LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Class 
 
A TREASURY 
 OF IRISH POETRY 
 
A TREASURY 
 
 OF 
 
 IRISH POETRY 
 
 IN THE ENGLISH TONGUE 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 STOPFORD A. BROOKE 
 
 AND 
 
 T. W. ROLLEST.ON 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
GENERAL 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1900. Reprinted 
 March, 1905. 
 
 J. 8. Gushing & Co. Berwick &, Smith Co, 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY 
 
 AMONG WHOSE MANY SERVICES TO IRELAND WAS THE 
 
 PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST WORTHY COLLECTION 
 
 OF IRISH NATIONAL POETRY, THE EDITORS 
 
 WITH DEEP RESPECT 
 
 DEDICATE THIS VOLUME 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE position which Ireland holds in the literature of the world 
 is beginning to be understood at last. In the nineteenth 
 century, Ireland, slowly relieved from the oppression which 
 forbade her very speech and denied education to her native 
 intelligence, made known to scholars and the friends of litera- 
 ture the imaginative work she had done in the past. England, 
 who for many years encouraged the cry Can any good come 
 out of Ireland ? has shown little interest in that work, and the 
 class which in Ireland calls itself cultivated has shown even 
 less interest than England. A few Celtic scholars, many of 
 whom are quite unknown to fame ; and a few ' rebellious 
 persons,' who having no chance with the sword grasped the 
 pen began this labour of love. They awakened little excite- 
 ment in Trinity College, Dublin, but they did stir up Conti- 
 nental scholars ; and that which an Irish University on the 
 whole neglected, was done by German and French professors 
 and students with system, accuracy, and enthusiasm. Moreover, 
 the modern school of critical historians in England and the 
 Continent soon recognised and proclaimed the originating and 
 inspiring work by which Ireland, in ancient days, had awakened 
 England and Europe into intellectual, artistic, and religious life. 
 The people who from our little island did so much for the 
 civilisation of the nations wrote and spoke at home the Irish 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 tongue, and all their poetical work up to the beginning of this 
 century is in that tongue. But England naturally wished to 
 get rid of the Irish tongue and was naturally careless of its 
 literature. Ireland herself, and that was a pity, did not care 
 enough about her own tongue to preserve it as a vehicle for 
 literature ; and finally her poets and thinkers were steadily 
 driven to ase the English language. Much has been lost by 
 this destruction of a literary language, but much has also been 
 gained. If Irish can again be used as a vehicle for literature, 
 so much the better. A few are now making that endeavour, 
 and all intelligent persons will wish them good luck and 
 success. It is no disadvantage to a man or a country to be 
 bilingual, and the teaching and use of the Irish tongue will 
 throw light upon the ancient form of it, enable scholars to 
 understand it better, and increase our knowledge of its 
 treasures Moreover, there are many realms of imaginative 
 feeling in Ireland which can only be justly put into poetic 
 form in the tongue of the country itself. No other vehicle can 
 express Jhem so well. 
 
 On the other hand, the gain to Irishmen of speaking 
 and writing in English is very great. It enables them to 
 put their national aspirations, and the thoughts and passions 
 which are best expressed in poetry, into a language which is 
 rapidly becoming universal. It enables them to tell the world 
 of literature of the ancient myths, legends, and stories of 
 Ireland, and to represent them, in a modern dress, by means of 
 a language which is read and understood by millions of folk in 
 every part of the world. These considerations lie at the root 
 of the matter, and if Irish writers do not deviate into an imita- 
 tion of English literature, but cling close to the spirit of their 
 native land, they do well for their country when they use the 
 English tongue. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The use of English by national poets and versifiers may 
 be said to have begun towards the end of the eighteenth 
 century; it has continued ever since, and this book is a 
 history and Anthology of that poetry. We have divided it into 
 six books, representing on the whole distinct phases, but these 
 divisions must not be too sharply separated. They overlap 
 one another, and there will sometimes arise, in the midst of a 
 new phase, a poet who will revert to the types of the past or 
 make a forecast into the future. The short introductions to 
 these books discuss the characteristics and the historical 
 sequence of the general movement of Irish poetry during the 
 nineteenth century. The arrangement of the selections in 
 these six books illustrates that movement. 
 
 When the book was first projected, I wished to include 
 nothing in it which did not reach a relatively high standard of 
 excellence. But I soon discovered and this was strongly 
 urged by my brother Editor that the book on those lines 
 would not at all represent the growth or the history of Irish 
 poetry in the English language. Moreover, our original pur- 
 pose had already been carried out by Mr. Yeats in his too 
 brief Anthology, and it was advisable that we should adopt a 
 different aim. It must also be said, with some sorrow, that 
 the Irish poetry of the first sixty years of this century would 
 not reach, except in a very few examples, the requirements 
 of a high standard of excellence. Art is pleased with the 
 ballads, war songs, political and humorous poetry, and with 
 the songs of love and of peasant life, but she does not admit 
 them into her inner shrine. It is only quite lately that modern 
 Irish poetry can claim to be fine art. But as it has now, in 
 what is called the Celtic Revival, reached that point, the history 
 of the poetry that preceded it, and examples from it, are of 
 value and of interest, at least to Irishmen. We laid aside then 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 our original intention, and our book is a systematic record of 
 the best poems we can cull from the writers of the nineteenth 
 century. It is also a history of the development of a special 
 national art, and as such has a real place in the history of 
 literature. The modern as well as the earlier forms of that 
 art stand completely apart from the English poetry of their 
 time. Moreover the book illustrates very vividly the history 
 of Ireland and of her movement towards a national existence. 
 
 We do not claim for the poetry a lofty place. That would 
 be unwise and untrue. But I have given reasons in the second 
 part of this Introduction why we claim for it not only the 
 affection and reverence of Irishmen, but a distinct place in the 
 temple of Poetry, and a bland and sympathetic interest from 
 the students, the critics and the lovers of literature. They 
 will find here a school of poetry in the making, a child growing 
 into a man ; and a slight sketch of its progress may not be out 
 of place in this Introduction. 
 
 Goldsmith and other Irishmen had written poems in the 
 English tongue before the close of the eighteenth century, but 
 they were English in matter and manner, and belonged to the 
 English tradition. The national poetry of Ireland, written in 
 English, began towards the close of the eighteenth century with 
 the ballads and songs made by the peasants, by the hedge-school- 
 masters and their scholars, and by the street beggars. Nearly 
 all those distinctive marks of the Irish poetry of the first half 
 of the nineteenth century on which I shall hereafter dwell 
 make in these a first and rude appearance. Even before 1798 
 William Drennan, a cultivated gentleman, beat the big patriotic 
 drum in English verse ; and the United Irish movement, 
 together with the influence of Grattan and his Parliament, 
 strengthened that conception of an Irish nation which was now 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 embodied by the ballad- makers, and sung in drawing-rooms by 
 fine ladies, and by ragged minstrels from street to street of the 
 towns. Wrath and sorrow alike filled these ballads, and pride 
 in Ireland. * When Erin first rose from the dark swelling tide ' 
 was the first of a multitude of poems with the same motive ; 
 and it was sung all over Ireland. It was followed by the 
 'Wearin' of the Green,' a song which has glided into a 
 national anthem, and by the 'Shan Van Vocht,' which cele- 
 brated the sailing of the French to Ireland to help the revolt 
 of Lord Edward FitzGerald. Thomas Moore struck the same 
 national note, and forced it into prominence in English 
 society. 
 
 Along with this patriotic poetry, and always accompanying 
 it in Ireland, the elegiac pipe was heard, and Moore in his 
 best songs played upon it with a grace and tenderness in com- 
 parison with which his other poetry fades from our hearing. 
 Callanan and Gerald Griffin continued this strain, but it was 
 partly accompanied and partly succeeded, in an eminently 
 Irish revolt from sadness, by songs like those of Lever, Lover, 
 and P'ather Prout, in which the wit, fun, and wildness of the 
 Irish nature were displayed. 
 
 Before this amusing phase was exhausted, and in a grave 
 reaction from the elements of the stage Irishman contained in 
 it, the poets of the Nation newspaper, indignant that the light 
 gaiety of the Irish character (though they justly appreciated 
 the courage and charm of this gaiety in the days of misery) 
 should alone represent their people, and moved by the spirit 
 which soon passed into action when Europe rose for liberty 
 and justice in 1848, again set forth the national aspirations of 
 Ireland. They called on Protestant and Catholic alike, on the 
 Orange and the Green, to unite for the deliverance and nation- 
 ality of Ireland. Gavan Duffy, who founded and edited the 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Nation, Thomas Davis and their comrades, united literature to 
 their politics and civic morality to literature. Indeed, the 
 Nation poets are sometimes too ethical for poetry. Their 
 work inspired, almost recreated, Ireland ; and it still continues 
 to inspire Irishmen all over the world with its nationalising 
 spirit. Its poetry could not naturally be of a high class, but 
 it may be said to have made the poetic literature of Ireland. 
 The editors of this newspaper received and published poems 
 sent to them by peasants and struggling folk, hitherto voice- 
 less ; and extended in this way a love of literature, a know- 
 ledge of its ideals, and an opportunity to make it, over the 
 country. Those Irish also who had fled to foreign lands felt 
 the impulse given by this journal, and poetry awoke among the 
 emigrants. It became impossible, after the Songs of the 
 Nation were collected and published, for England or Europe 
 or America to either forget or ignore the passion for nationality 
 in the hearts of the Irish. 
 
 The Famine years in which the Death-keen of a whole 
 people was listened to by the indignation and pity of the 
 world, produced its own terrible poetry. A vast emigration 
 succeeded the Famine. A third of the population found it 
 impossible to live in Ireland ; and then a poetry of exile and 
 of passionate- remembrance of their land took form among 
 Irish poets, and melted into sorrow men whose hearts had 
 been hot with wrath. It was no wonder, after this dreadful 
 suffering, that political poetry lost the temperance of the Songs 
 of the Nation and took a ferocious turn in men like McCarroll ; 
 but of that kind of fierce poetry there is far less in Ireland 
 than we might expert.- 
 
 Of the men who succeeded l the poets of the Nation, Man- 
 
 1 I say ' succeeded,' but only in the sense of succession of one phase of 
 poetry to another. In reality, the beginning of the Gaelic movement was 
 contemporaneous with the rise of the political poetry of the Nation. 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 gan, whose genius was as wayward and as unequal as his life, 
 was the chief. He too, beyond his interest in foreign litera- 
 ture, was a political poet. But he was so with a difference, a 
 difference which brought a new and vitalising element not only 
 into Irish song, but into Ireland's struggle to be a nation. 
 Acquainted with the past history of Irish chiefs and their wars, 
 and also with Gaelic tradition, he derived from this wild and 
 romantic source a thrill of new enthusiasm, and began that 
 return to Gael-dom for inspiration which is so constant an 
 element in the Celtic revival of our own day. He brought 
 again into prominence, and with astonishing force, the histori- 
 cal ballad, and gave it a new life. His impulse descended to 
 Ferguson, and together they originated a new Celtic movement. 
 
 In the midst of this political poetry of the present and this 
 fresh poetry of the past, some tender little poems, always 
 appearing in the turmoil and pain of Ireland, celebrate with 
 quiet and graceful feeling the idylls of peasant life. This ele- 
 ment also has passed into our modern poetry, and fills it with 
 the stories of the lowly life and love of Ireland. 
 
 The Fenian movement which, hopeless of justice from con- 
 stitutional means, called Ireland to arms, did not produce 
 much poetry ; and what it produced was feebler, as a whole, 
 than the Songs of the Nation, but some lyrics included in our 
 book have a passionate intensity which I look for in vain 
 among the Nation poets. After '67, patriotic rage seldom 
 recurs as a separate motive for poetry. There were a few 
 Land League poets, but they were even less vigorous than the 
 Fenians. Political indignation lasts in modern poetry only as 
 part of the aspiration to nationality. Its fury is now no longer 
 heard. It flashes for a moment out of death or failure in the 
 poems of Fanny Parnell, but she is the last writer who was 
 passionately inspired by politics. 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 The modern movement, justly occupied more with poetry 
 for its own sake than with poetry in aggression against Eng- 
 land, has passed into a quieter land, with wider horizons. Its 
 indwellers have larger aims and aspirations than the poets 
 who preceded them. What is universal in poetry is greater to 
 them than any particular; what belongs to human nature all 
 over the world is more to them than what belongs to any special 
 nation. Nevertheless, they remain, as they ought to remain, 
 distinctively Irish. But they pass beyond Ireland also. They 
 desire to do work which may be united with the great and 
 beautiful Song of the whole world. While they love Ireland 
 dearly and fill their work with the spirit of Ireland, they also 
 wish to be inhabitants of that high Land of Art, where there is 
 neither English nor Irish, French nor German, but the spirit of 
 loveliness alone. 
 
 This new movement took two lines, which ran parallel to 
 one another, like two lines of railway. But now and again, as 
 lines of railway meet and intersect at stations, these two mingled 
 their motives, their subjects, and their manner. But, on the 
 whole, they ran without touching; and one followed the Eng- 
 lish and the other the Irish tradition. The poets who kept 
 the first line, and who are placed in Book VI., have been 
 so deeply influenced by Wordsworth, Keats, and in part by 
 Shelley, that even when they write on Irish subjects the airs 
 of England breathe and the waters of England ripple in their 
 poetry. It is impossible not to admire the subtlety, tenderness, 
 and love of nature of these poets, but their place is apart in an 
 Anthology of Irish poetry. They have not kept, along with 
 their devotion to their art, the spirit of their native land. They 
 are descended from the English poets ; and if they were to read 
 out their poems on Knocknarea, Queen Meave, and with her 
 the Fairy Race of Ireland, would drive them from her presence, 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 gently, for they are bards, but inevitably, and transport them 
 on the viewless winds to England. 
 
 The other line on which Irish verse ran was backward to 
 the recovery of the old Celtic stories and their modernising 
 in poetry, and forward to the creation of a new form of the 
 Celtic spirit. The poets who did and are doing this work, while 
 they have studied and honoured the great masters of song, 
 and, as they write in English, the English masters, have yet 
 endeavoured to secure and retain in their poetry not only the 
 national and spiritual elements of the character of the Irish 
 people, but also that appealing emotion which lives like a soul in 
 the natural scenery of Ireland, and makes it, at least for Irishmen, 
 transcend all other scenery by depth and range of sentiment. 
 
 I have said that Mangan began the return to Celtic tradition, 
 but as it were by chance, with no deliberate hand. Even before 
 him Callanan and Walsh had fallen back, out of their stormy 
 poetry, on the silent record of Irish story, and had put into 
 English verse some Gaelic poems. The translations Miss 
 Brooke had made in the last century were indeed the first 
 of all, but they were as English in manner as Goldsmith's 
 verses. Mangan was the true precursor of the revival of the 
 passion and thought of ancient and mediaeval Ireland. But 
 the leader of the choir was Sir Samuel Ferguson, whose ' Lays 
 of the Western Gael,' 1867, established the Celtic movement. 
 In his own time few cared to drink of the forgotten fountains 
 he struck from the rock where they were hidden, nor did he 
 gain the interest or gratitude of any wide society, but the 
 waters he delivered have swelled into fertilising streams. His 
 restoration of the sagas of Ireland has made a new realm for 
 romantic poetry, and given it fresh impulse and fresh subjects. 
 He has done this not only for Ireland, but for the literary 
 world. English, French, Germans, Americans have begun to 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 enter into and enjoy that enchanted land. Even Tennyson, 
 English of the English, could not resist its attraction. More- 
 over, its Cycle of Tales has proved its right to be one of the 
 great Subject-matters of poetry by its adaptability. The later 
 Irish poets who have modernised its tales or episodes have 
 been able to treat it with the same freedom and individuality 
 as the romantic poets did the legend of Arthur. A great Cycle 
 of Tales fits itself into the individual temper of each poet, and 
 calls on him, as it were imperiously, to make new matter out 
 of it. It desires no slavish following of its ancient lines ; it 
 begs for fresh creation. Ferguson, Sigerson, Aubrey de Vere, 
 Larminie, Todhunter, Russell, Nora Hopper, and William 
 Yeats have invented new representations of the old Celtic 
 stories, and the work of each of these poets stands apart. 
 
 Another phase of the Celtic movement, illustrated in this 
 book, tends to accurate translations, preserving the original 
 metres, of old Irish poetry into English verse. This has been 
 done with great enthusiasm and success by Dr. Hyde and Dr. 
 Sigerson. It has its interest : it adds to our knowledge ; but 
 the original poetry is curiously unequal, and the scientific 
 metres no more an excellence in Irish poetry than they are 
 in Icelandic. They limit both passion and freedom. 
 
 One would have thought that in this Celtic revival, faery 
 poetry would have occupied a large place. In Ireland the 
 fairies are still alive, and faery-land is still real. But they scarcely 
 live in the modern poets of Ireland. William Allingham's 
 fairies are of English origin. One Irish poet actually takes 
 refuge with Oberon and Titania, who, though they may trace 
 their far-off origin to Ireland, are creatures wholly different 
 from the Irish fairies, in whose atmosphere they could not 
 breathe. Oberon and Titania have never crossed the Channel. 
 The Irish fairies, who are descended from the great Nature 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 Gods and the under-deities of flood and fell and lake and angry 
 sea, are of a double nature, kindly and terrible ; and in their fall 
 from their high estate the terrible has, more than the kindly, 
 become their abiding temper. They do not therefore come 
 easily into subjects for modern verse, except when the Irish 
 poet is attacked by pessimism. Fortunately that disease is not 
 common in Ireland, and those who do suffer from it at times in 
 Ireland soon break out into laughter at themselves. Indeed, the 
 Fairy Race of Ireland themselves are not at all pessimistic. They 
 live their own life ; are very ancient in temper ; are quite un- 
 affected by science, art, and literature ; carry off beautiful human 
 girls and children, as their women carried off lovers of old from 
 the race of men ; avenge a slight or any want of reverence with 
 great promptitude and a native sense of justice ; dance, and play 
 music of their own making ; and even mingle a rare gamesome- 
 ness with their dignity and severity. It is a pity nothing has 
 yet in poetry been written about them with full insight and 
 knowledge. It is true their acquaintance or friendship is not 
 easily made, and the greater personages among them are very 
 haughty and reticent. But the lesser folk are more approach- 
 able, and are delightful company. There is but one poet in 
 Ireland who has been admitted to this retired and difficult 
 society, who knows a little of its terrible, mysterious, and 
 spiritual charm. 
 
 That charm has partly to do with a new phase of the 
 Celtic movement in poetry the last which has come into being, 
 and perhaps the most fruitful. For certain young poets, either 
 looking deeper into that mysterious world, or driven by a 
 spirit in themselves, have seen beneath the myths and legends 
 of Ireland, and in the hidden regions where the Nature Gods 
 of the Irish still dwell afar, the images and symbols of those 
 remoter states of the human soul, which only live on the border- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 land between the worlds of matter and spirit, and share in the 
 nature of both. And out of this has arisen a mystic school 
 of modern poets, who, if they do not isolate themselves too 
 much in that, will awaken a new power in Irish literature. But 
 to dwell only in that land, and never to emerge into the open 
 country where the great simplicities of human nature quietly 
 abide, will in the end weaken that type of poetry, and may 
 bring it to nothing. I am glad that some of the mystical poets, 
 having seen that truth, have written poems, as Blake did, full 
 of a natural humanity. 
 
