchance this moment ride 
 Upon the winds that tread thy stormy steeps ? 
 Hast thou, has Nature not a voice to answer? 
 Ah no ! or if a voice, the ears of men 
 Are yet too dull to catch its whispered music. 
 But in our souls resides an unseen Power 
 Who speaketh, and whose still, small voice 
 Grows mighty echoed from the hearts of millions. 
 Ah, this voice mocks not ! 'tis the Eternal Spirit 
 Telling our souls, they cannot cease or perish. 
 In heavenly tones through doubt's terrific gloom. 
 
178 TEm DELVER'B CHANT. 
 
 i 
 
 The Delver's Chant. 
 
 His baton the warrior chieftain wields, 
 
 And the monarch his scepter sways; 
 But my spade-armed hands rule the realm of fields^ 
 
 Where Nature herself obeys. 
 
 The haughtiest head in the land eats bread 
 
 From the fingers of men like me; 
 And I fix the gems on the diadems 
 
 Of the lords of the earth and sea. 
 
 Their corn and wine and their flocks and kine, ) 
 
 Robes, rank, and resounding name. 
 Would vanish to air, bereft of my care, 
 
 And their glory be turned to shame. 
 
 And yet when they pass where I mow the grass. 
 
 Or the mattock I wield or hoe. 
 Their pride forgets the uncounted debts 
 
 Ihat lords to laborers owe. 
 
 I can see the scorn of the "baser born" ;<' 
 
 In your silken idler's eye. | 
 
 Who preaches that God made me to plod J 
 
 And him to be grand and high. t 
 
 But reason or jeer, proud man, Fm your peer; )[ 
 
 I too, bear the image of God, ; 
 
 And never shall cower, or cringe to the power ; 
 Of the haughtiest "son of the sod," 
 
TEE DELYER'S CHANT. 179 
 
 For your tinsel toys I've a wealth of joys 
 
 In the beauties that round me lie ; 
 I can draw delight from the day and the night, 
 
 And pleasure from earth and sky. 
 
 From the streams, the trees, and the rocks-framed seas 
 
 More rapturous melodies roll 
 Than from minstrels' chords in the halls of lords; 
 
 For they sound in the ears of my soul. 
 
 And the hues divine of the flowers that shine 
 On the heaven-bright brows of Spring 
 
 More charm my sight than the diamond's light 
 From the crown of an eastern king. 
 
 The summer's calm is the spirit's balm. 
 And we revel in autumn's store; 
 
 And there's joy sublime in the thunder's chime. 
 And the strong-voiced tempest's roar. 
 
 For I feel and know that thus, below, 
 
 The high and eternal One 
 Converses with me through flower and tree. 
 
 And shadow and shining sun. 
 
 And my faith is strong, that when earth-born wrong 
 Shall have perished with earth-born things. 
 
 We shall each appear in his rightful sphere 
 In the realm of the King of kings. 
 
180 THE DELVER'S CHANT. 
 
 Then why should I lower on pomp and power? — 
 For their gold and their purple pine? — 
 
 Gilt millionaire, I but crave my share ; 
 For the wealth I create is mine. 
 
 Come heaven-born worth, in thy scorn of birth 
 
 Raise me to the rank that springs 
 From no miser's hoard, no slaughterer's sword, 
 
 No whimseys of vulgar kings. 
 
THE hunduedth birthday. 181 
 
 The Hundredth Birthday of Robert Burns. 
 
 (^Second Prise, Ulster Competition.) 
 
 Througli winter's wild storms and obscurity's gloom 
 The sun of his age in his dawning appears — 
 
 Thus rises thy Burns, Caledonia, whom 
 
 The nations shall shrine in their "praises and tears," 
 
 While thy gray granite cliffs to the warring winds ring. 
 And the summer sun dances on Boon's winding wave, 
 
 While the meadows of Coila are daisied by spring, 
 And autumn's torn tresses are strev/ed on his grave. 
 
 A hundred gay garments thy valleys have worn, 
 A hundred snow mantles thy summits sublime, 
 
 Since thy patriot poet and hero was born 
 
 To a fame unimpaired or by tempest or time. 
 
 Hail ! son of the peasant ! hail ! genius divine ! 
 
 Immortal one sprung from a cottage of clay! 
 The millions whose lot is as lowly as thine 
 
 Look exultingly back on thy advent, to-day. 
 
 'Tis our pride and our glory, though sentenced to plod 
 Till the earth to her bosom shall fold us again, 
 
 That nobles of Nature and princes of God 
 Arise from the ranks of the lowliest men. 
 
18^ 
 
 TSE ^UNDHEDTii BIRTBDAt. 
 
 To her kingliest son Caledonia's muse 
 
 Came down from the heights that have throned her so 
 long, 
 Through his soul that deep patriot tide to diffuse 
 
 Which wildly welled forth in rich torrents of song ; 
 
 To bind on the brow of her high-minded bard 
 
 That frontlet he bore through the battle of life — 
 
 That manly and stern independence, which dared 
 The conflict of fortune, nor failed in the strife. 
 
 How tyranny shrinks at the flash of his scorn 
 As the tiger recoils from the valorous eye! 
 
 Fraud and sham, their sheep's garb in just wrathfulness 
 torn, 
 In their naked and wolfish deformity lie. 
 
 When his satire descends like that flame-winged dart, 
 Hurled fiercely from heaven's cloud battlements down, 
 
 Which pierces the haughtiest oak to the heart, 
 And shivers the crags on Ben Nevis's crown. 
 