 There has also been recovered, with a new note 
 attached to it, and with more of fine art than before, the 
 poetry of Irish humour and of its companion, pathos; and 
 poems, like those of Mr. Graves, are as gracious and gay as 
 they are national. Correlative with these, and passing into 
 them, are the idylls of the poor. Peasant life in Ireland is 
 radically different from peasant life in England ; it has its own 
 Celtic qualities and of the best ; and it holds a multitude of 
 tender, gay, sweet, courageous, and natural subjects for Irish 
 poets who love their countrymen and enjoy their temper. Many 
 such poems will be found in this book, and I hope that many 
 more will be written. There are plenty of remote and romantic 
 subjects in Irish life and legend, of wars, adventures, raidings, 
 sieges, of tragic loves and sorrows^of spells and enchantments, 
 of the gods and mortals in love and battle with one another, 
 of a hundred passionate and mystic things, and this com- 
 mercial modern world will welcome them, if they are not 
 moralised ; but the better food and pleasanter delights of poetry 
 will be found in the daily life of men and women spiritualised 
 by natural passion into that eternal world of Love where the 
 unseen things are greater than the seen. It is in that return 
 to natural love that poetry when athirst drinks fresh dew, and 
 
INTRODUCTION- xix 
 
 rises into a new life ; and in it will be found the true mysticism, 
 the vital spirituality, the passion, and that noble sensuousness 
 which, when it is thrilled through and through by the spiritual, 
 becomes, and especially in contact with nature, itself a part of 
 spirit. 
 
 This slight history of Irish poetry during a century is 
 necessarily inadequate. An introduction is limited : many 
 things must be omitted, many points left undeveloped, and 
 criticism of living poets must be left alone. These omissions 
 are filled up by the introductions and the criticisms in this 
 book. I have dwelt on tendencies rather than on men. It 
 remains to say something of the reason for publishing a separate 
 Anthology of Irish poetry, and of the distinctive elements of 
 that poetry. That there are distinctive elements in it is the 
 main reason for publishing its Anthology. 
 
 The first of these is its nationality. That, right or wrong, is 
 the deepest thing in Ireland, and it is a multitudinous absurdity 
 for England to try to ignore it. Even if it were wrong, as it is 
 not, all laws or any government which do not take it into the 
 highest consideration are bound to fail dismally in Ireland. 
 This stands to reason, but reason rarely influences Cabinets or 
 lawyers. It stands also to reason that if Irish nationality be 
 so deep a thing, the Irish literature which ignores it is bound 
 to be inferior in life and originality to that which is inspired by 
 it. And such is the case. The Irish poetry which follows the 
 English tradition too often wears an imitative look, languishes 
 into subtleties, or dreams into commonplace. Were it possible 
 that Irish literature should be anglicised, there would soon be no 
 literature worth the name in Ireland. It has not been anglicised. 
 No one can be deaf to the national note in the greater part 
 of the poetry here published. It is everywhere distinctive, 
 
xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 from the 'Wearin' of the Green' to the ' Wanderings of Oisin' ; 
 and there are so many forms of it that they alone give interest 
 to this book. 
 
 English poetry is national enough, but it is a national 
 poetry of pride (not ignoble pride), of victory and of joy. 
 Irish national poetry has its own pride, not ignoble either, but 
 different from English pride. It is the pride of the will 
 unconquered by trouble, of courage to endure ill-fate to the 
 end, of the illimitable hope for the future which is a child of 
 the imaginative powers. Nor is her national poetry of victory 
 and joy, but of defeat and sorrow and hope. The poems here 
 are in all points different from the national poems of England. 
 So sorrowful are they that English seems no fitting vehicle for 
 their emotions. . 
 
 When the English embody their nation, she sits by the sea- 
 shore, crowned ; with the triple fork of Poseidon to rule the waves ; 
 helmeted, and her shield by her side like Athena ; Queen of 
 her own isle, and in her mind, Queen of all the seas. She is a 
 poetic figure, but belongs more to the pride of life than the 
 passion of poetry. But when Irish poets imagined Ireland, she 
 sits, an uncrowned queen, on the wild rocks of the Atlantic 
 coast, looking out to the west, and the sorrow of a thousand 
 years makes dark her ever youthful eyes. Her hair, wet with 
 the dews, is her helmet, and her robe she has herself woven from 
 the green of her fields and the purple of her hills. This Virgin 
 Lady of Ireland, in the passion of her martyrdom, was the 
 subject, after her conquest by England, of a crowd of Gaelic 
 poems, and is the subject still of English poems by Irish poets. 
 And many names are hers, names under which she was hidden 
 from the English oppressors. Dark Rosaleen, Silk of the Kine, 
 Innisfail, the Little Black Rose, the Rose of the World, and others 
 too long to number ; but all of them belong to immortal beauty. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 One hardly wishes, for the sake of Art, that this Lady should 
 lose all the sorrow by which her loveliness is veiled, but yet, joy 
 would make her lovelier ; and the national symbol of Ireland 
 may yet have that enchanting light in her eyes. If Irish poetry 
 could so image her now, it would be well. That which is con- 
 ceived with imaginative truth often fulfils itself in reality. 
 
 Another distinctive mark of this poetry is its religion. Ire- 
 land's religion is linked closely to her nationality, and has been 
 as much oppressed. The note of the poetry is nearly always 
 Catholic, and Catholic with the pathos, the patience, and the 
 passion of persecution added to its religious fervour. English 
 poetry, on the other hand, is a poetry of many forms of religion ; 
 men of all churches and sects can find their spiritual sympa- 
 thies represented in it. But it has no specialised, no isolated 
 religious note, because persecution such as existed in Ireland 
 did not deepen its music into a cry. 
 
 The religious poetry of England (there are only a few excep- 
 tions, like Southwell) is comfortable and at peace. It plays its 
 pleasant, quaint, or solemn flute in quiet vicarages, or Bishops' 
 palaces, or in the classic gardens of the Universities. Even the 
 Nonconformist verse breathes the settled consolations of a 
 warless land. But the Irish religious poetry of the early 
 nineteenth century was written in prisons, under sentence 
 of exile or death, on the wild moor and in the mountain cave. 
 Its writers lived under the ban of Government, crushed by 
 abominable laws ; and the mercy given to the wolf was the only 
 mercy given to men whose crime was the love of their own 
 religion. Their religious poetry gained from that experience 
 a passionate love for the Catholic Church, and well the 
 Church deserved it. And we have in this book only too few of 
 the poems which image and record this love, expressed with an 
 intensity and devotion which, though it has but little art, has 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 much of nature. Things have changed since then ; persecution 
 has ceased, and the present Catholic poetry is written by com- 
 fortable persons. Yet the old savour clings to, and the ancient 
 passion rings in, the modern poems. The memories of martyr- 
 dom are as -powerful in song as its realities. 
 
 The matter and the manner have both changed. The 
 sacred legends of Irish saints are now told, and the glories 
 of the ancient Church of Ireland. The mystic elements, so 
 deep in Catholicism, are selected for the music of verse; 
 and their intense spirituality, white and rose-red with the 
 heavenly flames of wisdom and love, is a vital part of the 
 mysticism which is one of the powers of the Celtic revival. 
 
 Nor was the Church of Ireland left of qld, nor is she now 
 left, without her imagined personality. As the Lady of Ireland 
 was created by the poets, so was the Lady of the Church. She 
 sits on the shore of Irish Romance, hand in hand with her who 
 personifies Ireland as a nation, and two more pathetic figures 
 in their indomitable resistance to oppression, in their sorrow 
 and their hope, in' their claim to the love of their people 
 because of their own undying love, in their eternal youth to 
 which no oppression has given one stain of age do not exist 
 in the world of literature. They are clothed with the beauty of 
 their land, and the martyrdom of their people is their crown of 
 light. A thousand poems are hidden as yet in this con- 
 ception. 
 
 Another distinctive mark of this poetry is what England calls 
 Rebellion. Rebellion, even when its motive is only pride or 
 the support of an immoral cause, much more when it is waged 
 by sword or pen against legalised oppression and iniquitous laws, 
 is always a poetic motive. It is the weak against the strong, 
 independence against tutelage, the love of one's own land in 
 her hour of sorrow and danger. And all these motives are 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 vivid in Irish poetry. It is a poor country that can make no 
 songs in a struggle for freedom ; it is not worth its freedom. 
 
 Then, when the fierce songs of rebellious war are still, and 
 the rebels, defeated, suffer the penalties of the victor, songs of 
 pity and wrath awake together, and these are even more poetic 
 than marching and battle songs. And further, when the 
 struggle of the spirit goes on, though the bodily powers are 
 enslaved, and the soul of the people will not yield, but still in 
 silence breathes revolt the poetry of rebellion takes to itself 
 moral sanctions, and then, moral passion for justice is mingled 
 in that poetry with the finer passions of the spirit. 
 
 Nor does the matter end here. It is pitiful, but it is one 
 of the curses that are bred by injustice, that among the 
 injured people Revenge then claims to be Justice, and the 
 law, being identified with injustice by the people, is despised 
 and scorned. Sympathy with the legal criminal then arises in 
 song. The oppressed peasant who illegally rights his own 
 wrong is counted a martyr ; the outlaw and the prisoner are 
 made into knights of romance. Unjust law produces these 
 revolts against it, and where they are, the law is in fault, not 
 the people. In a well-governed country, except among the 
 degraded classes, they are not found. In Ireland, they were 
 found among men of high intelligence, of gentle manners, of 
 cultivated affections, of high and noble aims, of deep religious 
 fervour, and of poetic imagination. Many of these rose to 
 high offices in the State in other lands than Ireland, and some 
 were tender and graceful poets. It is worth while to read the 
 idyllic poems of Charles Kickham, the Fenian, and to ask 
 if one who felt thus was worthy of penal servitude. The fact 
 is that the greater number of Irishmen were proud to take the 
 hand of the ' treason-felons,' and thought their imprisonment 
 their crown of honour. That could not have occurred in 
 
xxi v INTR OD UCTION 
 
 England; and the reason was, not that these Irishmen were 
 bad, but that England was tolerably well-governed and Ireland 
 intolerably ill-governed. Well, in this long rebellion of body 
 and soul the poetry of rebellion grew up, and it is a distinctive 
 note in Irish poetry. There is not a trace of this kind of 
 poetry in English verse, but England created it in Ireland. 
 
 In the realm of Art in which I write, I am glad to have 
 poetry of this kind in the English language. Whether it be 
 rebellious or not does not matter to Art. The only questions 
 Art asks are : ' Is it well done ? was it worth the doing ? ' 
 and the readers of this book may answer the questions for 
 themselves. In the early Irish poetry rebellion, with all 
 its ' motives,' flames out incessantly. There is little good work 
 in it, but it is original, and its very rudeness attracts like 
 early sculpture. It has a daring, lilting, fine, and savage swing, 
 and sets, with great joy, the Saxon and the Celt in battle 
 array. It has an inspiration which breathes of the people, 
 and it calls for slaughter, revenge, and ruin with an energy 
 Art will not disdain. But pitiless poetry of this kind seldom 
 reaches a high level. Since the days of the Hebrew prophets, 
 who do possess the pitiless poetry in its highest form for their 
 fierce religion uplifted into strength the natural weakness of 
 vengeance I do not know any fine poetry which calls for 
 merciless slaughter and revenge. 
 
 The best rebel poetry of Ireland is not found among 
 such songs, but is found in those which are based on pity 
 for the imprisoned rebel, sorrow for the exile, and sympathy 
 with the outlaw. There is no class of poetry in England 
 that celebrates the first or the second of these motives. 
 There is in Scotland, and the Jacobite songs have the same 
 air of romance as the Irish songs of those who were hunted, 
 like Prince Charlie, from cave to cave, and who died for 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 XXV 
 
 the cause. They are numerous in the Irish records, and 
 though few are of fine poetic quality, yet their circumstances 
 enhance them. As to sympathy with the outlaw, we have 
 poetry of that kind in English literature, but we must go back, 
 in order to find it, for several centuries. The songs which 
 concreted themselves, year after year, round the names of 
 Robin Hood and his wild-wood followers bear, in their 
 sympathy with the outlaw, some analogy to the Irish poems 
 with the same subject. But there is a difference. The 
 English ballads are happy, the forest life is enjoyed, the 
 outlaws get the better of the law, and they are received into 
 royal favour at the end. The Irish songs are drenched in 
 sorrow, the life of the outlaw is wretched, the law chases him 
 like a fox, and when he is caught, he is slaughtered without 
 mercy. We have, for the most part, left those days behind us, 
 and no rebellious poetry, save a few scattered songs, now 
 appears. But in the realm of Art, in whose quiet meadows 
 we now read poems of this class, we may be glad to have 
 them in the English tongue. 
 
 The poetry of Misery also arose, a wild and melancholy 
 cry. Here and there a song of misery the misery of a class, 
 like the 'Song of the Shirt' is found in England ; but this Irish 
 poetry was for the misery of a whole country, for the misery of 
 millions. The sword had passed over Ireland, and torture was 
 added to the work of the sword. Then famine came, a famine 
 that concentrated into itself and doubled and trebled the 
 misery of former famines, a famine that awakened horror in 
 the whole of the civilised world. Men, women, and children 
 died by thousands of starvation. They fell dead in the streets of 
 the towns and on the moors and mountains, and their bodies 
 were given for meat to the fowls of the air and the beasts of 
 the field. On the top of that, pestilence arrived, and those 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 whom famine had spared plague destroyed. England sub- 
 scribed, when the mischief was done, a huge sum for Ireland's 
 relief, but the administration of it was marked by that absolute 
 want of common sense which till quite lately has always 
 characterised the government of Ireland by England. The 
 food given was totally unfit for creatures wasted with famine 
 and fever ; and tj*e starving peasants, weak as new-born children, 
 had often to walk miles to the centres of distribution. There 
 was plenty of good food in Ireland, but the poor could not 
 buy it. It was a famine of poverty, not of want of food. More 
 cattle, it is said, were exported to England that year from Ireland 
 than in any previous year. The misery of exile followed on 
 the pestilence. The number of those who, unable to find any 
 means of life in Ireland, left the country, carrying with them 
 hatred of England, runs into millions. Such a history is un- 
 exampled in Europe during the last hundred years. Indeed, 
 there is no indictment of past English rule in Ireland, even 
 when made by those who hate England most, so terrible as the 
 silent indictment of the miseries by which Ireland was deci- 
 mated. They could not have occurred in a decently governed 
 country. 
 
 Well, the misery had its poetry a kind of poetry unknown 
 before in literature written in the English tongue, and though, 
 as usual, its poetic excellence is not high, it has a passionate, 
 strange note, an astonished horror and dismay, a wild wail of 
 utterance, which Art, now that time has mellowed the memories 
 of the pain, accepts with gratitude, and would not willingly let 
 die. Ireland has added to English literature this poetry of the 
 Sword, the Famine, and the Pestilence. England could not 
 produce it, for centuries have passed away since she was 
 devastated from end to end by these dreadful sisters. Nor 
 has England any of the poetry of exile a pathetic and fruitful 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 motive. Its songs are among the best that the lyric poets of 
 Ireland have produced. They are simple, natural, direct, and 
 rapid. They seldom err, as so many Irish poems err, by over- 
 length, that is, by the poet's incapacity to select the suggestive 
 and cast away the superfluous. And they also have at their 
 root that poetic image of Ireland, as a Lady of Sorrow, whose 
 tragic fate has deepened for her the passionate love of her 
 people. Many of these songs are written in prison, in convict 
 ships, in the far lands into which the youth of Ireland fled to 
 gain bread to eat and raiment to put on, and they breathe the 
 hopeless desire to see again the hills and skies of Ireland. 
 Others, however banished, might return, and hope might be 
 in their songs, but the Irish exile had no hope. And many of 
 these songs are of visits to a native land in dreams, and have 
 the spiritual note of dreams. This then is another distinctive- 
 ness in Irish poetry, and even to the present day this motive 
 is continued. But the hopelessness of return, the woe of the 
 exile have departed. There is nothing now to prevent a man 
 returning to Ireland, and political exile, we may hope, has 
 ceased to be. But the memory of what has been still lives 
 in Art, and is used by Art. 
 
 Another class of poems are only distinctive from the dis- 
 tinctive character of the Irish peasant. The idylls of the poor, 
 the loves and sorrows of the poor, belong to all countries, and 
 are excellent subjects for poetry, when they are 'naturally felt. 
 Any distinctiveness the Irish poems of this kind possess, 
 many of which are contained in this book, arises from a special 
 doubleness in the Irish character, which indeed exists in other 
 peoples, but is nowhere, I think, so clear in its divisions, and so 
 extreme in its outward forms, as in Ireland. The peasant meets 
 overwhelming trouble with the courage and the endurance 
 of a fatalism which is only modified by his profound religion. 
 
xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 He dies in silence and submission, but as long as there is a 
 shadow of hope that fate will lift her hand, the uncomplaining 
 courage with which he stems misfortune, the steady affection 
 with which he defends those he loves against it, is as intelligent 
 and of as high a morality as it is simple and unconscious. 
 The peasant idylls of sorrow and trouble met with courage and 
 love, and then with simple fatalism, have their own peculiar 
 touch a touch whose note is deepened by the underlying 
 thought of the vast misfortune of their country. All personal 
 trouble is only an incident in Ireland of the vaster trouble of 
 the whole land an element in poetry which cannot belong to 
 English poetry. Along with this are the poems which repre- 
 sent a contrasted feature in the Irish character. The moment 
 the weight of trouble is removed or if in the midst of the 
 worst trouble a sudden impulse of joy or love should come, 
 or of physical excitement or of intellectual humour a sudden 
 reaction sets in ; the elastic heart forgets for the time its 
 pain ; the acuteness of the trouble ministers to the acuteness 
 of the gaiety, and a wild, gay, witty, sometimes turbulent joy 
 leaps into life, during which the world is filled with laughter and 
 brightness and satisfied affection. This is the source of the witty 
 and delightful songs which, even in the darkness of famine and 
 pestilence, emerged in Irish literature, and which are apart 
 from all other songs in the English language. They celebrate 
 the ideal pleasure of fanciful intoxication, the mutual games 
 and fun of two sweethearts, the joys of fighting, the rapture of 
 making a fool of a man and telling him of it, and even the wild 
 and wicked daring of the ' Night before Larry was Stretched.' 
 Nowhere in English, since the days of ' Golias,' can such songs 
 be found, and I dare say the English are glad that they are 
 impossible. But Art, in its bold young moods, may not be 
 sorry to possess them. 
 
INTRODUCTION- xxix 
 
 I have already described how, when the worst stress of 
 these woes was over, the Irish poets ceased to express them- 
 selves in political poetry, but nevertheless save in those poets 
 who followed the English tradition consecrated their verse 
 towards the support of a vigorous and vital nationality : first, by 
 the representation in a modern dress of the Irish myths and sagas ; 
 and secondly, by the representation of the spiritual elements 
 of the modern world from an Irish standpoint, and in an Irish 
 spirit. The subject makes the first distinctively Irish, but 
 recommends itself to the use of poets and story-tellers in all 
 nations that love literature. When art and criticism have cleared 
 the Celtic stories from their early coarseness and rudeness and 
 their later extravagance of diction and ornament, they will be 
 a treasure-house of subjects for those who love the past, or for 
 those who love to modernise the past. But those who work 
 at them in these ways in Ireland will have to possess or to 
 sympathise with the Celtic spirit, must understand and feel 
 its distinctiveness. The material, when modernised, seems to 
 demand that condition, at least from Irishmen. Men of other 
 countries may use the stories as they please, as the Normans 
 French, and Germans used the Tales of Arthur. But the Irish 
 poets must embody their ancient story in verse that breathes 
 the spirit of Ireland, or fall below their true vocation. They 
 may fill it with modern motives, symbolise and spiritualise its 
 tales ; they may change its robes ; they may animate it with 
 the passions and thoughts of our own time, and express it 
 with the fine and careful delicacy of poetic art. But the living 
 and distinctive soul in it will be born in Ireland. Of the fulfil- 
 ment of this no better or shorter example can be given than 
 Mr. Yeats' poem of the ' Hosting of the Sidhe.' 
 
 The other tendency of Irish poetry is towards a more 
 spiritual view of the world than now prevails in fine literature. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In this, however, it does not stand alone. Such a reaction 
 from mere sensuousness or materialism or from the common- 
 places of natural description and love, has visited French 
 poetry, and the wave of it has reached England. In France 
 both the mystic and religious elements of this spiritual move- 
 ment are represented in combination ; and there is one class 
 of Irish poets who have added to their religious work not only 
 the mysticism which, as I have said, lies so deep in the 
 Catholic Church, but also a lively leaven of Neo-Platonism, 
 with a modern Celtic addition of their own. The result of 
 this admixture is a curious, difficult, symbolic, and interesting 
 type of poetry, charged with motives of serene but somewhat 
 austere beauty. And the austerity in the beauty is not the 
 least charm in the poetry. We can claim for this Catholic and 
 mystic poetry, of which Mr. Lionel Johnson is the chief singer, 
 a real distinctiveness. With the exception of Francis Thomp- 
 son, himself a Catholic, English poetry is without it at present. 
 It used to exist in England, in work like that of Henry Vaughan 
 and other Platonists, but even there the difference between the 
 present Irish poetry, with its Celtic element like a fresh wind 
 within 'it, is clearly marked. 
 
 Other poets, of whom Mr. Russell is chief, have made 
 mysticism alone their subject. The powers which spiritually 
 move under the visible surface of human life, and lead it, in 
 its blindness, on to goals of which it knows nothing; the 
 powers which invisibly move under the forces and forms of the 
 natural world, and which create and recreate it day by day by 
 Thought and Love these are the subjects of the song of these 
 poets, and though we have .had purely mystic poets in England, 
 yet we have none now, and it is well to recover this element 
 for Art. Only, if it were possible for them to write about 
 universal human life as well, as all the greater poets have 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 done, and about Nature as she seems to the senses as well as 
 to the soul, it were better. Shelley, who was mystic enough on 
 one side of his being, was in full sympathy with the common 
 life of men and women on another side. Otherwise the purely 
 mystic poetry, with all its charm and art, hands on no torch. 
 It is then a childless woman. 
 
 Other writers, both men and women, have written on 
 religious matters without any admixture of mysticism, and 
 their poetry approaches more nearly to imaginative work than 
 the distinctly religious poetry of England. The religious poets 
 of Ireland are almost altogether Catholic, and it is well for 
 poetry that it is so. The Church of England poetry is weighted 
 away from Art by doctrinal and ecclesiastical formula, by a 
 diluted scepticism of the supernatural, and by a distrust and 
 reprobation of enthusiasm which has its source in the temper of 
 the universities a temper which Trinity College has inade- 
 quately imitated. As to the Nonconformists, they cherish 
 a most sorrowful want of imagination. Beauty has no 
 temple among their shrines, and it seems a pity that so 
 large and influential a body of citizens should be incapable 
 of producing any fine religious poetry. In Ireland, however, 
 the immense store of poetic subjects which belong to the 
 Catholic Church, the living faith in the legendary world of the 
 saints and in miracle, the multitude of thoughts, stories, and 
 passions which cluster round the vast antiquity of the Church 
 of Rome, and the poetic image (of which I have spoken) of 
 the young and virgin beauty of the persecuted Church of 
 Ireland, present to the poetic religious temper beautiful and 
 innumerable motives for song, and create incessant emotion 
 round them. I wonder there is not more religious poetry 
 written in Ireland, and in the Irish spirit. At present, we are 
 not likely to have it in England. Christina Rossetti is its only 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 imaginative representative in modern English, and she was at 
 root Italian. Her work has that high, pure, keen spiritual 
 note which the Celtic Catholic poetry loves to hear. And in 
 it also is that mingling of earthly sorrow with celestial joy, of 
 sweetness and austerity, in an atmosphere of mystic ecstasy, 
 which is vital, but not yet fully developed, in the Celtic 
 revival. 
 
 As yet, in modern Ireland, the larger religion is un- 
 touched, the religion of the greater poets not their personal 
 religion which is often limited but that which poetry of its 
 own will creates ; which answers to the unformulated aspira- 
 tions of the soul towards the eternal love; which is neither 
 Catholic nor Protestant, but includes both ; which has no fixed 
 creed, no necessary ritual, no formulas ; and no Church but that 
 invisible Church with which the innumerable spirits of the 
 universe are in communion, and whose device bears these 
 words : ' The Letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.' It is 
 my hope that the spiritual tendency of Irish poetry will 
 embody that conception. 
 
 These three tendencies in Irish poetry each with its dis- 
 tinctive Celtic touch, towards religion, towards mysticism, and 
 towards a mingling of both into one, have been united in 
 the poems of Mr. Yeats. He has added to them a spiritualised 
 representation of the ancient Celtic stories, and he has also done 
 some work, direct, simple, and humane, on actual life. His 
 poetry has therefore a wider range than that of his fellow-poets. 
 Moreover, he has suffused these various kinds of verse with 
 an imaginative spirituality which has borne their subjects, 
 while they belong to this world, into the invisible world of 
 which this is the shadow. I hope that, having proved his 
 universality, he will not fasten down into any one of these 
 several forms of poetry and abandon the rest. He has a 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 natural turn for mysticism and its symbolic ways, and it would 
 be a great loss if he gave up to this particular form what was 
 meant for mankind ; if, like Aaron's serpent, it swallowed 
 up the other forms of poetry. 
 
 Amid the varied aims of these poets there is one element 
 common to them all. It is their Nationalism. That 
 nationalism has on the whole ceased to be aggressive against 
 England, and that is all the better. Poetry has no national 
 feuds. But the nationalism which, in love of Ireland, sets itself 
 in poetry towards the steady evolution of the Celtic nature, 
 and the full representation of its varied elements that is vital 
 in these poets, and is vital to the life, growth, and flowering of 
 Irish poetry. Irish poetry, if it is to be a power in literature, 
 must be as Irish as English poetry is English. It has now 
 gained what of old it wanted. It has gained art. Its work is 
 no longer the work of amateurs. Its manner and melody are 
 its own. Its matter is not yet as great as it ought to be for 
 the creation of poetry of the higher ranges. The Subject- 
 matter of mankind has been only lightly or lyrically treated in 
 Ireland, or only in such side issues as mysticism or religion or re- 
 animation of the past. A graver, larger, and more impassioned 
 treatment of those weighty human issues which live in the 
 present, but are universal in the nature of man, is necessary 
 before Irish poetry can reach maturity. 
 
 As to the other great Subject-matter outward Nature as 
 seen and felt by man that, I am surprised to find, consider- 
 ing the feeling of the Celt for natural scenery, has received no 
 adequate treatment from the Irish poets. What they have as 
 yet done in this way is not to be compared with the work 
 of English or French poets ; moreover, the aspects of nature 
 in Ireland, the special sentiment and soul of natural scenery 
 in Ireland, so varied from sky to sea and from sea to land, 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 so distinguished and so individual, have not, save in a few 
 scattered lines, been expressed I had almost said, have not 
 been perceived by the poets who live in that scenery. A vast 
 subject-matter, then, almost untouched, lies before the future 
 Irish poets. 
 
 I have said that Art has only shown itself of late in the 
 Irish poetry of this century ; nor is there any attempt on my 
 part to claim for the poems in this book a lofty place in litera- 
 ture. The river of Irish poetry in the English language is yet in 
 its youth. It rose a hundred years ago in the far-off hills, and 
 wrought its turbulent way down the channelled gorge it carved 
 for its stream out of its own mountains. Other streams have 
 joined it, bearing with them various waters ; and it has 
 only just now issued from the hills, and begun to flow in 
 quieter and lovelier lands, glancing from ripple to pool and 
 from pool to ripple, among woods and meadows, happy, and 
 making its lovers happy. It is the youngest child of the 
 Goddess Poesy. Let it- be judged as a youth. In time, if it 
 remain true to its country's spirit, the stream that has just 
 emerged from the mountain torrent will become a noble river. 
 
 STOPFORD A. BROOKE. 
 
 October 1900. 
 
To the living authors who have kindly sanctioned the inclusion oi 
 writings, of theirs in this collection we desire to express our sincere 
 thanks. We also gratefully acknowledge permission given by the 
 undernamed publishing houses to make extracts from the works 
 set opposite their names : 
 
 John Lane BALLADS IN PROSE, and UNDER QUICKEN BOUGHS 
 by Miss Nora Hopper; THE EARTH-BREATH, by A. E. 
 
 /. M. Dent &> Co. THREE BARDIC TALES, by John Todhunter. 
 Cameron & Ferguson, Glasgow POEMS by 'Leo' (J. K. Casey). 
 William McGee, Dublin KOTTABOS. 
 
 Blackwood & Sons SONGS OF THE ANTRIM GLENS, by Moira 
 O'Neill. 
 
 Elkin Matheivs POEMS, by Lionel Johnson; ROSES AND RUE, 
 by Miss Alice Furlong. 
 
 Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner &> Co. ST. AUGUSTINE'S HOLIDAY 
 AND OTHER POEMS, by the Most Rev. Dr. Alexander, 
 Primate. 
 
 Macmillan & Co. POEMS, by Mrs. Alexander. 
 
 T. Fisher Unwin BARDS OF THE GAEL AND GALL, by George 
 Sigerson, M.D., F. R.U.I. ; POEMS, by W. B. Yeats. 
 
 We have also to thank Lady Ferguson and Mrs. Allingham 
 for permission to include extracts from the works of Sir Samuel 
 Ferguson and of William Allingham, and the Rev. H. Wynne for 
 a similar favour in regard to our extract from Mrs. Wynne's 
 volume ' Whisper.' 
 
XXXVI 
 
 It would be impossible to enumerate here all the works which 
 have been of use to us in the compilation of this anthology, but 
 special acknowledgment must be made to the editors of previous 
 anthologies whose labours have lightened ours. Among works 
 which have been of special service to us are Sir Charles Gavan 
 Duffy's BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND ; THE HARP OF ERIN, and 
 other collections edited by * Duncathail ' (R. Varian) ; POETS AND 
 POETRY OF IRELAND, by Alfred M. Williams; THE BALLADS OF 
 IRELAND, by Edward Hayes ; IRISH MINSTRELSY, by Halliday 
 Sparling; A BOOK OF IRISH VERSE, by W. B. Yeats. Mr. D. J. 
 CTDonoghue's DICTIONARY OF IRISH POETRY has of course 
 rendered us great service as a work of reference. We have also 
 to thank its author for the willingness with which he has placed 
 at our disposal his unrivalled knowledge of Irish literature. Mr. 
 John O'Leary has also kindly permitted us to draw upon his 
 valuable library of Irish works, as well as upon his no less 
 valuable store of judgment and information. The late Mr. John 
 Kelly lent us a very extensive collection made by him of fugitive 
 verse from Irish periodicals, for which we regret that we cannot 
 now thank him. 
 
 THE EDITORS. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 by the Rev. Stopford A. 
 Brooke . . . . vii 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 INTRODUCTION I 
 
 The Wearin' o' the Green . 2 
 The Sorrowful Lamentation 
 of Callaghan, Greally, and 
 Mullen .... 3 
 Hugh Reynolds . .-- " . . 4 
 Willie Reilly ... 6 
 The Night before Larry was 
 
 Stretched ... 8 
 ' Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye ' 10 
 The Cruiskeen Lawn . .12 
 Shule Aroon . .' .14 
 Irish Molly O . . .15 
 The Maid of Cloghroe . 16 
 Jenny from Ballinasloe . 18 
 The Boyne Water . .19 
 By Memory Inspired . .21 
 The Shan Van Vocht . . 22 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 WILLIAM DRENNAN : 
 
 Introductory Notice by D. J. 
 O'Donoghue . . -25 
 
 Erin 25 
 
 The Wake of William Orr . 27 
 My Father . . . .28 
 
 JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN : 
 Introductory Notice . . 30 
 The Deserter's Meditation . 30 
 
 R. B. SHERIDAN : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 30 
 Dry be that Tear . .31 
 Song . ... . .31 
 
 G. N. REYNOLDS: 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 32 
 Kathleen O'More . . 32 
 
 ANONYMOUS. . . -33 
 Kitty of Coleraine . . 33 
 
 THOMAS MOORE : 
 
 Introductory Notice by the 
 
 Rev. S. A. Brooke . . 34 
 The Song of Fionnuala . 43 
 The Irish Peasant to his 
 
 Mistress . . . -44 
 At the Mid Hour of Night . 45 
 When He Who Adores Thee 45 
 After the Battle . . . 45 
 The Light of Other Days . 46 
 On Music . . . -47 
 
 Echo 47 
 
 As Slow our Ship . . 48 
 No, Not More Welcome . 49 
 My Birthday . . . 49 
 
 CHARLES WOLFE : 
 
 Introductory Notice by T. 
 
 W. Rolleston . . .51 
 The Burial of Sir John 
 
 Moore . . . S3 
 Sonnet . . . -54 
 Lines written to Music . 55 
 
 LUKE AYLMER CONOLLY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 56 
 The Enchanted Island . 56 
 
 MARGUERITE A. POWER : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 57 
 A Hidden Rose-tree . . 57 
 
XXXV111 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 GEORGE DARLEY : PAGE 
 
 Introductory Notice by T. 
 
 W. Rolleston ... 58 
 From Nepenthe . *. 60 
 Hymn to the Sun . 60 
 True Loveliness . . .61 
 The Fallen Star . . . 62 
 From The Fight of the For- 
 lorn . . . .63 
 
 SAMUEL LOVER : 
 
 Introductory Notice by D. J. 
 
 O'Donoghue . . .64 
 Widow Machree . . 65 
 
 Barney O'Hea . . -67 
 Rory O'More ... 68 
 
 CHARLES JAMES LEVER : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 69 
 Larry M'Hale . . . 70 
 The Widow Malone . .71 
 
 FRANCIS SYLVESTER MAHONY 
 
 (FATHER PROUT) : 
 Introductory Notice . . 7 2 
 The Bells of Shandon . . 73 
 
 JOHN FRANCIS WALLER 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 74 
 The Spinning- Wheel . . 74 
 Kitty Neil . . . .75 
 
 WILLIAM CARLETON : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 76 
 Sir Turlough . . 77 
 A Sigh for Knockmany . 83 
 
 GERALD GRIFFIN : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 Geo. Sigerson, M.D. . 84%. 
 Gile Machree . . . 85 X 
 Cead Mile Failte, Elim ! . 87 
 Lines to a Seagull . 88 
 
 The Wake of the Absent . 89 
 Eileen Aroon . . 90 
 
 J. J. CAI.LANAN : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 Geo. Sigerson, M.D. . 92 
 The Dirge of O'Sullivan 
 
 Bear .... 93 
 The Convict of Clonmel . 96 
 Gougaune Barta . . 97 
 The Outlaw of Loch Lene . 98 
 
 EDWARD WALSH : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 99 
 Mo Craoibhin Cno . . 99 
 Have You Been at Carrick ? 101 
 
 EDWARD WALSH (cont. ) : PAGE 
 The Dawning of the Day . 102 
 Lament of the Mangaire 
 
 Sugach . . . 103 
 
 GEORGE Fox : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .104 
 The County of Mayo . 105 
 
 JOHN BANIM : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 D. J. O'Donoghue . 106 
 Soggarth Aroon . .107 
 He said that He was not 
 
 Our Brother . . .108 
 The Irish Mother . .109 
 
 BOOK III 
 THE POETS OF The Nation 
 
 INTRODUCTION by T. W. 
 Rolleston . . . in 
 
 THOMAS DAVIS : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .116 
 Celts and Saxons . . 118 
 Lament for the Death of 
 
 Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill . 120 
 The Sack of Baltimore . 121 
 The Girl of Dunbwy . 123 
 Nationality . . .124 
 
 JOHN DE JEAN FRAZER : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .125 
 Song for July 1 2th, 1843 . 126 
 
 JOHN O'HAGAN : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .127 
 Ourselves Alone . .127 
 The Old Story. . .129 
 Protestant Ascendency . 131 
 
 SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY : 
 Introductory Notice . . 133 
 The Muster of the North . 134 
 The Irish Rapparees . 137 
 
 WILLIAM B. MCBURNEY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .139 
 The Croppy Boy . -139 
 The Good Ship Castle Down 140 
 
 JOHN KELLS INGRAM : 
 
 The Memory of the Dead . 142 
 
 MARTIN MACDEKMOTT : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 144 
 Girl of the Red Mouth . 144 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xxxix 
 
 RICHARD DALTON WIL- PAGE 
 
 LIAMS : 
 
 Introductory Notice . 145 
 
 The Munster War-Song . 146 
 The Dying Girl . . 147 
 
 ELLEN MARY PATRICK DOWN- 
 
 IN<; : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 149 
 My Owen . . .149 
 The Old Church at Lismore 1 50 
 
 ARTHUR GERALD GEOGHEGAN : 
 Introductory Notice . . 151 
 After Aughrim . . \ 152 
 
 DENNY LANE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .152 
 The Lament of the Irish 
 Maiden . '. -153 
 
 MARY KELLY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . 153 
 
 Tipperary . :. . 154 
 
 JOHN KEEGAN : 
 Introductory Notice . . 155 
 The Irish Reaper's Harvest 
 
 Hymn 155 
 
 The 'Dark Girl' . .156 
 
 M. J. BARRY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .158 
 The Sword .- . . 159 
 
 M. TORMEY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . , 160 
 The Ancient Race . . 161 
 
 T. D'A. McGEE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 162 
 The Dead Antiquary . 163 
 To Duffy in Prison . .166 
 Infelix Felix . . .167 
 Salutation to the Kelts . 168 
 
 D. F. MCCARTHY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .169 
 ' Cease to do Evil ' . .170 
 Spring Flowers from Ire- 
 land . . .'- . 172 
 
 MICHAEL DOHENY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 175 
 A Cushla Gal mo Chree . 175 
 
 LADY WILDE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .'176 
 The Famine Year . . 177 
 (END OF POETS OF The Nation} 
 
 ANONYMOUS : 
 