 But his lyre, like the summer eve's, odorous breath, 
 Sighs soft round the cabin on mountain or moor; 
 
 It gladdens the cot of the hamlet and heath, 
 And hallows the humble abodes of the poor. 
 
 It goes with the bark as it bounds o'er the brine, 
 It is echoed by wild, distant shores' rocky caves ; 
 
 O'er the hearts of the homeless its sympathies shine 
 Where "the wan moon is setting behind the white 
 waves/' 
 
THE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY. 183 
 
 Linked to music that floated o'er hurnies and hraes. 
 Over Scotia's moorlands and mountains of yore, 
 
 Or fanned the wild patriot fire to a blaze, 
 Or mingled with red battle's dissonant roar. 
 
 Here love lights anew his ethereal flame, 
 
 Which glows evermore before purity's shrine, 
 
 Like the day-god's adorers, who annu'lly came 
 To rekindle their fires at the radiance divine. 
 
 The song of his sorrow, the wail of his woe 
 
 Appeal to the heart and the tear-moistened eyes. 
 
 Like lays of m.elodious lament that might flow 
 From a seraph astray in the wastes of the skies. 
 
 Great Nature's high priest — through her temples 
 abroad 
 Shall the torch of our worship be lit at thy fire; 
 Through beauty, sublimity, rising to God, 
 
 With the woods and the winds and the waves for our 
 choir. 
 
 His nativity's anthem the winter winds hymned : 
 Alas ! 'twas a winter that passed not away — 
 
 A life by the clouds of despondency dimmed, 
 
 With the premature close of a gloom-shrouded day. 
 
 Let his spirit, his errors and sufferings passed, 
 Repose in the halls of the happy and free, 
 
 Quaff bliss by the board of Walhalla at last. 
 Or roam through the isles of eternity's sea. 
 
184 INVITATION TO KITTY CONNOR, 
 
 Invitation to Kitty Connor. 
 
 {Norn de plume of James M'Keown, Lisburn.) 
 
 Come, Kitty dear, to the dingles of Down, 
 Come to the hills of the heathery crown ; — 
 Linnet of Lagan, what spell woven round thee 
 So long in the meshes of silence has bound thee? 
 
 Come, for thy magical trills I would hear; 
 Melody wakes with the morn of the year; 
 April is hymned by ten thousand wild voices 
 From hearts the young princess of beauty rejoices. 
 
 Dykes deck their foreheads with primroses pale; 
 Incense of Eden ascends from each vale; 
 Daisies laugh out from the meadow's bright bosom, 
 And hillocks stand robed in the gorse's gold blossom. 
 
 Fresh as our infancy, fair as our hope. 
 Beams the green beauty of summit and slope; 
 Waved by soft winds round anemones sighing, 
 Far flash the mock suns of the gay dandelion. 
 
 Cuan's broad tide in calm brilliancy smiles. 
 
 Kissing the brows of his bird-haunted isles ; 
 
 O'er his glad flood, the first swallows are wheeling, 
 
 And the cuckoo's first cry through his poplars is pealing. 
 
INVITATION TO KITTY CONNOR. 185 
 
 Scraba we'll climb, rugged, picturesque, hoar. 
 Haunt of the shepherd saint, Patrick, of yore ; 
 Mona of mist, in the offing before us. 
 And the sky-minstrels charming the firmament o'er us. 
 
 Here in fond view of old Bangor and Ardes, 
 Homes, in far years, of our sages and bards. 
 Lays of the Lagan side, plaintive or cheering, 
 Will enter all hearts with the music of Erin. 
 
 Come, for my spirit is lonely and drear 
 E'en 'mid the mirth of the jolly young year; 
 Come, for beside thee the heart groweth lighter; 
 And joy is more joyful, and beauty is brighter. 
 
186 ON AN IRISH SMALL FARM. 
 
 On an Irish Small Farm. 
 
 My friends they are few, a penniless crew, 
 And I'm steeped to the lips in poverty too 
 
 And, cramped in spirit and limb, 
 While the rich and great in their awful state 
 Care not a crumb for my humble fate. 
 
 Whether I sink or swim. 
 
 And the world looks down on the low-born clown, 
 And heaven itself wears a threatening frown 
 
 As my heart and my purse get low. 
 And at times as I plod on the niggardly sod 
 I feel like a sinner abandoned by God 
 
 To misery's finishing blow. 
 
 Yet, they say, there are ways out of poverty's maze 
 To clamber to wealth, and win men's praise; — 
 
 All praise to the gainers of pelf ! 
 Though with scant, coarse fare, I as coarse a garb wear, 
 My heart cannot choose, and my hand cannot dare 
 
 What would make me ashamed of myself. 
 
 I disdain to palm what I know is a sham 
 On credulous men and not seem what I am 
 
 So making my lifetime a lie ; — 
 Thou heavenly maid, ere I ply such a trade 
 Let me dig till I drop at the side of my spade. 
 
 And honestly, manfully die! 
 
Oif ^if TBISJa: SMALL FARM. 187 
 
 The more I'm a clown, I can never stoop down 
 To fawn upon coronet, mitre, or crown, 
 
 And sue for their favoring smile; 
 I cannot be tool to a knave or a fool 
 Even though it might raise me to riches and rule 
 
 From this doom of unrecompensed toil. 
 
 I own without shame that I wish to claim 
 An ampler field and a wider fame 
 
 And escape from m.y straitened lot; 
 But on merit's wing if I cannot spring 
 Let me lie as I am, a neglected thing, 
 
 My name and misfortunes forgot. 
 
 The great may deride a bumpkin's pride. 
 But he'll yet be their fellow, laid side by side 
 
 In mortality's shadowy hall; 
 And he asks no more from the lordly corps 
 Than not to be barred by their cunning and power 
 
 From the good Heaven spread for us all. 
 
 Lord, hear while I plead for the help that I need 
 To avoid every trick, every mean, dirty deed 
 
 In my struggle to rise in the world ; 
 Ere my hand I shall hold for unmerited gold 
 Let me sink at my post under hunger and cold 
 
 And out of existence be hurled! 
 
 /*lir^>i 
 
188 TO THE GEEAT THINKERS OF THE AQE 
 
 To the Great Thinkers of the Age. 
 
 Grand, giant souls who, nourished on the True, 
 
 Rise in rejoicing strength with reason's brands 
 To overturn the wrongs of realms, and hew 
 
 From minds inthralled the bigot's brazen bands, 
 We hail you, captains armed with godlike might 
 
 To lead Right's legions on to victory ; 
 Or, rather, bearers of a glad, new light — 
 
 Bright morn stars of the brighter day to be. 
 Your teachings, like the breeze of blessed spring, 
 
 Sweep wintry error's deathly gloom away, 
 Till hope's ten thousand voices wake to sing 
 
 Loud hallelujahs to the emergent ray: 
 Ye call the virtues from their frozen tomb. 
 And flowers of Eden burst to light and bloom. 
 
SONNET TO SCOTLAND. 189 
 
 Sonnet to Scotland. 
 
 Clime of a thousand memories grand and bright, 
 Sweet radiances that beam from skies of yore, 
 Men say thy heavens are palled with moral night 
 And Caledonia's glorious day is o'er. 
 And yet though grief-struck o'er the tale I stand, 
 And o'er thy olden virtues' memories mourns, 
 I feel she cannot die, the great, brave land 
 That gave the world a Wallace, Bruce, and Burns. 
 Then, by each muse that waked the Scottish lyre. 
 And thrilled rejoicing ages with the strains; 
 By freedom's triumphs and the martyr's pyre, 
 O burst the bondage of the sensual chain; 
 Rise like a goddess grasping wisdom's lance 
 And take the van where sons of light advance. 
 
190 REMOI^^TIIANGE OF A CONDEMNED DRAKE. 
 
 Remonstrance of a Condemned Drake. 
 
 One Christmas day, I sallied forth. 
 The sun faint firing at the north 
 Through a dim haze of bluish gray 
 Weak beams, which scarce at noon of day 
 Sufficed to keep the frost at bay 
 Upon the hoary "hills of prey." 
 Crack ! crack ! at every bush a gun, 
 Hounds bay, and hurrying hunters run. 
 
 But whither are those squadrons rushing? 
 And what's the crowding for and crushing? 
 Behold their van ; it fairly bristles 
 With fowling pieces cocked, and pistols. 
 Drawn forth from nooks and chimneys dusty. 
 Where long they've lain unused and rusty; 
 Now for this great occasion burnished, 
 And each with charge and priming furnished. 
 
 What thus disturbs the country's quiet? 
 
 Has bold Belfast a winter riot? 
 
 Or do they hear the distant drumming 
 
 Of Tipperary's terrors coming 
 
 To do our northern goose so plump, 
 
 And eat up Ulster rump and stump? 
 
REMONSTRANCE OF A CONDEMNED DRAKE, 191 
 
 Oh! whether men have faced the foe 
 Where locust armies scatter woe. 
 Met India's tiger in the teeth 
 Or chased a hare across the heath, 
 "Bearded the lion in his den" 
 Or badger in McCame's glen, 
 Slaughtered a bear for fur and fat. 
 Or overcome a haggard rat, 
 Encountered Bushmen's poisoned arrows. 
 Or shot in Irish hedges, sparrows, — 
 Great triumph or achievement small. 
 This enterprise surpasseth all ! 
 Are cheeks not pale ? do hands not shake ? 
 Behold the foe; — a tethered Drake! 
 
 Poor bird ! he quacks and quacks in vain 
 And tugs his cord in fear and pain 
 And wildly shrieks and madly springs 
 Till hopeless droop his weary wings. 
 Ye, who have heard what came to pass 
 When Balaam beat his restive ass, 
 Won't feel surprised that thus a drake. 
 When stung to desperation, spake : — 
 
 "Destroying mob, unpitying crew. 
 
 Who gave the name of man to you ? — 
 
 You, who thus doom to bloody end 
 
 Your brother biped born, and friend. 
 
 While e'en his fiercest fallen foe 
 
 No generous soul would torture so? 
 
 What wrongs have you from me sustained 
 
 While over ditch and dam I reigned ? 
 
 Or, are you gathered, small and great, 
 
 To murder more through sport than hate? — 
 
19^ REMONSTRANCE OF A CONDEMITED DRAKE. 
 
 To laugh at every pang and start, 
 And cheer the clown that splits my heart ? 
 While tethered by the leg I lie 
 Without the power to fight or fly. 
 
 ''From prayer and feast and song this morn. 
 To-day, it seems, your Lord was born. 
 Did He, ye tyrants of the earth. 
 Bid you commemorate His birth 
 By slaughtering down with tube and blade 
 The creatures that Himself has made? 
 Or, is this time of blood and revel 
 The real birthday of the devil? 
 