 A Lay of the Famine . 1 79 
 
 JAMES MCCARROLL : PAGE 
 
 Introductory Notice . .180 
 
 The Irish Wolf . .180 
 
 JOHN SAVAGE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 181 
 
 Shane's Head . . .182 
 
 JOHN WALSH : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .184 
 
 To My Promised Wife . 184 
 
 Drimin Donn Dilis . .185 
 
 D. MACALEESE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .186 
 
 A Memory . . . 186 
 
 JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .187 
 
 Fionula . . . .189 
 
 Abhrain an Bhuideil . . 191 
 
 Shemus O'Brien . -193 
 
 CHARLES J. KICKHAM : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 John O'Leary . -199 
 
 Rory of the Hill . . 200 
 
 Myles O'Hea . . . 202 
 
 The Irish Peasant Girl . 205 
 
 St. John's Eve . . . 206 
 
 ROBERT DWYER JOYCE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 208 
 
 Fineen the Rover . . 209 
 The Blacksmith of Limerick 210 
 
 JOHN KEEGAN CASEY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 21 1 
 The Rising of the Moon . 212 
 
 Maire my Girl . . .213 
 
 ELLEN O'LEARY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .214 
 To God and Ireland True . 215 
 
 My Old Home . . .216 
 
 JOHN FRANCIS O'DONNELL : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .217 
 
 A Spinning Song . .217 
 
 T. C. IRWIN : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .218 
 
 A Window Song . .219 
 
 A Character . . . 22 1 
 
 From Cresar . . . 222 
 
 To a Skull . . . 224 
 
 LADY DUFFERIN : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 226 
 Lament of the Irish Emi- 
 grant .... 226 
 
 Terence's Farewell . . 228 
 
xl 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ANONYMOUS : PAGE 
 
 Music in the Street . . 229 
 
 DION BOUCICAULT : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 232 
 
 The Exiled Mother . . 232 
 
 T. D. SULLIVAN: 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 233 
 
 Steering Home . . 234 
 
 You and I ... 235 
 
 Dear Old Ireland . . 236 
 
 FANNY PARNELL : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 238 
 
 Post-mortem . . . 238 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 Lionel Johnson . . 241 
 Dark Rosaleen . . .250 
 A Vision of Connaught . 252 
 Lament for the Princes . 254 
 The Dawning of the Day . 260 
 Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan . 261 
 The Woman of Three Cows 262 
 The Karamanian Exile . 264 
 The Time of the Barme- 
 cides . . . 266 
 Siberia .... 268 
 O'Hussey's Ode to The 
 
 Maguire . . 269 
 
 The Nameless One . .271 
 
 Shapes and Signs . .273 
 
 . Gone in the Wind . . 274 
 
 Written in a Nunnery 
 
 Chapel . . . . 276 
 SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 A. P. Graves . . 276 
 
 Selections from ' Congal ' . 290 
 
 The Burial of King Connac 299 
 
 From Aideen's Grave . 303 
 
 The Fairy Thorn . . 305 
 
 The Fair Hills of Ireland . 308 
 
 Lament for Thomas Davis . 308 
 
 BOOK V 
 
 AUBREY DE VERB : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 Prof. W. Macneile 
 Dixon . . . -311 
 
 AUBREY DE VERE. (cont. ) : PAG E 
 The Sun God . . .314 
 
 From the Bard Ethell . 315 
 
 The Wedding of the Clans . 320 
 
 Dirge of Rory O'More . 321 
 
 Song . . .-. 322 
 
 Sorrow .... 322 
 
 The Year of Sorrow, 1849 323 
 
 The Little Black Rose . 329 
 
 GEORGE SIGERSON : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 Douglas Hyde, LL.D. . 330 
 The Lost Tribune . . 333 
 The Calling ... .. 334 
 Far- A way . . -335 
 The Blackbird's Song . 336 
 The Ruined Nest . . 336 
 The Dirge of Gael . . 338 
 Things Delightful . . 339 
 Solace in Winter . . 340 
 Lay of Norse- Irish Sea- 
 Kings .... 341 
 Love's Despair . . 344 
 
 WHITLEY STOKES : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 345 
 
 Lament for King Ivor . 346 
 
 King Ailill's Death . . 347 
 
 Man Octipartite . . 348 
 
 JOHN TODHUNTER : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 Prof. G. F. Savage- 
 Armstrong . . -35O 
 Morning in the Bay of 
 
 Naples . . . -3S 2 
 
 The Sons of Turann . . 353 
 Song . . . .357 
 
 Beethoven . . . 358 
 From The Fate of the Sons 
 
 .ofUsna . . . 358 
 
 Fairy Gold . . 363 
 
 WILLIAM ALLINGHAM : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 Lionel Johnson . . 364 
 
 /Eolian Harp . . . 367 
 
 A Gravestone . . . 368 
 
 The Banshee . . . 368 
 
 The Fairies . . . 370 
 The Winding Banks of 
 
 Erne . . . . 371 
 
 The Ruined Chapel . . 374 
 
 Therania .... 375 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xli 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 S. A. BROOKE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . 
 The Noble Lay of Aillinn . 376 
 The Earth and Man . . 379 
 ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 G. A. Greene . . 380 
 From The Girl with the 
 
 Cows . . . -3 8 5 
 The Limerick Lasses . 389 
 The Irish Spinning- Wheel. 392 
 Irish Lullaby . . 393 
 Father Q'Flynn . . 394 
 Fan Fitzgerl . . -395 
 Herring is King . . 396 
 FRANCIS A. FAHY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 398 
 The Donovans ." . . 398 
 Irish Molly O . . -399 
 The Quid Plaid Shawl . 400 
 MALACHY RYAN : 
 
 Introductory Notice . .401 
 Rose Adair . . .401 
 P. J. COLEMAN : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 403 
 Seed-Time . ... . 43 
 
 P. J. McCALL : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 404 
 Old Pedhar Carthy . . 405 
 Herself and Myself . . 406 
 LADY GILBERT : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 407 
 Song . . . . . 407 
 
 Saint Brigid . . . 408 
 KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 G. A. Greene . . 409 
 Larks . . . . 414 
 
 Daffodil ... . . . 414 
 
 Summer-Sweet. . .415 
 August Weather . .415 
 An Island Fisherman . 416 
 Lux in Tenebris . 417 
 Winter Evening . .417 
 Waiting .... 418 
 
 Saint Francis and the 
 Wolf . . ... 422 
 
 ROSE KAVANAGH : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 425 
 Saint Michan's Church- 
 yard .... 426 
 
 ALICE FURLONG : PACE 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 427 
 
 The Dreamer . . . 427 
 
 JANE BARLOW : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 G. A. Greene . . 428 
 
 Misther Denis's Return . 432 
 
 The Flitting of the Fairies . 435 
 
 DORA SIGERSON (MRS. 
 
 CLEMENT SHORTER) : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 Douglas Hyde, LL.D. . 437 
 
 Cean Duv Deelish . . 440 
 
 The Wind on the Hills . 440 
 
 A Rose will Fade . . 442 
 
 The One Forgotten . . 442 
 
 All Souls' Night . . 443 
 
 A Ballad of Marjorie . 444 
 
 STEPHEN Lucius GWYNN : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 446 
 
 Out in the Dark . . 446 
 
 Mater Severa . . . 447 
 
 FRANCES WYNNE: 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 448 
 
 A Lesson in Geography . 448 
 
 MOIRA. O'NEILL : ' 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 451 
 
 Corrymeela . . . 451 
 
 Johneen . . . . 452 
 Lookin' Back . . -453 
 
 DOUGLAS HYDE : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 454 
 
 My Love .... 454 
 Ringleted Youth of my 
 
 Love .... 456 
 
 My Grief on the Sea . . 457 
 Little Child . . -457 
 
 The Address of Death . 458 
 
 T. W. ROLLESTON : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 460 
 
 The Dead at Clonmacnois . 460 
 
 The Lament of Maev . 461 
 
 Song of Maelduin . . 462 
 
 THOMAS BOYD : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 463 
 
 To the Leanan Sidhe . 463 
 
 The King's Son . . 465 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON : 
 
 Introductory Notice by W. 
 
 B. Yeats . . .465 
 Ways of War . . .467 
 
xlii 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON (conl.}: PAGE 
 Te Martyrum Candidates . 468 
 The Dark Angel . . 469 
 The Church of a Dream . 470 
 The Age of a Dream . 471 
 
 NORA HOPPER : 
 
 Introductory Notice by W, 
 
 B. Yeats . . . .471 
 The Fairy Fiddler . . 473 
 The Dark Man . . 474 
 
 Phyllis and Damon . -475 
 
 ALTHEA GYLES : 
 
 Introductory Notice by W. 
 
 B. Yeats . . . 475 
 Sympathy . . . . . 475 
 
 WILLIAM LARMINIE: 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 'A. E.' . . . 476 
 The Speech of Emer . . 477 
 Epilogue to Fand . . 479 
 Consolation . . . 480 
 The Sword of Tethra . 481 
 
 STANDISH J. O'GRADY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 482 
 Lough Bray . . . 483 
 I Give my Heart to Thee . 484 
 
 A. E. : ' 
 
 Introductory Notice by W. 
 
 B. Yeats . . .485 
 Sacrifice . . . ' . 487 
 Dana . . . 487 
 
 Symbolism . . 488 
 
 Janus . . . . 489 
 Connla'sWell . . .489 
 Our Thrones Decay . .490 
 The Three Counsellors . 490 
 Inheritance . . '491 
 The Memory of Earth . 491 
 
 W. B. YEATS : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 
 T. W. Rolleston . . 492 
 The Hosting of the Sidhe . 498 
 Michael Robartes remem- 
 bers Forgotten Beauty . 499 
 The Rose of the World . 500 
 The Lake Isle of Innisfree 500 
 When you are Old . .501 
 A Dream of a Blessed 
 
 Spirit . . , . .501 
 The Lamentation of the Old 
 Pensioner . . . 502 
 
 W. B. YEATS (cont. ) : PAGE 
 
 The Two Trees . ' . 502 
 
 The Island of Sleep . . 503 
 
 BOOK VI 
 
 SIR AUBREY DE VERE : 
 Introductory Notice by 
 Prof. W. Macneile 
 
 Dixon . - . . . 509 
 
 Gougane Barra . . . 5 11 
 
 Liberty of the Press . . 511 
 The Rock of Cashel . .512 
 The Shannon . . .512 
 Spanish Point . . .512 
 
 JOHN KELLS INGRAM : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 513 
 
 Sonnet : Majuba Hill . 514 
 
 Social Heredity ' . . 514 
 
 Nationality . > . -' . 515 
 
 WILLIAM ALEXANDER : 
 
 Introductory Notice . 5 r 5 
 
 Among the Sand-hills . 516 
 Inscription . ., .518 
 
 Very Far Away . . 518 
 
 CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER: 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 519 
 
 The Siege of Derry . . 520 
 
 The Irish Mother's Lament 523 
 
 Dreams . . ' . 526 
 
 EDWARD DOWDEN : 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 Prof. W. Macneile 
 
 Dixon . . . . 527 
 
 On the Heights . . 528 
 
 Aboard the ' Sea Swallow ' 530 
 
 Oasis . . . 53 1 
 
 EDMUND JOHN ARMSTRONG: 
 
 Introductory Notice . 531 
 
 The Blind Student . . 532 
 Adieu . . . .532 
 
 From Fionnuala . . 533 
 
 GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE- 
 ARMSTRONG : 
 Introductory Notice by T. 
 
 W. Rolleston . -534 
 
 The Scalp . . . 538 
 
 A Wicklow Scene . . 538 
 
 Wicklow .... 539 
 
 Through the Solitudes . 542 
 
 Gay Provence . . . 546 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xliii 
 
 WILLIAM WILKINS : PAGE 
 
 Introductory Notice by 
 Prof. G. F. Savage-Arm- 
 strong .... 547 
 From Action . . 548 
 
 Disillusion . .,'. 551 
 
 The Magazine Fort . -551 
 
 GEORGE ARTHUR GREENE : 
 Introductory Notice . . 552 
 Art's Lough . . .553 
 On Great Sugarloaf . -553 
 The Return . . . 554 
 Lines - .... 556 
 
 WILLIAM KNOX JOHNSON : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 556 
 An Anniversary . . 556 
 
 W. E. H. LECKY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 558 
 Undeveloped Lives . . 558 
 
 W. E. H. LECKY (font.) : PAGE 
 
 The Sower and his Seed . 559 
 
 THE ' KOTTABISTAI : ' 
 
 INTRODUCTION by Prof. G. F. 
 
 Savage- Armstrong . 560 
 
 C. P. MULVANY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 561 
 
 Emmeline . . . 562 
 
 Long Deserted . . . 563 
 
 JOHN HARTLEY : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 564 
 
 The Valley of Shanganagh 564 
 
 A Budget of Paradoxes . 565 
 
 ARTHUR PALMER : 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 5^5 
 
 Epicharis .... 566 
 
 PERCY SOMERS PAYNE: 
 
 Introductory Notice . . 5^7 
 
 Rest .... 568 
 
IRISH POETS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THERE are two classes of anonymous poems those which 
 seem to have grown up among the people, often perhaps the 
 work of more than one hand, and reflecting the spirit rather 
 of a class or of a race than of an individual j and those which 
 are distinctly individual and are only anonymous by the 
 accident that no author's name has ever been affixed to them. 
 The former class of poems are represented in the first and 
 briefest book of this Anthology. They represent, mainly, the 
 earliest attempts of the Irish peasantry to express themselves 
 in poetic form in the English language. 
 
 Multitudes of such attempts must have been made and 
 lost. Now and then a stray line or two has by virtue of its 
 pathetic music caught the ear of some man of letters and found 
 its way into print. Sir Charles Duffy has recorded his early 
 recollection of a rude ballad of this description, at the singing 
 of which he saw a whole dinner company dissolved in tears, and 
 in which the warm-hearted reception given by Belfast to Wolfe 
 Tone and the Catholic envoys of 1793 on their way to plead 
 for the freedom of their faith was thus spoken of : 
 
 The Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast : 
 The poor Irish exile she soothed as he passed. 
 
 Many such things there must have been, many more than 
 ever found their way into print, and many which were printed 
 as ballad sheets and are now lost for ever. But some have 
 
 B 
 
BOOK I 
 
 survived in chapbooks, anthologies, old newspapers, stray 
 records of every kind, and of these a selection is here given. 
 In some the grandiloquent phrase of the hedge-schoolmaster is 
 noticeable, some are pieces of wild irresponsible humour, some 
 have a tender and unconscious grace, or are animated by a 
 grotesque vitality, or express with rude fervour the patriotic 
 devotion of the peasant. A peasant-poetry of far greater beauty 
 and elevation was in process of creation at the time when the 
 majority of these pieces were written the eighteenth century 
 and the beginning of the nineteenth but this was in the Gaelic 
 tongue, then the language of the masses of the people. In 
 his " Love Songs " and " Religious Songs " of Connacht, Dr. 
 Douglas Hyde has turned much of this popular poetry into 
 English verse, retaining the characteristic traits of the original. 
 Specimens of this will be found under his name in Book V. 
 Here, however, we present only the first stammerings of the 
 Irish spirit in the new tongue which, about the beginning of 
 this century, began to be the language of Irish literature. 
 
 THE WEARIN' o' THE GREEN 
 
 The finest of Irish street-ballads, and described by a writer in the Athenceum 
 in 1887 as probably the finest street-ballad ever written. One of its numerous 
 variants sung in a play of Boucicault's has given rise to the belief that he wrote 
 it, but it appe irs to date from about the year 1798. It deserves to be called the 
 Irish National Anthem, if any piece of poetry can claim that title. 
 
 OH, Paddy dear ! an' did ye hear the news that's goin' round ? 
 
 The shamrock is by law forbid'to grow on Irish ground ! 
 
 No more St. Patrick's Day we'll keep, his colour can't be seen, 
 
 For there's a cruel law agin the wearin' o' the green ! 
 
 I met wid Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand, 
 
 And he said, ' How's poor Ould Ireland, and how does she stand ?' 
 
 She's the most disthressful country that iver yet was seen, 
 
 For they're hangin' men and women there for wearin' o' the green. 
 
 An' if the colour we must wear is England's cruel red, 
 
 Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed ; 
 
 Then pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod, 
 
 And never fear, 'twill take root there, tho' under foot 'tis trod ! 
 
STREET BALLADS 
 
 When law can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow, 
 And when the leaves in summer-time their colour dare not show, 
 Then I will change the colour, too, I wear in my caubeen, 
 But till that day, plaze God, I'll stick to wearin' o' the green. 
 
 THE SORROWFUL LAMENTATION OF CALLAGHAN, GREALLY 
 AND MULLEN 
 
 KILLED AT THE FAIR OF TURLOUGHMORE 
 
 A STREET-BALLAD 
 
 This is a genuine ballad of the people, written and sung among them. 
 The reader will see at once how little resemblance it bears to \.\\zpseudo Irish 
 songs of the stage, or even to the street-ballads manufactured by the ballad- 
 singers. It is very touching, and not without a certain unpremeditated grace. 
 The vagueness, which leaves entirely untold the story it undertook to recount, 
 is a common characteristic of the Anglo-Irish songs of the people. The cir- 
 cumstance on which it is founded took place in 1843, at the fair of Darry- 
 nacloughery, held at Turloughmore. A faction-fight having occurred at the 
 fair, the arrest of some of the parties led to an attack on the police ; after the 
 attack had abated or ceased, the police fired on the people, wounded several, and 
 killed the three men whose names stand at the head of the ballad. They were 
 indicted for murder, and pleaded the order of Mr. Brew, the stipendiary magis- 
 trate, which was admitted as a justification. Brew died before the day appointed 
 for his trial. Note by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 
 
 ' COME, tell me, dearest mother, what makes my father stay, 
 
 Or what can be the reason that he's so long away ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! hold your tongue, my darling son, your tears do grieve me 
 
 sore ; 
 I fear he has been murdered in the fair of Turloughmore. 
 
 Come, all you tender Christians, I hope you will draw near ; 
 It's of this dreadful murder I mean to let you hear, 
 Concerning those poor people whose loss we do deplore 
 (The Lord have mercy on their souls) that died at Turloughmore. 
 
 It is on the First of August, the truth I will declare, 
 Those people they assembled that day all at the fair ; 
 But little was their notion what evil was in store, 
 All by the bloody Peelers at the fair of Turloughmore. 
 
 B2 
 
BOOK 1 
 
 Were you to see that dreadful sight 'twould grieve your heart, I 
 
 know, 
 
 To see the comely women and the men all lying low ; 
 God help their tender parents, they will never see them more, 
 For cruel was their murder at the fair of Turloughmore. 
 
 It's for that base bloodthirsty crew, remark the word I say, 
 The Lord He will reward them against the judgment-day ; 
 The blood they have taken innocent, for it they'll suffer sore, 
 And the treatment that they gave to us that day at Turloughmore. 
 
 The morning of their trial as they stood up in the dock, 
 
 The words they spoke were feeling, the people round them flock : 
 
 ' I tell you, Judge and Jury, the truth I will declare, 
 
 It was Brew that ordered us to fire that evening at the fair.' 
 
 Now to conclude and finish this sad and doleful fray, 
 
 I hope their souls are happy against the judgment-day ; 
 
 It was little time they got, we know, when they fell like new-mowed 
 hay, 
 
 May the Lord have mercy on their souls against the judgment- 
 day. 
 
 THE LAMENTATION OF HUGH REYNOLDS 
 
 A STREET-BALLAD 
 
 I copied this ballad from a broad-sheet in the collection of Mr. Davis ; 
 but could learn nothing of its date, or the circumstances connected with it. It 
 is clearly modern, however, and founded on the story of an abduction, which 
 terminated differently from the majority of these adventures. The popular 
 sympathy in such cases is generally in favour of the gallant, the impression 
 being that an abduction is never attempted without at least a tacit consent on the 
 part of the girl. Whenever she appears as a willing witness for the prosecution it 
 is said she has been tampered' with by her friends, and public indignation falls 
 upon the wrong object. The ' Lamentation ' was probably written for or by 
 the ballad-singers ; but it is the best of its bad class. 
 
 The student would do wel^to compare it with the other street-ballads in the 
 collection ; and with the simple old traditional ballads, such as ' Shule Aroon ' 
 and ' Peggy Bawn, 1 that he may discover, if possible, where the charm lies 
 that recommends strains so rude and naked to the most cultivated minds. 
 These ballads have done what the songs of our greatest lyrical poets have not 
 
STREET BALLADS frc. 5 
 
 done delighted both the educated and the ignorant. Whoever hopes for an 
 equally large and contrasted audience must catch their simplicity, directness, 
 and force, or whatever else constitutes their peculiar attraction. Note by Sir 
 Charles Gavan Duffy, Ball id Poetry of Ireland. 
 
 MY name it is Hugh Reynolds, I come of honest parents ; 
 
 Near Cavan I was born, as plainly you may see ; 
 By loving of a maid, one Catherine MacCabe, 
 
 My life has been betrayed ; she's a dear maid to me. 1 
 
 The country were bewailing my doleful situation, 
 
 But still I'd expectation this maid would set me free ; 
 
 But, oh ! she was ungrateful, her parents proved deceitful, 
 And though I loved her faithful, she's a dear maid to me. 
 
 Young men and tender maidens, throughout this Iri^h nation, 
 Who hear my lamentation, I hope you'll pray for me ; 
 
 The truth I will unfold, that my precious blood she sold, 
 In the grave I must lie cold ; she's a dear maid to me. 
 
 For now my glass is run, and the hour it is come, 
 And I must die for love and the height of loyalty : 
 
 I thought it was no harm to embrace her in my arms, 
 Or take her from her parents ; but she's a dear maid to me. 
 
 Adieu, my loving father, and you, my tender mother, 
 
 Farewell, my dearest brother, who has suffered sore for me ; 
 
 With irons I'm surrounded, in grief I lie confounded, 
 By perjury unbounded ! she's a dear maid to me. 
 
 Now, I can say no more ; to the Law-board - I must go, 
 There to take the last farewell of my friends and counterie ; 
 
 May the angels, shining bright, receive my soul this night, 
 And convey me into heaven to the blessed Trinity. 
 
 1 ' A dear maid to me.' An Irish idiom ; meaning, not that she was 
 much beloved by him, but that his love for her brought a heavy penalty 
 with it-^cost him dearly. Observe the effect of this idiom at the close 
 of the second verse. 
 
 2 Gallows. 
 
BOOK I 
 
 WILLY REILLY 
 
 Willy Reilly was the first ballad I ever heard recited, and it made a pain- 
 fully vivid impression on my mind. I have never forgotten the smallest incident 
 of it. The story on which it is founded happened some sixty years ago ; and 
 a-; the lover was a young Catholic farmer, and the lady's family of high 
 Orange principles, it got a party character, which, no doubt, contributed to its 
 great popularity. There is no family under the rank of gentry, in the inland 
 counties of Ulster, where it is not familiarly known. Nurses and sempstresses, 
 the honorary guardians of national songs and legends, have taken it into 
 special favour, and preserved its popularity. Note by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, 
 Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 
 
 * OH ! rise up, Willy Reilly, and come along with me, 
 I mean for to go with you and leave this counterie, 
 
 To leave my father's dwelling, his houses and free land ;' 
 And away goes Willy Reilly and his dear Coolen Ban. 
 
 They go by hills and mountains, and by yon lonesome plain, 
 Through shady groves and valleys, all dangers to refrain ; 
 But her father followed after with a well-armed band, 
 And taken was poor Reilly and his dear Coolen Ban. 
 
 It's home then she was taken, and in her closet bound ; 
 Poor Reilly all in Sligo jail lay on the stony ground, 
 Till at the bar of justice, before the Judge he'd stand, 
 For nothing but the stealing of his dear Coolen Ban. 
 
 1 Now in the cold, cold iron my hands and feet are bound, 
 I'm handcuffed like a murderer, and tied unto the ground. 
 But all the toil and slavery I'm willing for to stand, 
 Still hoping to be succoured by my dear Coolen Ban? 
 
 The jailor's son to Reilly goes, and thus to him did say : 
 4 Oh ! get up, Willy Reilly, you must appear this day, 
 For great Squire Foillard's anger you never can withstand, 
 I'm afeer'd you'll suffer sorely for your dear Coolen Ban. 
 
 'This is the news, young Reilly, last night that I did hear : 
 The lady's oath will hang you or else will set you clear.' 
 
 * If that be so,' says Reilly, ' her pleasure I will stand, 
 Still hoping to be succoured by my dear Coolen Ban? 
 
STREET BALLADS &>c. 
 
 Now Willy's drest from top to toe all in a suit of green, 
 His hair hangs o'er his shoulders most glorious to be seen ; 
 He's tall and straight, and comely as any could be found ; 
 He's fit for Foillard's daughter, was she heiress to a crown. 
 
 The Judge he said : ' This lady being in her tender youth, 
 
 If Reilly has deluded her she will declare the truth.' 
 
 Then, like a moving beauty bright, before him she did stand, 
 
 ' You're welcome there, my heart's delight and dear Coolen Ban.' 
 
 * Oh, gentlemen,' Squire Foillard said, ' with pity look on me, 
 This villain came amongst us to disgrace our family, 
 And by his base contrivances this villainy was planned ; 
 If I don't get satisfaction I'll quit this Irish land.' 
 
 The lady with a tear began, and thus replied she : 
 
 4 The fault is none of Reilly's, the blame lies all on me -, 
 
 I forced him for to leave his place and come along with me ; 
 
 I loved him out of measure, which wrought our destiny.' 
 
 Out bespoke the noble Fox, 1 at the table he stood by : 
 ' Oh, gentlemen, consider on this extremity ; 
 To hang a man for love is a murder, you may see : 
 So spare the life of Reilly, let him leave this counterie.' 
 
 ' Good my lord, he stole from her her diamonds and her rings, 
 Gold watch and silver buckles, and many precious things, 
 Which cost me in bright guineas more than five hundred pounds, 
 I'll have the life of Reilly should I lose ten thousand pounds.' 
 
 ' Good my lord, I gave them him as tokens of true love, 
 And when we are a-parling I will them all remove ; 
 If you have got them, Reilly, pray send them home to me.' 
 ' I will, my loving lady, with many thanks to thee.' 
 
 4 There is a ring among them I allow yourself to wear, 
 With thirty locket diamonds well set in silver fair, 
 And as a true-love token wear it on your right hand, 
 That you'll think on my poor broken heart when you're in foreign 
 land.' 
 
 1 The prisoner's counsel, afterwards a judge. 
 
8 BOOK I 
 
 Then out spoke noble Fox : * You may let the prisoner go ; 
 The lady's oath has cleared him, as the Jury all may know. 
 She has released her own true love, she has renewed his name ; 
 May her honour bright gain high estate, and her offspring rise to 
 fame!' 
 
 THE NIGHT BEFORE LARRY WAS STRETCHED 
 
 The authorship of this extraordinary piece of poetic ribaldry has been much 
 discussed, but the name of the modern Villon who uttered such an authentic 
 strain from La Bas has never been discovered, if indeed it had any single 
 author. Probably it was mainly a sense of humorous contrast which led it for 
 a long time to be attributed to a dignitary of the Established Church, Dean 
 Burrowes. It is written in Dublin slang of the end of last century. 
 
 THE night before Larry was stretched, 
 
 The boys they all paid him a visit ; 
 A bait in their sacks, too, they fetched ; 
 
 They sweated their duds till they riz it : 
 For Larry was ever the lad, 
 
 When a boy was condemned to the squeezer, 
 Would fence all the duds that he had 
 
 To help a poor friend to a sneezer, 
 And warm his gob 'fore he died. 
 
 The boys they came crowding in fast, 
 
 They drew all their stools round about him, 
 Six glims round his trap-case were placed, 
 
 He couldn't be well waked without 'em. 
 When one of us asked could he die 
 
 Without having duly repented, 
 Says Larry, ' That's all in my eye ; 
 
 And first by the clargy invented, 
 To get a fat bit for themselves.' 
 
 * I'm sorry, dear Larry,' says I, 
 
 ' To see you in this situation ; 
 And, blister my limbs if I lie, 
 
 I'd as lieve it had been my own station.' 
 4 Ochone ! it's all over,' says he, 
 
 ' For the neckcloth I'll be forced to put on, 
 
STREET BALLADS 
 
 And by this time to-morrow you'll see 
 Your poor Larry as dead as a mutton, 
 Because, why, his courage was good. 
 
 ' And I'll be cut up like a pie, 
 
 And my nob from my body be parted.' 
 ' You're in the wrong box, then,' says I, 
 
 ' For blast me if they're so hard-hearted : 
 A chalk on the back of your neck 
 
 Is all that Jack Ketch dares to give you ; 
 Then mind not such trifles a feck, 
 
 For why should the likes of them grieve you ? 
 And now, boys, come tip us the deck.' 
 
 The cards being called for, they played, 
 Till Larry found one of them cheated ; 
 
 A dart at his napper he made 
 (The boy being easily heated) : 
 
 * Oh, by the hokey, you thief, 
 
 I'll scuttle your nob with my daddle ! 
 You cheat me because I'm in grief, 
 But soon I'll demolish your noddle, 
 And leave you your claret to drink.' 
 
 Then the clergy came in with his book, 
 
 He spoke him so smooth and so civil ; 
 Larry tipped him a Kilmainham look, 
 
 And pitched his big wig to the devil ; 
 Then sighing, he threw back his head 
 
 To get a sweet drop of the bottle, 
 And pitiful sighing, he said : 
 
 ' Oh, the hemp will be soon round my throttle 
 And choke my poor windpipe to death. 
 
 * Though sure it's the best way to die, 
 
 Oh, the devil a better a-livin' ! 
 For, sure, when the gallows is high 
 
 Your journey is shorter to Heaven : 
 But what harasses Larry the most, 
 
 And makes his poor soul melancholy, 
 
io BOOK I 
 
 Is to think of the time when his ghost 
 Will come in a sheet to sweet Molly 
 Oh, sure it will kill her alive ! ' 
 
 So moving these last words he spoke, 
 
 We all vented our tears in a shower ; 
 For my part, I thought my heart broke, 
 
 To see him cut down like a flower. 
 On his travels we watched him next day ; 
 
 Oh, the throttler ! I thought I could kill him ; 
 But Larry not one word did say, 
 
 Nor changed till he come to * King William ' 
 Then, musha ! his colour grew white. 
 
 When he came to the nubbling chit, 
 
 He was tucked up so neat and so pretty, 
 The rumbler jogged off from his feet, 
 
 And he died with his face to the city ; 
 He kicked, too but that was all pride, 
 
 For soon you might see 'twas all over ; 
 Soon after the noose was untied, 
 
 And at darky we waked him in clover, 
 And sent him to take a ground sweat. 
 
 'JOHNNY, I HARDLY KNEW YE' 
 
 While going the road to sweet Athy, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 While going the road to sweet Athy, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 
 While going the road to sweet Athy, 
 A stick in my hand and a drop in my eye, 
 A doleful damsel I heard cry : 
 { Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
 With drums and guns, and guns and drums 
 
 The enemy nearly slew ye ; 
 My darling dear, you look so queer, 
 
 Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
STREET BALLADS frc. 11 
 
 * Where are your eyes that looked so mild ? 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 Where are your eyes that looked so mild? 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 
 Where are your eyes that looked so mild, 
 When my poor heart you first beguiled ? 
 Why did you run from me and the child ? 
 Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
 With drums, &c. 
 
 ' Where are the legs with which you run ? 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 Where are the legs with which you run ? 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 
 Where are the legs with which you run 
 When you went to carry a gun ? 
 Indeed, your dancing days are done ! 
 Och, Johnny, 1 hardly knew ye ! 
 
 With drums, &c. 
 
 * It grieved my heart to see you sail, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 It grieved my heart to see you sail, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 
 It grieved my heart to see you sail, 
 Though from my heart you took leg-bail ; 
 Like a cod you're doubled up head and tail. 
 Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
 With drums, &c. 
 
 ' You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 
 You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, 
 You're an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg ; 
 You'll have to be put wid a bowl to beg : 
 Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
 With drums, &c. 
 
12 BOOK I 
 
 1 I'm happy for to see you home, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 I'm happy for to see you home, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 
 I'm happy for to see you home, 
 
 All from the island of Sulloon, 1 
 So low in flesh, so high in bone ; 
 Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
 With drums, &c. 
 
 ' But sad as it is to see you so, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 But sad as it is to see you so, 
 
 Hurroo ! hurroo ! 
 But sad as it is to see you so, 
 And to think of you now as an object of woe, 
 Your Peggy '11 still keep ye on as her beau ; 
 Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
 With drums and guns, and guns and drums, 
 
 The enemy nearly slew ye ; 
 , My darling dear, you look so queer, 
 
 Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye ! 
 
 THE CRUISKEEN LAWN 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine a more jovial, sly, rollicking and altogether 
 irresistible bacchanalian song than the immortal ' Cruiskeen Lawn. 1 The 
 English words and the Irish blend together most happily. The chorus is pro- 
 nounced something like 
 
 Grd-ma-chree ma crooskeen, 
 
 Shldntya gal ma-voorneen 
 
 ' S grd-ma-chree a cooleen ban, &c. 
 
 a being pronounced as in ' shawl.' The meaning is : 
 
 Love of my heart, my little jug ! 
 
 Bright health to my darling ! 
 
 The love of my heart is her fair hair, &c. 
 
 The origin of the poem is lost in obscurity. It probably sprang up, in its 
 present form, in the convivial circles of eighteenth-century Ireland, and no 
 doubt has a reminiscence of some Gaelic original. Ldn = full. 
 
 1 Ceylon. 
 
STREET BALLADS &*c. 13 
 
 LET the farmer praise his grounds, 
 Let the huntsman praise his hounds, 
 
 The shepherd his dew-scented lawn ; 
 But I, more blest than they, 
 Spend each happy night and day 
 
 With my charming little cruiscin Ian, Ian, Ian, 
 
 My charming little cruiscin Ian. 
 
 Grddh mo chroidhe mo cruiscin, 
 Sldinte geal mo mhuirnin. 
 
 Is grddh mo chroidhe a cuilin bdn. 
 Grddh mo chroidhe mo cruiscin, 
 Sldinte geal mo mhuirnin, 
 
 Is grddh mo chroidhe a cuilin bdn, bdn, bdn, 
 
 Is grddh mo chroidhe a cuilin bdn. 
 
 Immortal and divine, 
 Great Bacchus, god of wine, 
 
 Create me by adoption your son ; 
 In hope that you'll comply, 
 My glass shall ne'er run dry, 
 
 Nor my smiling little cruiscin Idn, Idn, Idn, 
 
 My smiling little cruiscin Idn. 
 
 And when grim Death appears, 
 In a few but pleasant years, 
 
 To tell me that my glass has run ; 
 I'll say, Begone, you knave, 
 For bold Bacchus gave me lave 
 
 To take another cruiscin Ian, Ian, Idn, 
 
 Another little cruiscfn Ian. 
 
 Then fill your glasses high, 
 Let's not part with lips adry, 
 
 Though the lark now proclaims it is dawn ; 
 And since we can't remain, 
 May we shortly meet again, 
 
 To fill another cruiscin Idn, Ian, Idn, 
 
 To fill another cruiscin Ian. 
 
14 BOOK I 
 
 SHULE AROON 
 
 A BRIGADE BALLAD 
 
 The date of this ballad is not positively known, but it appears to be early 
 in the eighteenth century, when the flower of the Catholic youth of Ireland 
 were drawn away to recruit the ranks of the Brigade. The inexpressible 
 tenderness of the air, and the deep feeling and simplicity of the words, have 
 made the ballad a popular favourite, notwithstanding its meagreness and 
 poverty. Note by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Ballad Poetry of Ireland. 
 
 I WOULD I were on yonder hill, 
 
 J Tis there I'd sit and cry my fill, 
 
 And every tear would turn a mill, 
 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn ! 
 
 Siubhail, siubhail, siubhail, a riiin ! 
 Siubhail go socair, agus siubhail go ciuin, 
 Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus eulaigh Horn, 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn / l 
 
 I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel, 
 
 I'll sell my only spinning-wheel, 
 
 To buy for my love a sword of steel, 
 
 Is go d-teidh tu* a mhurnin, sldn ! 
 
 Siubhail, siubhail, siubhail, a ruin / 
 Siubhail go socair, agus sitibhail go ciuin, 
 Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus eulaigh liom^ 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn / 
 
 I'll dye my petticoats, I'll dye them red, 
 
 And round the world I'll beg my bread, 
 
 Until my parents shall wish me dead, 
 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn / 
 
 Siubhail, siubhail, siubhail, a ruin / 
 Siubhail go socair, agus siubhail go ciuin, 
 Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus eulaigh Horn, 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn! 
 
 1 In Mr. Halliday Sparling's IRISH MINSTRELSY Dr. Sigerson versifies 
 this chorus gracefully, and almost literally, as follows : 
 ' Come, come, come, O Love ! 
 Quickly come to me, softly move ; 
 Come to the door, and away we'll flee, 
 And safe for aye may my darling be ! ' 
 
STREET BALLADS 
 
 I wish, I wish, I wish in vain, 
 
 I wish I had my heart again, 
 
 And vainly think I'd not complain, 
 
 Js go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn / 
 
 Siubhail, siubhail, siubhail, a ruin ! 
 Siubhail go socair, agus siubhail go ciuin 
 Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus eulaigh Horn, 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn ! 
 
 But now my love has gone to France, 
 
 To try his fortune to advance ; 
 
 If he e'er come back, 'tis but a chance, 
 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhiirnin, sldn ! 
 
 Siubhail, siubhail, siubhail, a ruin ! 
 Siubhail go socair, agus siubhail go ciuin, 
 Siubhail go d-ti an doras agus eulaigh Horn, 
 Is go d-teidh tu, a mhurnin, sldn ! 
 
 IRISH MOLLY O 
 
 A STREET-BALLAD 
 
 Like ' Shule Aroon,' this ballad has been largely kept alive by virtue of the 
 beautiful and pathetic air to which it is sung. 
 
 OH ! who is that poor foreigner that lately came to town, 
 And like a ghost that cannot rest still wanders up and down ? 
 A poor, unhappy Scottish youth ; if more you wish to know, 
 His heart is breaking all for love of Irish Molly O ! 
 
 She's modest, mild, and beautiful, the fairest I have known 
 The primrose of Ireland all blooming here alone 
 The primrose of Ireland, for wheresoe'er I go, 
 The only one entices me is Irish Molly O ! 
 