 "Lords of this ever wandering ball. 
 
 Who slay the weaker or enthrall. 
 
 Does my poor sport, my petty joy. 
 
 Your boundless happiness destroy? 
 
 Or, does the span that's granted me 
 
 Make shorter your eternity ? 
 
 Or, are ye vexed that Nature's plan 
 
 Gave life to anything but man? 
 
 On hill and plain, lake, stream, and fen 
 
 There's surely room for ducks and men. 
 
 "But why exhaust my sinking breath 
 On ears which love the sounds of death? 
 Or pity hope from stolid blocks 
 With souls of kites and hearts of rocks ?" 
 
 The blazing guns proclaim the war. 
 The leaden shot hails wide and far. 
 The creature's down is white no more. 
 His green and gold are smeared with gore, 
 One flutter on the blood-stained clover, 
 A quack, a gasp; and all is over! 
 
 
TMB COSSOLATION OF THE QUAVR 193 
 
 The Consolation of the Grave. 
 
 Here's the couch that knows no weeping 
 Here ye loved ones, soundly sleeping, 
 All the strife of time shall never 
 Break your quiet rest forever. 
 Here no tempter's shafts assail you. 
 Hollow hope no more shall fail you ; 
 Barren want and freezing fear 
 Cannot break an entrance here. 
 Grass and flowers, your couch's cover. 
 Scent this breeze that waileth over. 
 While methinks your spirits fly 
 On its soft, ethereal sigh. 
 Sweet, amid our care and sorrow, 
 Sweet to know that here to-morrow — 
 Here in earth's most holy place. 
 In your longed for, long embrace. 
 We shall sleep along with you, 
 Stiller than the evening dew. 
 
 When life's flavor dies away. 
 Sense and soul in dull decay, 
 When that spring of time is o'er. 
 Seen but once, and then, no more — 
 Youthhood's glad and glorious light 
 Lost in age's deepening night; 
 Or, with plans and pleasures crossed. 
 All the aims of being lost. 
 
194 THE CONSOLATION OF TEE GMAVJS. 
 
 Floundering through a thousand woes, 
 Chilled with disappointment's snows, 
 While they hurl untimely doom 
 On an early blighted bloom, 
 'Tis a cordial balm to know 
 We can shelter here from woe, — 
 I^each that home the hapless crave 
 Who "rejoice to find the grave,". 
 Rest where toil nor tyrant calls. 
 Fenced with everlasting walls. 
 
THE LAST REQUEST. 195 
 
 The Last Request 
 
 Bury me, love, in yon graveyard lone, 
 
 Whose ruins, forlorn and hoar. 
 The eyes of my childhood have gazed upon 
 
 By the lough of my loved Portmore. 
 
 Where the wintry flood, as it rolls around 
 
 That island of olden graves. 
 Shall my requiem sing on the sacred mound 
 
 In the voices of moonlit waves. 
 
 Where above me shall sound the lapwing's wail 
 
 And the far-away curlew's cry. 
 And round me the widgeon and wild swan, sail 
 
 And the coot in her midnight joy. 
 
 Where the feathery flocks that herald spring, 
 With the rapture that chords their strains, 
 
 Make all the darkening welkin ring. 
 
 And are echoed from clouds and plains. 
 
 There the linnet will sing me his early lay 
 From his perch on the bloom-bright whin; 
 
 And no trill of the lark through the long June day. 
 Will be lost amid human din. 
 
 There the cuckoo comes with the first green leaf; 
 
 And, whether it springs or falls. 
 The redbreast warbles his joy and grief 
 
 From the ivy-enshrouded walls. 
 
196 THE LAST REQ VEST. 
 
 There the summer's breeze as she soughs along 
 
 Over heather and canavan^ 
 Is seldom disturbed in her dirge-like song 
 
 By the foot or the voice of man. 
 
 Oh ! there methinks I can calmly lie 
 
 And list, on that reed-graced shore, 
 To the wild bird's song and the wild wind's sigh 
 
 Forever and evermore. 
 
 Long, long have I ceased, as once, to hope 
 
 For liberty's rising ray. 
 Or that truth and right with the wrong can cope 
 
 For many a dreary day. 
 
 Though I know that in beautiful years to be. 
 
 Men, gentle and just and brave, 
 No spoiler shall lord it on land or sea, 
 
 And no valley shall nurse a slave. 
 
 Yet the blasted hopes of my blighted life 
 
 Are as leaves when the autumn raves ; 
 And I long to shelter from being's strife 
 
 In yon saint-blest garden of graves. 
 
 And, beloved, when you fron the toil and care 
 
 Of a wearisome world, get rest, 
 Our friends will remember my last fond prayer. 
 
 And place you on this calm breast. 
 
 Then! then! though the star of our darksome doom 
 
 Has severed us long and far. 
 We'll wed full well in the hallowing tomb — 
 
 That region which knows no star. 
 
 * Cotton sedge. 
 
GATHER money: 197 
 
 Gather Money. 
 
 Dreaming, drudging — ^money, money! 
 
 That's the age's cuckoo song; 
 That's the spell whose mighty magic 
 
 Charms a moiling world along. 
 
 All for money millions furrow 
 Earth and ocean o'er and o'er : 
 
 Lucre laughs at death and danger, 
 Storm and plague, on sea or shore. 
 
 Mammon's gewgaws lure us onward 
 Till we gain the goal of care; 
 
 There the fairy baubles vanish — 
 Riches, winged, fly us there. 
 
 Yet, for money, precious money. 
 
 Search with shrewdness, strive and toil; 
 
 Wrest it from the gripe of ocean. 
 Delve it out from rock and soil; 
 
 Not for power or pomp or pleasure. 
 Idols base that sway mankind; 
 
 Consecrate your garnered treasure 
 To the god within you shrined. 
 
 Glean from sands of action's river, 
 Hoist from mines of thought and soul. 
 
 Gold to guard you or deliver 
 
 From your "fellow worm's"tcontrol— 
 
198 GATHER MONEY. 
 
 Iron despot, bigot brazen 
 
 Who would God's own truth enchain. 
 Pillory science, hound down reason 
 
 With the bandogs, want and pain. 
 
 Want and pain and shame and danger 
 Though they rage and howl, we know, 
 
 Duty cries, "To blood resisting. 
 Strike, hell's brood to overthrow. 
 
 "Sham and fraud and red oppression, 
 Cramping customs, crushing laws. 
 
 Even should their fell aggression 
 Whelm the champion and the cause. 
 
 i9 
 
 Though ye claim this hero courage, 
 And the martyr spirit boast. 
 
 Sheathe you well in golden armor 
 Ere you meet the ravening host. 
 
 Golden blades will gain the battle; 
 
 Where Damascus steel would fail; 
 Sect's and party's darts will rattle 
 
 Harmless on your golden mail. 
 
 Mighty money, freedom giver. 
 Honest effort's precious dower, 
 
 Win, to save you or deliver 
 
 From the world's tyrannic power 
 
SPMmO'JS SADI{BS3 AND QLADNE88. 199 
 
 Spring's Sadness and Gladness. 
 
 Joy-beaming Spring, how I welcome thy brightness 
 E'en tho' my spirit has lost of its lightness ; 
 E'en tho' my soul, in the fetters of sadness, 
 Boundeth no more with the pulses of gladness. 
 
 Sweetly the pangs of ineffable pleasure 
 Hope without limit and joy without measure 
 Thrilled my whole heart when in life's blessed morning 
 I laughed at the frowns of those cloudlets of warning. 
 Emitting low thunder from iar, had I hearkened, 
 Foretelling these storms which my zenith have darkened. 
 The wild throbbing life of that morn is no more; 
 Dread and gloom fill the soul, for the rapture before. 
 Yet can I welcome the beauty thou bringest. 
 Yet am I soothed with the song that thou singest. 
 And sympathize full with the life thou hast given — 
 The gladness of earth and the glory of heaven; 
 When borne with the sea-soothing Zephyrus over. 
 Thou kissest our isle with the warmth of a lover. 
 Till born on her breast are the million-dyed flowers. 
 Clothed in thy sunshine and gemmed with thy showers. 
 
 Iris-eyed Spring, can I hope, can I borrow, 
 What giveth man's soul in its struggles new might 
 As yesterday's dreams and the faith of to-morrow 
 The vanished, the coming, I read in thy light ? 
 How bright thou recallest my infancy's glory, 
 When life had just left the bright region afar; 
 
200 SPEma'8 SADNESS AND GLADNESS. 
 
 And bliss was yet beaming behind and before me. 
 For doubt had not risen my rapture to mar ! 
 Sweetly thou wooest my world-weary spirit 
 Onward to regions where care is no more ; 
 On to those splendors we sigh to inherit — 
 Isles of O'Brasil we strayed from of yore. 
 
 Joy-beaming Spring, how I welcome thy brightness. 
 
 Sad tho' my soul and bereft of its lightness, 
 
 E'en though the smiles from which winter clouds vanish. 
 
 Cannot my darkness and dreariness banish ; 
 
 Cannot, while lighting hill, valley, and plain, — 
 
 Kindle the hopes of my bosom again. 
 
 * Celtic Paradise. 
 
TO THE SONG OUSEL IN WINTER. 201 
 
 To the Song Ousel in Winter. 
 
 Mellow minstrel of the grove 
 Whence thy joy-born lay of love 
 Flowed in streams of deep delight 
 When the year was young and bright, 
 Summer, with a softened sheen, 
 Gleaming through the covert green. 
 Now, since all that leafy home. 
 Like some gay, enchanted dome, 
 Like the tents, of morn, hath fled 
 From above thy houseless head. 
 Whither, whither canst thou fly 
 From a harshly scowling sky. 
 When, with voice of awful sound, 
 Boreas roars and rages round, 
 And the snows of heaven are hurled 
 On a cold and lonely world? 
 
 Yet, with woe and want oppressed, 
 Scarce a roost for needed rest 
 Where each dank or frozen spray 
 Sighs and shivers night and day. 
 Not a murmur of complaint 
 More than from a martyred saint. 
 Not a sigh of thine or tear 
 Can a mortal see or hear; 
 
205J TO TEE SONG 0U8EL IN WINTER. 
 
 But, with patient, hopeful mind, 
 Meek and tranquil and resigned, 
 Waitest for the vernal hours, 
 Brighter skies, and blooming bowers. 
 