 When Molly's father heard of it, a solemn oath he swore, 
 That if she'd wed a foreigner he'd never see her more. 
 He sent for young MacDonald and he plainly told him so 
 * I'll never give to such as you my Irish Molly O ! ' 
 
 She's modest, &c. 
 
16 BOOK I 
 
 MacDonald heard the heavy news and grievously did say 
 
 * Farewell, my lovely Molly, since I'm banished far away, 
 A poor forlorn pilgrim I must wander to and fro, 
 
 And all for the sake of my Irish Molly O ! ' 
 
 She's modest, &c. 
 
 * There is a rose in Ireland, I thought it would be mine : 
 But now that she is lost to me, I must for ever pine, 
 
 Till death shall come to comfort me, for to the grave I'll go, 
 And all for the sake of my Irish Molly O !' 
 
 She's modest, &c. 
 
 'And now that I am dying, this one request I crave, 
 To place a marble tombstone above my humble grave ! 
 And on the stone these simple words I'd have engraven so 
 " MacDonald lost his life for love of Irish Molly O ! "' 
 
 She's modest, &c. 
 
 THE MAID OF CLOGHROE 
 
 Air : 'Cailin deas cruithi-na-mbo.' 
 
 (The Pretty Girl milking the Cows. ) 
 
 As I roved out, at Faha, one morning, 
 
 Where Adrum's tall groves were in view 
 When Sol's lucid beams were adorning, 
 
 And the meadows were spangled with dew 
 Reflecting, in deep contemplation, 
 
 On the state of my country kept low, 
 I perceived a fair juvenile female 
 
 On the side of the hill of Cloghroe. 
 
 Her form resembled fair Venus, 
 
 That amorous Cyprian queen ; 
 She's the charming young sapling of Erin, 
 
 As she gracefully trips on the green ; 
 She's tall, and her form is graceful, 
 
 Her features are killing also ; 
 She's a charming, accomplished young maiden, 
 
 This beautiful dame of Cloghroe. 
 
STREET BALLADS frc. 17 
 
 Fair Juno, Minerva, or Helen, 
 
 Could not vie with this juvenile dame ; 
 Hibernian swains are bewailing, 
 
 And anxious to know her dear name. 
 She's tender, she's tall, and she's stately, 
 
 Her complexion much whiter than snow ; 
 She outrivals all maidens completely, 
 
 This lovely young maid of Cloghroe. 
 
 At Coachfort, at Dripsey, and Blarney 
 
 This lovely young maid is admired ; 
 The bucks, at the Lakes of Killarney, 
 
 With the fame of her beauty are fired. 
 Her image, I think, is before me, 
 
 And present wherever I go ; 
 Sweet, charming young maid, I adore thee, 
 
 Thou beautiful nymph of Cloghroe. 
 
 Now aid me, ye country grammarians ! 
 
 Your learned assistance I claim, 
 To know the bright name of this fair one 
 
 This charming young damsel of fame. 
 Two mutes and a liquid united, 
 
 Ingeniously placed in a row, 
 Spell part of the name of this phoenix, 
 
 The beautiful maid of Cloghroe. 
 
 A diphthong and three semivowels 
 
 Will give us this cynosure's name 
 This charming Hibernian beauty, 
 
 This lovely, this virtuous young dame. 
 Had Jupiter heard of this fair one, 
 
 He'd descend from Olympus, I know, 
 To solicit this juvenile phoenix 
 
 This beautiful maid of Cloghroe. 
 
18 BOOK I 
 
 JENNY FROM BALLINASLOE 
 
 This reads remarkably like a conscious burlesque on the hedge school- 
 master's style of love poem. 
 
 You lads that are funny, and call maids your honey, 
 
 Give ear for a moment ; ['11 not keep you long. 
 I'm wounded by Cupid ; he has made me stupid ; 
 
 To tell you the truth now, my brain's nearly wrong. 
 A neat little posy, who does live quite cosy, 
 
 Has kept me unable to go to and fro ; 
 Each day I'm declining, in love I'm repining, 
 
 For nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 
 
 It was in September, I'll ever remember, 
 
 I went out to walk by a clear river side 
 For sweet recreation, but, to my vexation, 
 
 This wonder of Nature I quickly espied ; 
 I stood for to view her an hour, I'm sure : 
 
 The earth could not show such a damsel, I know, 
 As that little girl, the pride of the world, 
 
 Called nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 
 
 I said to her : ' Darling \ this is a nice morning ; 
 
 The birds sing enchanting, which charms the groves ; 
 Their notes do delight me, and you do invite me, 
 
 Along this clear water some time for to rove. 
 Your beauty has won me, and surely undone me ; 
 
 If you won't agree for to cure my sad woe, 
 So great is my sorrow, I'll ne'er see to-morrow, 
 
 My sweet little Jenny from Ballinasloe.' 
 
 * Sir, I did not invite you, nor yet dare not slight you ; 
 
 You're at your own option to act as you please : 
 I am not ambitious, nor e'er was officious ; 
 
 I am never inclined to disdain or to tease. 
 I love conversation, likewise recreation ; 
 
 I'm free with a friend, and I'm cold with a foe ; 
 But virtue's my glory, and will be till I'm hoary,' 
 
 Said nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 
 
STREET BALLADS frc. 19 
 
 ' Most lovely of creatures ! your beautiful features 
 
 Have sorely attracted and captured my heart ; 
 If you won't relieve me, in truth you may b'lieve me, 
 
 Bewildered in sorrow till death I must smart ; 
 Pm at your election, so grant me protection, 
 
 And feel for a creature that's tortured in woe. 
 One smile it will heal me ; one frown it will kill me ; 
 
 Sweet, nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe ! ' 
 
 * Sir, yonder's my lover ; if he should discover 
 
 Or ever take notice you spoke unto me, 
 He'd close your existence in spite of resistance ; 
 
 Be pleased to withdraw, then, lest he might you see. 
 You see, he's approaching ; then don't be encroaching 
 
 He has his large dog and his gun there also. 
 Although you're a stranger, I wish you from danger, 
 
 Said nice little Jenny from Ballinasloe. 
 
 I bowed then genteelly, and thanked her quite freely ; 
 
 I bid her adieu, and took to the road ; 
 So great was my trouble my pace I did double ; 
 
 My heart was oppressed and sank down with the load. 
 For ever I'll mourn for beauteous Jane Curran, 
 
 And ramble about in affection and woe, 
 And think on the hour I saw that sweet flower, 
 
 My dear little Jenny from Ballinasloe ! * 
 
 THE BOYNE WATER 
 
 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy rightly observes that these fragments of the 
 original ' Boyne Water ' are far more racy and spirited than the song by 
 Colonel Blacker which has superseded them. 
 
 July the First, of a morning clear, one thousand six hundred and 
 
 ninety, 
 
 King William did his men prepare of thousands he had thirty 
 To fight King James and all his foes, encamped near the Boyne 
 
 Water ; 
 
 He little fear'd, though two to one, their multitudes to scatter. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 BOOK I 
 
 King William call'd his officers, saying : ' Gentlemen, mind your 
 
 station. 
 
 And let your valour here be shown before this Irish nation ; 
 My brazen walls let no man break, and your subtle foes you'll 
 
 scatter, 
 Be sure you show them good English play as you go over the 
 
 water.' 
 
 Both foot and horse they marched on, intending them to batter, 
 But the brave Duke Schomberg he was shot as he crossed over 
 
 the water. 
 When that King William did observe the brave Duke Schomberg 
 
 falling, 
 He rein'd his horse with a heavy heart, on the Enniskilleners 
 
 calling : 
 
 ' What will you do for me, brave boys see yonder men retreating ? 
 Our enemies encourag'd are, and English drums are beating.' 
 He says, ' My boys, feel no dismay at the losing of one com- 
 mander, 
 For God shall be our king this day, and I'll be general under." 
 
 Within four yards of our fore-front, before a shot was fired, 
 A sudden snuff they got that day, which little they desired ; 
 For horse and man fell to the ground, and some hung in their 
 
 saddle : 
 Others turn'd up their forked ends, which we call coup de ladle. 
 
 Prince Eugene's regiment was the next, on our right hand ad- 
 vanced, 
 
 Into a field of standing wheat, where Irish horses pranced 
 But the brandy ran so in their heads, their senses all did scatter, 
 They little thought to leave their bones that day at the Boyne 
 Water. 
 
 Both men and horse lay on the ground, and many there lay 
 
 bleeding, 
 
 I saw no sickles there that day but, sure, there was sharp 
 
 shearing. 
 
STREET BALLADS frc. i\ 
 
 Now, praise God, all true Protestants, and heaven's and earth's 
 
 Creator, 
 
 For the deliverance that He sent our enemies to scatter. 
 The Church's foes will pine away, like churlish-hearted Nabal 
 For our deliverer came this day like the great Zorobabel. 
 
 So praise God, all true Protestants, and I will say no further, 
 But had the Papists gain'd the day, there would have been open 
 
 j murder. 
 
 Although King James and many more were ne'er that way in- 
 clined, 
 It was not in their power to stop what the rabble they designed. 
 
 BY MEMORY INSPIRED 
 
 Said to have been composed by J. Kearney, a Dublin street-singer, but 
 believed by Mr. D. J. O Donoghue to have been merely popularised by him. 
 tt is a fair example of the modern street-ballad. 
 
 BY memory inspired 
 
 And love of country fired, 
 The deeds of MEN I love to dwell upon ; 
 
 And the patriotic glow 
 
 Of my Spirit must bestow 
 
 A tribute to O'Connell that is gone, boys- gone. 
 Here's a memory to the friends that are gone ! 
 
 In October 'Ninety-Seven 
 
 May his soul find rest in Heaven ! 
 William Orr to execution was led on : 
 
 The jury, drunk, agreed 
 
 That IRISH was his creed : 
 
 For perjury and threats drove them on, boys on. 
 Here's the memory of John Mitchel that is gone ! 
 
 In 'Ninety-Eight the month July 
 
 The informer's pay was high ; 
 When Reynolds gave the gallows brave MacCann ; 
 
 But MacCann was Reynolds' first 
 
 One could not allay his thirst ; 
 
 So he brought up Bond and Byrne that are gone, boys gone. 
 Here's the memory of the friends that are gone ! 
 
22 BOOK 1 
 
 We saw a nation's tears 
 
 Shed for John and Henry Shears ; 
 Betrayed by Judas, Captain Armstrong ; 
 
 We may forgive, but yet 
 
 We never can forget 
 
 The poisoning of Maguire ' that is gone, boys gone : 
 Our high Star and true Apostle that is gone ! 
 
 How did Lord Edward die ? 
 
 Like a man, without a sigh ! 
 But he left his handiwork on Major Swan ! 
 
 But Sirr? with steel-clad breast 
 
 And coward heart at best, 
 Left us cause to mourn Lord Edward that is gone, boys- 
 
 gone. 
 Here's the memory of our friends that are gone ! 
 
 September, Eighteen-Three, 
 
 Closed this cruel history, 
 When Emmet's blood the scaffold flowed upon. 
 
 Oh, had their spirits been wise, 
 
 They might then realise 
 
 Their freedom but we drink to Mitchel that is gone, boys- 
 gone. 
 Here's the memory of the friends that are gone ! 
 
 THE SHAN VAN VOCHT 
 
 One of the most popular of Irish street-ballads. Written in 1796,-when the 
 French fleet arrived in Bantry Bay. The 'Shan Van Vocht' (Sean Bhean 
 Bhocht) means ' The Poor Old Woman 'a name for Ireland. 
 
 OH ! the French are on the sea, 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 The French are on the sea, 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 
 1 Father Tom Maguire, the well-known Catholic controversialist, who 
 with other members of his family was poisoned, it was alleged, by his 
 housekeeper, 1847. 
 
STREET BALLADS 
 
 Oh ! the French are in the Bay, 
 They'll be here without delay, 
 And the Orange will decay, 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 Oh ! the French are in the Bay, 
 They'll be here by break of day, 
 And the Orange will decay, 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 And where will they have their camp ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 Where will they have their camp ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 On the Curragh of Kildare, 
 The boys they will be there, 
 With their pikes in good repair, 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 To the Curragh of Kildare 
 The boys they will repair, 
 And Lord Edward will be there, 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 Then what will the yeomen do ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 What will the yeomen do ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 What should the yeomen do, 
 But throw off the red and blue, 
 And swear that they'll be true 
 
 To the Shan Van Vocht ? 
 
 What should the yeomen do, 
 But throw off the red and blue, 
 And swear that theyTI be true 
 To the Shan Van Vocht ? 
 
 And what colour will they wear ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 What colour will they wear ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 
24 BOOK I 
 
 What colour should be seen 
 Where our fathers' homes have been, 
 But their own immortal Green ? 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 What colour should be seen 
 Where our fathers' homes have been, 
 But their own immortal Green ? 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 And will Ireland then be free ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 Will Ireland then be free? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 Yes ! Ireland shall be free, 
 From the centre to the sea ; 
 Then hurrah for Liberty ! 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 Yes ! Ireland shall be free, 
 From the centre to the sea ; 
 Then hurrah for Liberty ! 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 WILLIAM DRENNAN 
 
 THIS writer, the best of the poets of the 1798 Rebellion, was 
 born in Belfast on May 23, 1754, and died on February 5, 1820. 
 He was one of the strongest supporters of the Society of 
 United Irishmen, whose original manifesto he wrote. In 1794 
 he was tried for sedition, but was acquitted. His verses, which 
 are very few in number, are perhaps rhetoric rather than 
 poetry, but the rhetoric is always strong and sincere. Most of 
 them, apart from the national lyrics, appeared first in Joshua 
 Edkin's COLLECTION OF POEMS, Dublin 1801 (restricted to 
 Irish writers). He published FUGITIVE PIECES in Belfast, 
 1815, and a translation of 'The Electra' of Sophocles in 1817. 
 He took particular pride in the fact of having invented the 
 phrase ' Emerald Isle,' which occurs in a song highly extolled by 
 Moore, but hardly deserving of his extravagant eulogy. His 
 best piece is unquestionably 'The Wake of William Orr,' 
 commemorating the execution of a respectable Ulster farmer 
 who was convicted on perjured evidence, and whose name has 
 never been forgotten in Ireland. The toast ' Remember Orr ' 
 was for some years one of the watchwords of the aristocratic 
 Whig party in^England. D> j. Q'DoNOGHUE. 
 
 ERIN 
 
 WHEN Erin first rose from the dark swelling flood 
 God bless' d the green Island, and saw it was good ; 
 The em'rald of Europe, it sparkled and shone 
 In the ring of the world the most precious stone. 
 
26 BOOK II 
 
 In her sun, in her soil, in her station thrice blest, 
 With her back towards Britain, her face to the West, 
 Erin stands proudly insular on her steep shore, 
 And strikes her high harp 'mid the ocean's deep roar. 
 
 But when its soft tones seem to mourn and to weep, 
 The dark chain of silence is thrown o'er the deep ; 
 At the thought of the past the tears gush from her eyes, 
 And the pulse of her heart makes her white bosom rise. 
 Oh ! sons of green Erin, lament o'er the time 
 When religion was war and our country a crime ; 
 When man in God's image inverted His plan, 
 And moulded his God in the image of man ; 
 
 When the int'rest of State wrought the general woe, 
 The stranger a friend and the native a foe 
 While the mother rejoiced o'er her children oppressed, 
 And clasp'd the invader more close to her breast ; 
 When with Pale for the body and Pale for the soul, 
 Church and State joined in compact to conquer the whole 
 And as Shannon was stained with Milesian blood, 
 Ey'd each other askance and pronounced it was good. 
 
 By the groans that ascend from your forefathers' grave 
 For their country thus left to the brute and the slave, 
 Drive the demon of Bigotry home to his den, 
 And where Britain made brutes now let Erin make men. 
 Let my sons, like the leaves of the shamrock, unite 
 A partition of sects from one footstalk of right ; 
 Give each his full share of the earth and the sky, 
 Nor fatten the slave where the serpent would die. 
 
 Alas ! for poor Erin that some are still seen 
 
 Who would dye the grass red from their hatred to Green : 
 
 Yet, oh ! when you're up and they're down, let them live, 
 
 Then yield them that mercy which they would not give. 
 
 Arm of Erin, be strong ! but be gentle as brave ! 
 
 And, uplifted to strike, be as ready to save ! 
 
 Let no feeling of vengeance presume to defile 
 
 The cause or the men of the Emerald Isle. 
 
WILLIAM DRENNAN 27 
 
 The cause it is good, and the men they are true, 
 And the Green shall outlive both the Orange and Blue ! 
 And the triumphs of Erin her daughters shall share 
 With the full swelling chest and the fair flowing hair. 
 Their bosom heaves high for the worthy and brave, 
 But no coward shall rest in that soft-swelling wave. 
 Men of Erin ! awake, and make haste to be blest ! 
 Rise, Arch of the Ocean and Queen of the West ! 
 
 THE WAKE OF WILLIAM ORR 
 
 THERE our murdered brother lies ; 
 Wake him not with woman's cries ; 
 Mourn the way that manhood ought 
 Sit in silent trance of thought. 
 
 Write his merits on your mind ; 
 Morals pure and manners kind ; 
 In his head, as on a hill, 
 Virtue placed her citadel. 
 
 Why cut off in palmy youth ? 
 Truth he spoke, and acted truth. 
 ' Countrymen, UNITE,' he cried, 
 And died for what our Saviour died. 
 
 God of peace and God of love ! 
 Let it not Thy vengeance move 
 Let it not Thy lightnings draw 
 A nation guillotined by law. 
 
 Hapless Nation, rent and torn, 
 Thou wert early taught to mourn ; 
 Warfare of six hundred years ! 
 Epochs marked with blood and tears ! 
 
 Hunted thro' thy native grounds, 
 Or flung reward to human hounds, 
 Each one pulled and tore his share, 
 Heedless of thy deep despair. 
 
28 BOOK II 
 
 Hapless Nation ! hapless Land ! 
 Heap of uncementing sand ! 
 Crumbled by a foreign weight : 
 And by worse, domestic hate. 
 
 God of mercy ! God of peace ! 
 Make this mad confusion cease ; 
 O'er the mental chaos move, 
 Through it SPEAK the light of love. 
 
 Monstrous and unhappy sight ! 
 Brothers' blood will not unite ; 
 Holy oil and holy water 
 Mix, and fill the world with slaughter. 
 
 Who is she with aspect wild ? 
 The widow'd mother with her child 
 Child new stirring in the womb ! 
 Husband waiting for the tomb ! 
 
 Angel of this sacred place, 
 Calm her soul and whisper peace 
 Cord, or axe, or guillotine, 
 Make the sentence not the sin. 
 
 Here we watch our brother's sleep : 
 Watch with us, but do not weep : 
 Watch with us thro' dead of night 
 But expect the morning light. 
 
 MY FATHER 
 
 WHO took me from my mother's arms, 
 
 And, smiling at her soft alarms, 
 
 Showed me the world and Nature's charms ? 
 
 Who made me feel and understand 
 
 The wonders of the sea and land, 
 
 And mark through all the Maker's hand ? 
 
WILLIAM DRENNAN 29 
 
 Who climbed with me the mountain's height, 
 And watched my look of dread delight, 
 While rose the glorious orb of light ? 
 