 O, that thou on me would'st pour 
 Not alone thy minstrel lore, 
 But they gift far more sublime — 
 Calmness 'mid the storms of time; 
 That when clouds and darkness roll 
 O'er the azure of my soul. 
 When my summer-blossomed joy 
 Raving winds of woe destroy 
 Or, with unrespecting rage. 
 Sweep the wintry wastes of age, 
 I may suffer with a mind 
 Patient, tranquil, and resigned, 
 Hoping for the bliss and bloom 
 Of a spring beyond the tomb. 
 
THE LOBN WIDOW 8 LAMENT. 203 
 
 The Lorn Widow's Lament. 
 
 The daisies peep forth from the young green grass 
 For the smiles of the gladsome spring; 
 
 From woodland and lawn, in the mist-white dawn, 
 The hymns of the warblers ring. 
 
 The daffodils dance in the breeze of noon; 
 
 On the hillside blooms the whin, 
 And the bogs rejoice at the lapwing^s voice 
 
 And the snipe's weird quavering din; 
 
 The violets gleam from the brown-browed dike 
 G'er-arched by his green-gemmed crown, 
 
 Where the bards that sing from spring to spring 
 Are winning a fresh renown, — 
 
 Those honey- voiced minstrels, Robin and Wren, 
 
 Who gladdened the wintry day, 
 And, founding a home for the broods to come. 
 
 Are warbling their cares away ; 
 
 But Fm like the sorrowing widowed bird 
 On her perch in the lonesome gloom. 
 
 When her young are not, and her mate is shot. 
 And despair, the bereaved one's doom. 
 
204 THE LORN WIDOW 8 LAMENT. 
 
 Neither sun nor song nor the spring breeze bland ^ 
 
 Can waken one life for me, 
 As I joyless stand 'mid the gay green land 
 
 Like that blighted and branchless tree. 
 
 The March wind soughs through the rustling reeds 
 
 That bend by the clear blue waves, 
 As it comes from yon bed of the clay-clothed dead 
 
 Like a whisper from out of their graves. 
 
 But no! never even one whispered word 
 
 Can I draw from the closed lips there: 
 No news can I hear from year to year 
 
 Though I weary the heaven with prayer.* 
 
 One by one with death they have gone. 
 
 No power to stay or save ; 
 Let the blossoms spring and the songsters sing, 
 
 I'll rejoice when I find the grave.f 
 
 * Wearying Heaven with warm devotion. — Burns. ^ Job iii. 
 
DECADENCll AND BERBA tEMEMf. ^65 
 
 Decadence and Bereavement. 
 
 Fast wanes the warmth of autumn's ray- 
 When corn is reaped and leaves are lying, 
 
 And winter's howling heralds prey 
 On summer's latest roses dying; 
 
 When south the failing sun declines, 
 
 And leaves the north in darkness sleeping, 
 
 As through October's mists he shines 
 
 On earth all sad from heaven all weeping. 
 
 When we, as sons of science say. 
 
 His glowing globe are nearing weekly. 
 
 And he should dart a stronger ray, 
 His beam is feeble, faint, and sickly. 
 
 Thus wanes the light that warmed my soul 
 
 And joy and glory radiated, 
 Till clouds of disappointment roll 
 
 O'er all the heaven that hope created. 
 
 The heaven that spanned the golden years. 
 
 When boyhood's blooming raptures crowned me, 
 
 Undimmed by dark regrets and fears — 
 
 The fogs that since have thickened round me. 
 
206 DEGADENGE AND BEREAVEMENT. 
 
 Faded are all my summer flowers, 
 
 My joys like summer song-birds, banished; 
 
 And fancy's gorgeous cloud-built towers 
 Before the winds of fate have vanished. 
 
 And oh! this late, remorseless blast, 
 Fiercer than all that blew before it. 
 
 My last green leaf to earth has cast 
 For grim despair to trample o'er it. 
 
 Sweep on, sweep on, ye wasting storms. 
 
 As wild as chaos ere creation ! 
 Ye cannot, in your fellest forms, 
 
 Make a completer desolation. 
 
TEE HOMELESS. ^7 
 
 The Homeless. 
 
 Hearts to love her homes to shelter 
 Let the lonely wanderer find; 
 
 Screen her from the storms that pelt her. 
 From misfortune's rain and wind. 
 
 Blooming near her native river 
 
 Like a daffodil in spring, 
 Little dreamed the maid she'd ever 
 
 Roam a lorn and blighted thing. 
 
 She the pride of rural valleys, 
 She the prized of rustic swains. 
 
 Fades amid your fetid alleys 
 And your pestilential lanes. 
 
 They, her happy prime who cherished. 
 Nearest, dearest, shield and stay. 
 
 By the shafts of fate have perished 
 And their hearts are cold in clay. 
 
 Or the perjured pander's lying 
 
 Has beguiled a virgin fair ; 
 And the frighted damsel's flying 
 
 From the new discovered snare. 
 
 Gliding grief-wild through the city 
 Crowded mart and thoroughfare. 
 
 Meets she not a heart to pity 
 
 'Mid the throngs that thicken there? 
 
^08 ^-^^ ^oMelebs. 
 
 All too busy, all too eager 
 
 Hunting pleasure, grasping gain. 
 
 To regard that form so meager 
 Drooping in her drought of pain. 
 
 Oh ! her soul's one blight of sadness 
 As she wanders up and down, 
 
 And her brain's a whirl of madness 
 As she thrids the mazy town. 
 
 And her limbs grown weak and weary 
 Scarcely hold her from the ground. 
 
 And her heart within is dreary, 
 Dreary as the world around. 
 
 Christians boasting wealth and station. 
 
 To redeem the lost be yours; 
 Let her not of stark starvation 
 
 Sink and die before your doors. 
 
 Worse may chance. She's weak and human. 
 Save her from the burglar's den, 
 
 Save her from degraded women! 
 Save her from abandoned men ! 
 
 Hearts to love her, homes to shelter. 
 
 Let the lonely wanderer find, 
 Screen her from the storms that pelt her. 
 
 From misfortune's rain and wind. 
 
 % 
 
LAST WOMBS TO MUjlNA. 209 
 
 Last Words to Moina. 
 
 Yes, Moina, pluck from that dear heart of thine 
 
 A love that can to no fruition rise; 
 Yet, oh ! despair's black frost repel from mine 
 
 With th« warm light of those angelic eyes. 
 Yea, cheat me into that most soothing faith — 
 
 The fond delusion of the love-sick soul — 
 Which whispers, "More than faltering language saith 
 
 Lies in her secret breast's unopened scroll." 
 O give my shipwrecked hopes this raft of thought 
 
 To waft them to their haven in the clay, — 
 That when I lie, by all the world forgot. 
 
 My name in Moina's memory shall stay: 
 That thou wilt sometimes come at dying day 
 
 And pitying, view my shamrock-sheeted bed, 
 Trim its green flowery turf and o'er me pray. 
 
 And drop a kindly tear upon my head. 
 The thought that I shall then so sweetly lie. 
 Will be enough to make me long to die. 
 
310 TO TEE YOUNG SPRING FL0WEK8. 
 
 To the Young Spring Flowers. 
 
 Darling daughters of palmy Spring, 
 In your gala robes of the rarest dyes. 
 
 Gloom and sorrow and care take wing 
 
 From your glances gay as the morning skies ! 
 
 Blessings upon you wherever you beam, — 
 In the tilled parterre, on the virgin sod, — 
 
 Through the clouds and the fog of the soul ye gleam 
 With a joy that thrills like the smiles of God! 
 
 As ye dance to the lyre of the western breeze 
 On laughing plain and exultant hill, 
 
 As ye gladden the turf or rejoice the trees 
 Which murmur a bass to the warbler's trill. 
 
 My heart ye wake to a heavenly hope 
 As into his deepest of depths ye shine. 
 
 Ye rouse my soul with the doubts to cope 
 That would sap the life of her life divine, 
 
 As each of you chants in a strain of light, 
 "The Spirit 'that dwells and works' in me. 
 
 That has waked me up to a life so bright, 
 At the time He has set will remember thee/' 
 
TO THE TOUNa SPBING FLOWERS. 211 
 
 We shuddering shrink from the noisome tomb 
 Where the forms we loved are unsightly clay; 
 
 Yet out of such darksome depths ye bloom — 
 Such dungeons of dread and drear decay — 
 
 Proclaiming, that something divine below, 
 
 Whence forms of splendor and grace can rise — 
 
 Some germens of beauty, in earth must glow — 
 Some glory that's hidden from tear-dimmed eyes; 
 
 That it is not the loathsome and ghastly thing 
 
 We have dreamed and dreaded in grief-dark hours^ 
 
 To sleep where ye slumbered, sweet elves of spring, 
 Awaiting His call who hath waked the flowers. 
 
2ia TO TEE LOVED AND LOST. 
 
 To the Loved and Lost. 
 
 Once again the forest minstrels sing 
 
 Bursting tombs of re-awakened flowers; 
 
 Once again the blessed "breeze of spring" 
 Hither wafteth rapture-freighted hours. 
 
 Glory beameth down from heaven to earth; 
 
 Joy, life's incense, soars from earth to heaven; 
 Beauty hath her glad and gladdening birth; 
 
 Hope once more to lone, lorn hearts is given.— 
 
 April's blossoms and Favonian airs, 
 
 O, my lost one, whisper me of thee 
 As thou smiledst free from griefs and cares 
 
 In the springs that never more can be — 
 
 Springs like Eden's, when the gay, green land 
 Seemed one bliss-bright paradise of love. 
 
 Whither Angel-freighted zephyrs bland 
 Bore the bounty of the realms above. 
 
 Then in spring's young bloom and life's, we mated, 
 Blithe earth chanting to the laughing sky : 
 
 I rejoiced like Adam new created 
 When he woke and Eve stood blushing nigH. 
 
 Thou wast then my sacrificial fire ; 
 
 Thou, my brightened being's solar blaze; 
 Woe is me! I've watched that flame expire, 
 
 Darkling, wildered, In a hopeless maze. 
 
TO THE LOVED AND LOST, 213 
 
 Now the fairyland of time has vanished ; 
 
 Youth's lost paradise — the gates are barred; 
 From the bowers of bliss and beauty banished. 
 
 Life I thrid lone, luckless, evil-starred. 
 
 Yet, ere borne from my embrace away. 
 
 Cherub-fondled, to the spirit sphere. 
 Didst thou not grief's cureless pangs allay 
 
 With the hope that thou would'st hover near? 
 
 Come, and glad this long expectant soul ; 
 
 Come, and fetch this saddened heart some cheer; — 
 Are there climes where raptures, star-like, roll 
 
 Round the heaven of Heaven's eternal year ? 
 
 Say, lost love, we only sipped below 
 
 Joy's first draught from God's unfathomed fount; 
 Shall we quaff of that exhaustless flow 
 
 Welling from celestial Zion's mount? 
 