 Who from each flower and verdant stalk 
 Gathered a honey'd store of talk, 
 And filled the long, delightful walk ? 
 
 Not on an insect would he tread, 
 Nor strike the stinging nettle dead 
 Who taught, at once, my heart and head ? 
 
 Who fired my breast with Homer's fame, 
 And taught the high heroic theme 
 That nightly flashed upon my dream ? 
 
 Who smiled at my supreme desire 
 To see the curling smoke aspire 
 From Ithaca's domestic fire? 
 
 Who, with Ulysses, saw me roam, 
 High on the raft, amidst the foam, 
 His head upraised to look for home ? 
 
 ' What made a barren rock so dear ? ' 
 ' My boy, he had a country there ! ' 
 And who then dropped a precious tear ? 
 
 W T ho now in pale and placid light 
 Of memory gleams upon my sight, 
 Bursting the sepulchre of night ? 
 
 Oh \ teach me still thy Christian plan, 
 For practice with thy precept ran, 
 Nor yet desert me, now a man. 
 
 Still let thy scholar's heart rejoice 
 With charm of thy angelic voice ; 
 Still prompt the motive and the choice 
 
 For yet remains a little space 
 Till I shall meet thee face to face, 
 And not, as now, in vain embrace. 
 
30 BOOK II 
 
 JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 
 
 THE famous wit and orator was born at Newmarket, County 
 Cork, July 24, 1750, and died in London on October 14, 
 1817. He wrote few poems, and the following sombre lament, 
 with its cry like that of the wind in a ruined house,- is by far 
 the best of them. It was founded on a chance encounter and 
 conversation with a deserting soldier whom he met on a 
 journey. 
 
 THE DESERTER'S MEDITATION 
 
 IF sadly thinking, with spirits sinking, 
 
 Could more than drinking my cares compose, 
 A cure for sorrow from sighs I'd borrow, 
 
 And hope to-morrow would end my woes. 
 But as in wailing there's nought availing, 
 
 And Death unfailing will strike the blow, 
 Then for that reason, and for a season, 
 
 Let us be merry before we go. 
 
 To joy a stranger, a way-worn ranger, 
 
 In every danger my course I've run ; 
 Now hope all ending, and death befriending 
 
 His last aid lending, my cares are done. 
 No more a rover, or hapless lover, 
 
 My griefs are over my glass runs low ; 
 Then for that reason, and for a season, 
 
 Let us be merry before we go. 
 
 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 
 
 THE great Irish wit, orator and dramatist was born in Dublin, 
 1751; a son of Thomas Sheridan, an actor. After a stormy life, 
 much of which belongs to English literature and much to 
 English history, he died in 1816, and was buried in Westminster 
 
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 31 
 
 Abbey. The following graceful lyric, 'Dry be that Tear/ 
 illustrates the well-known love of intricate verbal melody, and 
 the taste for cunning devices of chiming sound which mark 
 Gaelic poetry, and which frequently appear in Anglo-Irish verse. 
 
 DRY BE THAT TEAR 
 
 DRY be that tear, my gentlest love, 
 
 Be hushed that struggling sigh ; 
 Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove, 
 
 More fixed, more true, than I. 
 Hushed be that sigh, be dry that tear ; 
 
 Cease, boding doubt ; cease, anxious fear 
 Dry be that tear. 
 
 Ask'st thou how long my love shall stay, 
 
 When all that's new is past ? 
 How long ? Ah ! Delia, can I say, 
 
 How long my life shall last ? 
 Dry be that tear, be hushed that sigh ; 
 
 At least I'll love thee till I die 
 
 Hushed be that sigh. 
 
 And does that thought affect thee, too, 
 The thought of Sylvio's death, 
 
 * That he, who only breathed for you, 
 
 Must yield that faithful breath ? 
 Hushed be that sigh, be dry that tear, 
 Nor let us lose our heaven here 
 
 Dry be that tear. 
 
 SONG 
 HAD I a heart for falsehood framed, 
 
 I ne'er could injure you ; 
 For, tho' your tongue no promise claimed, 
 
 Your charms would make me true ; 
 Then, lady, dread not here deceit, 
 
 Nor fear to suffer wrong, 
 For friends in all the aged you'll meet, 
 
 And lovers in the young. 
 
32 BOOK II 
 
 But when they find that you have blessed 
 
 Another with your heart, 
 They'll bid aspiring passion rest, 
 
 And act a brother's part. 
 Then, lady, dread not here deceit, 
 
 Nor fear to suffer wrong, 
 For friends in all the aged you'll meet, 
 
 And brothers in the young. 
 
 GEORGE NUGENT REYNOLDS 
 
 BORN at Letterfyan, County Leitrim, about 1770 ; the son of 
 a landowner in that county. He wrote numerous songs and 
 poems for the Dublin magazines between 1792-95 ; published 
 a musical piece called 'Baritry Bay' in 1797, which was 
 performed at Covent Garden, and a poem in four cantos in 
 1791. The following is his best song. Several pieces have 
 been attributed to him which he did not write. He died at 
 Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, in 1802. 
 
 
 KATHLEEN O'MORE 
 
 MY love, still I think that I see her once more, 
 But alas ! she has left me her loss to deplore, 
 My own little Kathleen, my poor little Kathleen, 
 My Kathleen O'More ! 
 
 Her hair glossy black, her eyes were dark blue, 
 Her colour s.till changing, her smiles ever new 
 So pretty was Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen, 
 My Kathleen O'More ! 
 
 She milked the dun cow that ne'er offered to stir ; t 
 Though wicked to all, it was gentle to her 
 
 So kind was my Kathleen, my poor little Kathleen, 
 My Kathleen O'More ! 
 
GEORGE NUGENT REYNOLDS 33 
 
 She sat at the door one cold afternoon, 
 To hear the wind blow and to gaze on the moon 
 So pensive was Kathleen, my poor little Kathleen, 
 My Kathleen O'More ! 
 
 Cold was the night-breeze that sighed round her bower ; 
 It chilled my poor Kathleen ; she drooped from that hour, 
 And I lost my poor Kathleen, my own little Kathleen, 
 My Kathleen O'More ! 
 
 The ,bird of all birds that I love the best 
 Is the robin that in the churchyard builds its nest ; 
 For he seems to watch Kathleen, hops lightly o'er Kathleen, 
 My Kathleen O'More ! 
 
 ANONYMOUS 
 KITTY OF CoLERAiNE 1 
 
 Often wrongly attributed to Lysaght. 
 
 As beautiful Kitty one morning was tripping 
 
 With a pitcher of milk for the fair of Coleraine, 
 When she saw me she stumbled, the pitcher down tumbled, 
 
 And all the sweet buttermilk watered the plain. 
 * Oh, what shall I do now ? 'Twas looking at you now ! 
 
 I'm sure such a pitcher I'll ne'er see again. 
 'Twas the pride of my dairy. Oh, Barney McCleary, 
 
 You're sent as a plague to the girls of Coleraine.' 
 
 I sat down beside her, and gently did chide her 
 
 That such a misfortune should give her such pain ; 
 A kiss then I gave her, and before I did leave her 
 
 She vowed for such pleasure she'd break it again. 
 'Twas the haymaking season I can't tell the reason 
 
 Misfortunes will never come single, 'tis plain ! 
 For very soon after poor Kitty's disaster 
 
 The devil a pitcher was whole in Coleraine. 
 
 1 Coleraine is generally pronounced in Ireland CoPraine. 
 
 D 
 
34 BOOK II 
 
 THOMAS MOORE 
 
 THOMAS MOORE was born under the gloom of the Penal Laws. 
 His parents were Catholic, and he clung all his life to the 
 Church of his fathers. His patriotism he wore rather lightly, 
 but not his religion. That lay deep, and perhaps the best of 
 all his songs ' The Irish Peasant to his Mistress ' records the 
 love and honour he gave to the martyred church of Ireland. 
 He suffered from the laws against Catholics as a boy and a 
 young man. All avenues to distinction, even to education, 
 were closed against him. It was not till the Act of 1793 did 
 away with the worst of the remaining sanctions of the Penal 
 Code that he could even enter Trinity College, and he was 
 still excluded from its honours and emoluments. No wonder, 
 then, that he hailed, even as a boy, the French Revolution, 
 and seemed to see in it the dawn of deliverance for himself 
 and his people. He tells, in one of his Prefaces, how he was 
 taken by his father in 1792 to a dinner given in Dublin to 
 celebrate that great event, and how he sat on the knee of the 
 chairman while the toast went round ' May the breezes from 
 France fan our Irish Oak into verdure.' 
 
 These early experiences influenced his life and work as a 
 poet. They made him, as we should now say, a Liberal ; they 
 kept him a lover of Ireland even in the midst of the fashionable 
 society which he amused, enjoyed, and sometimes endured; 
 they often intruded into the brilliant wit of his political satires 
 a passionate intensity which surprises the reader, as when in a 
 green grove full of flowers and butterflies a dark pine rises ; 
 and they were at the root of the power of the IRISH MELODIES. 
 All his life he waged war against intolerance and oppression, 
 and for this he deserves our gratitude. But he carried out the 
 war in his own way. It was not the way of the martyr, nor of 
 the stern patriot. The spirit of the writers of the ballads of 
 the Nation was not his. He was too light, too gay, too social 
 a creature to live or to write in that fashion ; and English 
 
THOMAS MOORE 35 
 
 Society, with flattery and good living, laid its chains upon him. 
 Had he resisted this Dalilah, even though he was not a 
 Samson, he might have found that grave, indignant passion, 
 that steady sincerity which would have chastened his lightness, 
 reduced his exuberance, and drawn him down into those depths 
 of feeling where the unnecessary in poetry is consumed. We 
 see what might have been in a song like ' At the mid hour of 
 night, when stars are weeping, I fly.' But he was led away 
 from these impassioned regions, not only by the flattery of 
 society, by the circumstances of the time which forbade to an 
 Irish patriot all the means of fame, but also by his own nature. 
 He was one to whom Anacreon was dearer than Sophocles, 
 and his translations of that poet reveal the gay, witty, pleasure- 
 loving character of the man. Their note remained an element 
 in his poetry for the greater part of his life. How he could 
 wed some of the spiritual Irish music to the bacchanalian 
 words with which he degrades its Elfin mysticism, I have 
 never been able to understand. And the worst of it is that 
 these songs of wine and women were not, as poetry, true. He 
 was neither a frank convivialist, nor much of a wandering 
 lover. Had he been either one or the other with any force, 
 the poetry would have been better. He only played with these 
 subjects, flitting over them like a humming bird. Anacreon, 
 who was really in earnest, loses his reality in Moore's transla- 
 tions. There is not a trace of true passion, sensual or otherwise, 
 in the * poems of Mr. Little,' and the love scenes where Moore 
 tries to be serious in LALLA ROOKH or the LOVES oV THE ANGELS 
 resemble vital love as much as the sugar wreaths on a wedding- 
 cake resemble living flowers. There are tender passages in his 
 songs, of a sweet and natural emotion, but they belong to the 
 friends and the wife he loved, and have nothing to do with the rest 
 of his shallow, brilliant, and sometimes tinsel poetry. The man 
 was thin, and, fortunately for his success, he did not know it. On 
 the contrary, he believed himself, even though he was modest 
 about it, to be a poet of substantial power. Such a faith enabled 
 him to go on writing thousands of verses, with loose fertility, on 
 every kind of subject. The society in which he lived was even 
 
 D2 
 
36 BOOK II 
 
 more unreal than himself, and it saw all that it lazily cared 
 for represented by Moore with a dazzling lightness and an 
 insincere sentiment which exactly suited it. They turned, 
 amazed and frightened by Byron's revolutionary force, repelled 
 by Wordsworth's simplicity, to a poet who did not disturb 
 them or indict their life, and who adorned the hours of their 
 indifferent leisure with a filagree of sentiment, philosophy, 
 classical and Oriental imagery, of women and wine and wit. It 
 was a society which loved bric-a-brac, and Moore gave it bric- 
 a-brac poetry of the best kind. Never was it better done ; and 
 the verse had a melodious movement, as of high-bred and 
 ignorant ladies dancing on enamelled meadows, which pleased 
 the ear and almost seemed to please the eye. He was quite, 
 then, in harmony with the society for which he wrote, and it 
 would be rather surly of us if we judged him altogether from 
 our standard of poetry and abused him for complying with 
 the taste of his time. No one dreams of comparing him with 
 the greater men, or of giving his poetry too important a place 
 in the history of English song. But the man whose work Byron 
 frankly admired ; whom Scott did not dispraise ; who received 
 letters of thanks and appreciation from readers in America, 
 Europe, and Asia ; who fulfilled Matthew Arnold's somewhat 
 foolish criterion of a poet's greatness by being known and 
 accepted on the Continent ; whom the Italians, French, 
 Germans*, Russians, Swedes, and Dutch translated; whose 
 LALLA ROOKH was partly put into Persian, and became the 
 companion of Persians on their travels and in the streets of 
 Ispahan ; to whom publishers like Longmans gave 3,ooo/. for 
 a poem before they had even seen it, ' as a tribute to repu- 
 tation already acquired ' can scarcely be treated with the 
 indifferent contempt which some have lavished upon him. 
 He pleased, and he pleased a very great number. Time has 
 altered that contemporary verdict, and rightly but when it is 
 almost universal, not merely the verdict of a clique, it counts. 
 It does not permit us, in judging of a poet, to throw his reputa- 
 tion altogether overboard. And indeed what he did, within 
 his own range and at his lower poetical level, was well done 
 
THOMAS MOORE 37 
 
 and original. The graver satires, such as ' Corruption ' and 
 ' Intolerance,' written in imitation of Pope, have neither weight, 
 humour, felicity of phrase, nor savage bitterness. He had no 
 more capacity for grave or cruel poetry than a butterfly has for 
 making honey or using a sting. But the lighter satirical poetry, 
 the TWOPENNY POST-BAG, the SATIRICAL AND HUMOROUS 
 POEMS, could not be bettered. They stand alone in their 
 excellence. They have a roguish happiness in their own wit, 
 and their wit is honestly brilliant. They are severe, but there 
 is so much gaiety in the severity that even those most sharply 
 attacked had no desire to revenge themselves. Even the Prince- 
 Regent whom Moore, who was no toady, scarified laughed 
 at the picture of himself, and enjoyed the mockery. We can 
 scarcely imagine, we whom no such wit illumines, how society 
 was charmed, tickled, and seasoned by jeux <f esprit which hit 
 the moment with such sagacity and mirth, and which, continued 
 for nearly thirty years, kept their freshness ; and even now 
 furnish weapons against 'that spirit of monopoly by which, 
 under all its various impersonations commercial, religious, 
 and political these satires were first provoked.' 
 
 A worthier subject for his song now occurred to him. It 
 was bound up with the associations of his childhood and the 
 patriotic and religious passion of his youth, with his sympathy 
 for the Irish rising and his friendship for Emmet. It was 
 mingled with his love of music and his talent for singing ; and 
 the music he fitted with lyrics was the creation of his native 
 land. All the depths which, though shallow enough, existed 
 in his nature, were stirred by this work, and among the songs 
 he wrote to Ireland's music his best poetry lies the only 
 poetry of his which will continue to justly please mankind. ' It 
 was,' he says, ' in working the rich mine of my country's melodies 
 that my humble labours as a poet have derived their sole lustre 
 and value.' These songs have variety ; they touch both 
 tragedy and comedy. They drink, they dance and sing ; they 
 march to battle, they mourn over the dead ; they follow the 
 patriot to the scaffold and to exile ; they sing the scenery, the 
 legends, the sorrows, and the mirth of Ireland. They do this 
 
38 BOOK II 
 
 work not in the best way possible. They have not the true 
 Celtic touch either in joy or in sorrow. They are entirely 
 devoid of mysticism ; they never belong to fairy-land ; and 
 Moore did not conceive for a moment the haunted, obscure, and 
 majestic darkness of the Celtic ancientry. Their patriotism is 
 mostly on the surface a sympathy more dainty.than passionate, 
 nurtured more by soft music than by salt tears. But a certain 
 amount of patriotic feeling they do reach, as much as Moore, 
 cossetted by English society, was capable of supporting. To 
 as much of it as he felt, he was faithful, and openly faithful ; 
 and this is a courage for which we may give him credit. He 
 did more for Ireland than we think. He made her music 
 charm the world. He brought by his singing of the Melodies 
 (and though he had no power in his voice, he had 
 a manner of singing which enchanted and thrilled his 
 hearers) the wrongs and sorrows of Ireland into the ears 
 and consideration of that class in society which had not 
 listened to or cared for them before. It is not too much to 
 say that Moore hastened Catholic Emancipation by his Melodies. 
 Moreover, a natural sweet tenderness which was of the very 
 essence of the man, but which rarely appears in his poetry, 
 emerges and surprises in some of the IRISH MELODIES. How 
 far this naturalness, sincerity, and pathos were due to the effect 
 of the music upon him I cannot quite determine. 'I only 
 know,' he says, * that in a strong and inborn feeling for music 
 lies the source of whatever talent I may have shown for 
 poetical composition, and that it was the effort to translate 
 into language the emotions and passions which music appeared 
 to me to express that first led to my writing any poetry at all 
 deserving the name.' This is as modest as it is true, and it 
 supplies us with the best definition and criticism of all his 
 serious poetry. That poetry is the translation of music into as 
 pretty and melodious words as possible ; and the poetry varied 
 in form, thought, and emotion as the music varied. LALLA 
 ROOKH is the representation in words of the florid, fanciful 
 music which pleased his time. When in the Irish music he 
 touched a sadder, wilder, tenderer, and more imaginative 
 
THOMAS MOORE 39 
 
 music which in its mirth was broken into plaintiveness, and in 
 its plaintiveness turned on itself with laughter, which mingled 
 with its note of joyous defiance the passionate pain of the exile 
 for the home where so many brave men had died under 
 oppression he was lifted by the music into a higher region of 
 poetry. What he heard, he wrote. Music was first, and 
 poetry followed. This is not the case with a great poet. 
 Music may illustrate his work, not create it. Poetry is first. 
 That it was not first with Moore places him in a unique 
 position among the poets, and accounts for that strangeness in 
 his work which differentiates it from all the poetry which 
 appeared in his time indeed, from any other English poetry. 
 It had no resemblance to Scott ; it was wholly unaffected by 
 the revival of naturalism in Wordsworth and Coleridge. The 
 influence of Byron may be traced in it and in its subjects, but 
 it was devoid of Byron's power and of his poetic passion. It 
 was like nothing else; and we may at least grant him the 
 praise of originality. To this strangeness may perhaps be 
 traced some of his amazing popularity ; LALLA ROOKH ran 
 in a short time through twenty editions. His tragedies are 
 absurd. The * Veiled Prophet ' is transpontine. Where the 
 * Fire Worshippers ' has power, it is derived from his Irish 
 hatred of intolerance and the remembrance of the oppression 
 of his country. ' Paradise and the Peri ' is melodious, but 
 curiously insincere ; and ' Nourmahal ' just suited Moore's 
 prattling tenderness in love and his delight in ornamental 
 description. It is a really pretty story of true love, told some- 
 times with grace and charm, and sometimes with irritating 
 sentimentality. As to the prose insertions, which weave the 
 various poems into a romance, they are not unworthy. 
 They have the gilded quality of the poetry, but, like the poetry, 
 they are readable in certain moods. It is easy to criticise 
 LALLA ROOKH, like Fadladeen ; but it is pleasanter far, when 
 the temper seizes us for that sort of thing, to pass into another 
 age and listen to it, not for long, as the Princess listened to 
 Feramorz. 
 