 Love — O, shall he wed with joy? shall we 
 Wed anew — we, death-divorced no more? 
 
 Joy and love — O, say they shall not be 
 Fleeting phantoms on th' immortal shore. 
 
»14: THE UNBETUBNING. 
 
 The Unreturning. 
 
 Youthful and glad-hearted, hopeful and brave. 
 To-day for a far, rich mart he sails. — 
 
 "Fear not, mother, for wind or wave, 
 Our good ship weathers the stiff est gales. 
 
 "Canvas and steam, at an early day, 
 
 Shall speed me back to the dear old home; 
 
 Let me wipe these sorrowing tears away; 
 For duty and hope are thundering 'Come !' " 
 
 Quick beyond ken of her yearning eye. 
 Her gallant young sailor has boldly gone; 
 
 Five sons, who are safe, are standing by. 
 
 But they fill not the place of the vanished one. 
 
 Sweetly and dearly the May skies glow; 
 
 Tenderly green is the spring's young grass; 
 She sees not the beauty above or below; 
 
 "Her earth is iron, her heaven is brass." 
 
 Flashes at length from a distant strand, 
 "Home-bound and hearty; weVe traded well." 
 
 They shall soon meet the loved in the lovely old land. 
 And their tales of adventure right merrily tell. 
 
 To the mother, now basking in joy-bright hope. 
 The world once more looks glad and fair. — 
 
 "Hasten, ye suns, over heaven's blue cope. 
 And the hours on pinions electric bear!" 
 
THE UNRETUBNING. 215 
 
 And the suns do haste, and the date is past 
 
 That promised him home from his distant bourn. — 
 
 "Are they threading that isle-strewn wilderness vast 
 Among atolls and reefs that bar return? 
 
 "Is he swept from his deck? Has he breathed the 
 plague ? 
 
 Or have murderous hands made his grave the sea? 
 But away with such questionings wild and vague ! 
 
 If he's dead^ what's the mode of his death to me? 
 
 "Not a soul in that vessel sends even one word; 
 
 Such silence proclaims, like a knell, 'All's lost/ 
 In my dreams, a black hulk with grim specters on board 
 
 Rolls helplessly weltering, wandering, tossed. 
 
 "O, days long as sea-serpents, slow crawling nights, 
 With your dragons and fiends, a horror-led train. 
 
 How your cruelest demon. Suspense, delights 
 In dragging to madness this frenzied brain! — 
 
 "Weak, weak to exhaustion. — O, chastening God, 
 I would trust Thee and love Thee if only I could; 
 
 I would bow to Thy will, I would kiss Thy^ rod ; 
 But these hell-bred terrors expell all good." — 
 
 A telegram: — "Lost with her cargo and crew." 
 
 Where sank she! mid ocean, strait, channel, or bay? 
 
 By rock, flame, or tempest? No witness, none knew; 
 That good ship's sea sepulchre, none knows to-day. — 
 
 Mother, O mother, though moans and cries 
 
 To your heart and your hearth cannot call him again. 
 
 Think whose is the Hand that shall wipe all eyes 
 
 And deliver God's world from its death-born pain.— 
 
216 THE VxTRJETURNINa. 
 
 'Tis a pang too keen, 'tis a stroke too dread, — 
 Woe*s last fell swoop on a quivering mind; 
 
 AH joy for all time from her life has fled, 
 And Reason "is gone with the winged wind/ 
 
QUARANTINE, 217 
 
 Quarantine. 
 
 A widow, bowed and blanched by time, 
 By age's frost and sorrow's showers, 
 
 Forced from the home that nursed her prime, 
 From cottage pets and garden flowers. 
 
 Must dare the rude Atlantic's rage 
 For yon green valley's April smiles; 
 
 But a son's love shall cheer her age 
 By grand Ontario's thousand isles. 
 
 Her land is lost, her kindred, dead. 
 But here at least their graves remain, 
 
 Where the spring daisies deck their bed. 
 By Ballinderry's ivied fane. 
 
 Here too she leaves each blissful scene 
 She trod "in glory and in joy," 
 
 When her life's May was flush and green. 
 And beauty glowed in earth and sky. 
 
 Loved names are graven on her heart. 
 Loved objects brightly pictured there; 
 
 But, from the loved, she must depart 
 O'er ocean's desert of despair. 
 
 She reached that widely sheltering land 
 Where Erin's wandering millions roam; 
 
 But, plague-smit, died upon its strand. 
 Wild crying for one glimpse of home. 
 
218 QUARANTINE. 
 
 "O, give me," prayed the poor, forlorn 
 
 Waif on an unfamiliar shore, 
 "Again to see the spears of Mourne, 
 
 To gaze on loved Lough Neagh once more ! 
 
 "I walked that lake's white sanded banks 
 Long ere I knew the earth has graves ; 
 
 And there the fairies play their pranks 
 O'er dew-bright grass and moonlit waves. 
 
 "I've watched it when the glorious noon 
 Reflected, seemed the grander light; 
 
 I've sailed it when the harvest moon 
 Shed heaven upon the autumn night. 
 
 "Its memory flashes through my soul; 
 
 O let its splendor strike mine eye; 
 Let me once see its billows roll, 
 
 Then in God's peace, I'll gladly die!" 
 
 Alas! no more it blessed her view; 
 
 Far rests she from its castled shore. 
 Far from her cottage by the Crewe, 
 
 Far from thy whispering reeds, Portmore. 
 
 THE END. 
 
JAN 15 1901