 In 1817 his visit to Paris awoke again his satirical Muse, 
 
40 BOOK II 
 
 and the FUDGE FAMILY had nearly as much success as LALLA 
 ROOKH. He travelled then, and his RHYMES ON THE ROAD 
 are only ' bad prose fringed with rhyme.' Owing to pecuniary 
 difficulties, he lived in Paris till 1822, when the LOVES OF THE 
 ANGELS, the FABLES FOR THE HOLY ALLIANCE, and the kindness 
 of some friends freed him from his trouble. The EPICUREAN, 
 a prose tale, originally conceived as a poem in which Egyptian, 
 Greek and Christian philosophy are pounded together, as in a 
 mortar, with Athenian gardens, pyramids, Nile temples, the 
 Thebaid desert and mystic marvels ended his poetic career. 
 He lived to write a few more songs, the LIFE OF LORD BYRON, 
 and an almost worthless HISTORY OF IRELAND. 
 
 Moore is neither a truly Celtic nor a truly English poet. 
 The deep things in the Irish nature were not in him. No 
 mysticism made him dream ; no hunger for the spiritual world 
 beset him ; no fairyland, sometimes gracious, but chiefly 
 terrible, was more real to him than the breathing world. No 
 sadness without a known cause, no joy whose source was 
 uncomprehended, influenced him. Nature did not speak to 
 him of dreadful and obscure powers, or of beauty and love and 
 eternal youth beyond mortal reach but not beyond immortal 
 desire. The love of his country was no passion ; it was more 
 that political hatred of intolerance and oppression which any 
 honest Whig might feel, but which Moore felt deeply as a 
 Catholic. None of these Celtic elements belonged to him, 
 and they and others are at the roots of Irish imagination. Nor 
 did he replace them by the elements of English imagination. 
 His poetry is no more English than Irish in character. It 
 does not grow naturally out of the tree of English poetry ; it is a 
 graft upon it. He does not descend from any poetical ancestors 
 in England, and he has had no influence on any of the English 
 poets that followed him. He stands, as I have said, curiously 
 alone. Had he had imagination, he would have been in brother- 
 hood with either English, Scottish, or Irish poets. But he is a 
 curious instance of a poet who never, save perhaps in one or 
 two songs, deviates into imaginative work. On the other hand, 
 he is a master in fancy, a poet so full of that power which 
 
THOMAS MOORE 41 
 
 plays with grace and brightness on t,he surface of Nature and 
 man but which never penetrates, that few if any have ever 
 showed so well what fancy could do, when quite alone, and 
 enjoying herself, apart from her nobler sister, imagination. 
 And Moore helped his fancy by collecting, with infinite care, 
 heaps of material on which she could work. He ransacked 
 classical and Oriental history, philosophy, botany, legendary 
 lore, religion, dress, jewels ; everything to supply his fancy 
 with illustrations, with subjects which she could entertain 
 herself with ornamenting. No copiousness, no fertility is 
 greater, in this region, than Moore's. And he brought to the 
 help of his fancy a wit, an esprit^ which made everything he 
 touched with it sparkle and sing. Lastly, owing to his love of 
 music, he gave to his poetry all the tenderness of which fancy 
 is capable, and a melodious movement, a metrical flexibility, 
 which delighted his contemporaries, and which has the power 
 still of pleasing our later and more fastidious time. 
 
 STOPFORD A. BROOKE. 
 
 Thomas Moore was born in Dublin, 1779. His father was a native of 
 County Kerry, his mother of Wexford. He was educated, like Sheridan 
 before him, mainly at Samuel Whyte's excellent grammar-school. He 
 entered Trinity College in 1794, the year after the partial repeal of the 
 Penal Laws permitted a Roman Catholic to do so. Here Robert Emmet 
 was one of his closest friends, and he was very nearly being involved with 
 him in the United Irish conspiracy. In 1799 he went to London, bringing 
 with him the reputation which his wonderful singing and playing had gained 
 for him in Dublin society and the volume of translations from Anacreon which 
 was his first published work. The introduction to the Prince of Wales 
 set him on the high road to success, and his POETICAL WORKS OF THE 
 LATE THOMAS LITTLE (1801) was much applauded and admired. He was 
 appointed Admiralty Registrar at the Bermudas in 1803, and after a short 
 visit to the island placed the duties of the office, after the usual practice of 
 the day, in the hands of a deputy, and went on a tour through the United 
 States and Canada. He returned to London in the winter of 1804. In 1806 
 appeared the ODES AND EPISTLES, which, on a severe review in the Edin- 
 burgh^ led to an abortive duel with Jeffrey, afterwards one of Moore's closest 
 friends. In the following year, 1807, began the publication of the IRISH 
 MELODIES with music, arranged by Stevenson. The airs were taken chiefly 
 from the collections of Bunting and Holden, and were mercilessly altered 
 
42 BOOK II 
 
 (whether by Moore or his collaborator is unknown) to suit the musical taste 
 of the day. In the admirable edition of the MELODIES in which the 
 original airs have been at last restored by the hand of Dr. C. Villiers 
 Stanford it is suggested in the preface that Stevenson, who was much 
 under the influence of Haydn, ' imported into his arrangements a dim echo 
 of the style of the great Austrian composer. He could scarcely,' adds 
 Dr. Stanford, ' have chosen a model more unsuited for the wildness and 
 ruggedness of the music with which he had to deal. This probably led to 
 the alterations of scales and characteristic intervals (such as the flat 
 seventh) which are the life and soul of Irish melodies.' The publication 
 of the MELODIES went on at irregular intervals till 1834, Moore receiving 
 a hundred guineas for each song, or I2,8io/. in all. In 1811 he married 
 a young actress, Miss Bessie Dyke. Save for the untimely death of all 
 the five children born of their union, his domestic life appears to have 
 been one of unclouded happiness, as it was certainly one of enduring 
 affection on both sides. The young couple settled first at Keyworth in 
 Leicestershire ; afterwards at other places in the country. About this time 
 Moore engaged to write a long narrative poem for Longmans, and that 
 publisher, before a line of the work was written, undertook to pay 3,ooo/. 
 for it the highest sum ever as yet offered for a single poem. Moore shut 
 himself up with a library of Eastern books, and in 1815, after many 
 unsuccessful attempts, had written enough of LALLA ROOKH to submit to 
 the opinion of the publisher, who however declined to read it. In 1816, 
 the year following the battle of Waterloo, when England was passing 
 through an epoch of the deepest commercial depression, Moore with the 
 scrupulous honour which he carried into all business transactions 
 volunteered to let the publisher off his bargain. The latter, however, 
 refused to accept the offer, and LALLA ROOKH came out in 1817, achieving 
 an immediate and striking success and winning for its author a European 
 fame. Shortly afterwards a severe financial disaster befell him. His 
 deputy at the Bermudas turned out a rogue, and Moore found himself liable 
 to the Admiralty for 6,ooo/. of defalcations. Ultimately the debt was 
 reduced to i,ooo/. , which was settled by a wealthy friend of the poet, Lord 
 Lansdowne, and shortly afterwards repaid to him by Moore. His NATIONAL 
 AIRS (1815) and SACRED SONGS (1816) had begun to rival the success of 
 the MELODIES. In 1817 a trip to the Continent gave the motive for 
 he FUDGE FAMILY IN PARIS and the other satires of the same series. 
 
 The LOVES OF THE ANGELS appeared in 1822, and FABLES FOR THE 
 HOLY ALLIANCE in 1823. In the following year Moore was the chief 
 actor in one of the most singular and mysterious episodes of literary history. 
 During a visit to Venice in 1819 Byron had presented Moore with his 
 memoirs, a striking testimony to the honour and discretion of his friend. 
 The death of Byron occurred in April 1824. Moore had in 1821 sold the 
 
THOMAS MOORE 43 
 
 memoirs to John Murray for 2,000 guineas. It was evidently con- 
 templated both by Byron and by Moore that the memoirs should be 
 published after the death of their author. Yet immediately after that 
 event Moore repaid Murray the 2,000 guineas with interest, and induced 
 him to return the manuscripts, which he at once put in the fire. The only 
 thing we can feel certain of in regard to this strange transaction is that the 
 motive of it must have been honourable both to Moore and to his 
 publisher. Moore, however, did not eventually suffer by it, as he undertook 
 a LIFE OF BYRON (published in 1830), for which Murray paid him 4,000 
 guineas. About the same year the LIFE OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 and the MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK testified to the constant affection for 
 his native land which time and circumstances never weakened. His LIFE OF 
 SHERIDAN had appeared in 1825. During the later years of his life Moore 
 unwisely undertook to write a HISTORY OF IRELAND for Lardner s CABINET 
 CYCLOPEDIA. The work, for which he eventually discovered himself to 
 be wholly unfitted, spread to four times the bulk originally intended, and 
 his intellect and energy sank under the burden. It turned out to be the 
 solitary failure of an unusually successful literary career. He died in 1852, 
 and was buried at Bromham near Devizes. His wife survived him for a 
 few years, and part of the literary pension of 300^. a year which Moore 
 had enjoyed since 1835 was continued to her for her lifetime. 
 
 THE SONG OF FIONNUALA 
 
 SILENT, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water ; 
 
 Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose, 
 While, murmuring mournfully, Lii's lonely daughter 
 
 Tells to the night-star her tale of woes. 
 When shall the swan, her death-note singing, 
 
 Sleep, with wings in darkness furl'd ? 
 When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing, 
 
 Call my spirit from this stormy world ? 
 
 Sadly, O Moyle, to thy winter-wave weeping, 
 
 Fate bids me languish long ages away ; 
 Yet still in her darkness doth Erin lie sleeping, 
 
 Still doth the pure light its dawning delay. 
 When will that day-star, mildly springing, 
 
 Warm our isle with peace and love ? 
 When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing, 
 
 Call my spirit to the fields above ? 
 
44 BOOK II 
 
 THE IRISH PEASANT TO HIS MISTRESS* 
 
 THROUGH grief and through danger thy smile hath cheer'd my 
 
 way 
 
 Till hope seem'd to bud from each thorn that round me lay; 
 The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burn'd, 
 Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turn'd ; 
 Yes, slave as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free, 
 And bless'd even the sorrows that made me more dear to thee. 
 
 Thy rival was honour'd, while thou wert wrong'd and scorn'd. 
 Thy crown was of briars, while gold her brows adorn'd ; 
 She woo'd me to temples, whilst thou lay'st hid in caves, 
 Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas ! were slaves ; 
 Yet cold in the earth, at thy feet, I would rather be 
 Than wed what I lov'd not, or turn one thought from thee. 
 
 They slander thee sorely, who say thy vows are frail 
 Hadst thou been a false one, thy cheek had look'd less pale. 
 They say, too, so long thou hast worn those lingering chains, 
 That deep in thy heart they have printed their servile stains. 
 Oh ! foul is the slander no chain could that soul subdue 
 Where shineth thy spirit, there liberty shineth too ! 
 
 1 The peculiar metre of this and the following poem is not uncommon 
 in Gaelic verse : e.g. 
 
 ru 5 At) 5-CAfinM5, no 
 No A B-JTACA cu 5jle, jnnne, '^u- 
 
 From this source it seems to have found its way into English literature, 
 Shelley used it, dividing the lines differently, and with double rhymes, in 
 the lines written in 1822 : 
 
 When the lamp is shattered, 
 
 The light in the dust lies dead ; 
 When the cloud is scattered, 
 The rainbow's glory is fled. 
 
 and Swinburne in his SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE : 
 
 Who is this that sits by the way, by the wild wayside, 
 In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride ? 
 
THOMAS MOORE 45 
 
 AT THE MID HOUR OF NIGHT 
 
 AT the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly 
 To the lone vale we lov'd, when life shone warm in thine eye ; 
 And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air, 
 To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there, 
 And tell me our love is remember' d, even in the sky. 
 
 Then I sing the wild song 'twas once such pleasure to hear ! 
 
 When our voices commingling breath'd, like one, on the ear ; 
 And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls, 
 I think, O my love ! 'tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls, 
 
 Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. 
 
 WHEN HE WHO ADORES THEE 
 
 WHEN he who adores thee has left but the name 
 
 Of his faults and his sorrows behind, 
 Oh ! say wilt thou weep, when they darken the fame 
 
 Of a life that for thee was resign'd ? 
 Yes, weep, and however my foes may condemn, 
 
 Thy tears shall efface their decree : 
 For Heaven can witness, though guilty to them, 
 
 I have been but too faithful to thee. 
 
 With thee were the dreams of my earliest love ; 
 
 Every thought of my reason was thine ; 
 In my last humble prayer to the Spirit above, 
 
 Thy name shall be mingled with mine, 
 Oh ! blest are the lovers and friends who shall live 
 
 The days of thy glory to see ; 
 But the next dearest blessing that Heaven can give 
 
 Is the pride of thus dying for thee. 
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE 
 
 NIGHT clos'd around the conqueror's way 
 And lightnings show'd the distant hill 
 
 Where those who lost that dreadful day 
 Stood few and faint, but fearless still. 
 
46 BOOK II 
 
 The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal, 
 For ever dimm'd, for ever crost 
 
 Oh ! who shall say what heroes feel, 
 When all but life and honour's lost ? 
 
 The last sad hour of freedom's dream 
 
 And valour's task mov'd slowly by, 
 While mute they watch'd till morning's beam 
 
 Should rise and give them light to die. 
 There's yet a world where souls are free, 
 
 Where tyrants taint not Nature's bliss : 
 If death that world's bright opening be, 
 
 Oh ! who would live a slave in this ? 
 
 THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS 
 
 OFT, in the stilly night, 
 
 Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me, 
 Fond Memory brings the light 
 Of other days around me ; 
 The smiles, the tears, 
 Of boyhood's years, 
 The words of love then spoken ; 
 The eyes that shone, 
 Now dimm'd and gone, 
 The cheerful hearts now broken ! 
 Thus, in the stilly night, 
 
 Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me, 
 Sad Memory brings the light 
 Of other days around me. 
 
 When I remember all 
 
 The friends, so link'd together, 
 I've seen around me fall, 
 
 Like leaves in wintry weather, 
 
 I feel like one 
 
 W T ho treads alone 
 Some banquet-hall deserted, 
 
 Whose lights are fled, 
 
 Whose garlands dead, 
 And all but he departed ! 
 
THOMAS MOORE 47 
 
 Thus, in the stilly night, 
 
 Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me, 
 Sad Memory brings the light 
 
 Of other days around me. 
 
 ON Music 
 
 WHEN thro' life unblest we rove, 
 
 Losing all that made life dear, 
 Should some notes we used to love 
 
 In days of boyhood meet our ear, 
 Oh ! how welcome breathes the strain, 
 
 Wakening thoughts that long have slept, 
 Kindling former smiles again 
 
 In faded eyes that long have wept. 
 
 Like the gale that sighs along 
 
 Beds of Oriental flowers 
 Is the grateful breath of song 
 
 That once was heard in happier hours ; 
 Fill'd with balm, the gale sighs on, 
 
 Though the flowers have sunk in death ; 
 So, when pleasure's dream is gone, 
 
 Its memory lives in Music's breath 
 
 Music ! oh how faint, how weak 
 
 Language fades before thy spell ! 
 Why should Feeling ever speak, 
 
 When thou canst breathe her soul so well ? 
 Friendship's balmy words may feign, 
 
 Love's are e'en more false than they ; 
 Oh ! 'tis only Music's strain 
 
 Can sweetly soothe and not betray. 
 
 ECHO 
 
 How sweet the answer Echo makes 
 
 To music at night, 
 
 When, rous'd by lute or horn, she wakes, 
 And far away, o'er lawns and lakes, 
 
 Goes answering light ! 
 
48 BOOK II 
 
 Yet Love hath echoes truer far, 
 
 And far more sweet, 
 Than e'er beneath the moonlight's star, 
 Of horn, or lute, or soft guitar, 
 
 The songs repeat. 
 
 'Tis when the sigh in youth sincere 
 
 And only then 
 
 The sigh that's breath'd for one to hear 
 Is by that one, that only dear, 
 
 Breath'd back again ! 
 
 As SLOW OUR SHIP 
 
 As slow our ship her foamy track 
 
 Against the wind was cleaving, 
 Her trembling pennant still look'd back 
 
 To that dear Isle 'twas leaving, 
 So loath we part from all we love, 
 
 From all the links that bind us ; 
 So turn our hearts as on we rove, 
 
 To those we've left behind us. 
 
 When round the bowl of vanish'd years 
 
 We talk, with joyous seeming 
 With smiles that might as well be tears, 
 
 So faint, so sad their beaming ; 
 While mem'ry brings us back again 
 
 Each early tie that twined us, 
 Oh, sweet's the cup that circles then 
 
 To those we've left behind us. 
 
 And when, in other climes, we meet 
 
 Some isle or vale enchanting, 
 Where all looks flow'ry, wild and sweet, 
 
 And nought but love is wanting ; 
 We think how great had been our bliss, 
 
 If Heav'n had but assign'd us 
 To live and die in scenes like this, 
 
 With some we've left behind us ! 
 
THOMAS MOORE 49 
 
 As travellers oft look back at eve, 
 
 When eastward darkly going, 
 To gaze upon that light they leave, 
 
 Still faint behind them glowing 
 So, when the close of pleasure's day 
 
 To gloom hath near consign'd us, 
 We turn to catch one fading ray 
 
 Of joy that's left behind us. 
 
 No, NOT MORE WELCOME 
 
 No, not more welcome the fairy numbers 
 
 Of music fall on the sleeper's ear, 
 When, half-awaking from fearful slumbers, 
 
 He thinks the full choir of heaven is near 
 Than came that voice, when, all forsaken, 
 
 This heart long had sleeping lain, 
 Nor thought its cold pulse would ever waken 
 
 To such benign, blessed sounds again. 
 
 Sweet voice of comfort! 'twas like the stealing 
 
 Of summer wind thro' some wreathed shell 
 Each secret winding, each inmost feeling 
 
 Of all my soul echoed to its spell ; 
 Twas whisper'd balm 'twas sunshine spoken 
 
 I'd live years of grief and pain 
 To have my long sleep of sorrow broken 
 
 By such benign, blessed sounds again. 
 
 MY BIRTHDAY 
 
 ' MY birthday ! ' What a different sound 
 That word had in my youthful ears ! 
 
 And how, each time the day comes round, 
 Less and less white its mark appears ! 
 
 When first our scanty years are told, 
 It seems like pastime to grow old ; 
 
50 BOOK II 
 
 And as youth counts the shining links 
 That time around him binds so fast, 
 
 Pleased with the task, he little thinks 
 How hard that chain will press at last. 
 
 Vain was the man, and false as vain, 
 
 Who said, ' Were he ordained to run 
 His long career of life again, 
 
 He would do all that he had done.' 
 Ah ! 'tis not thus the voice that dwells 
 
 In sober birthdays speaks to me ; 
 Far otherwise of time it tells 
 
 Lavished unwisely, carelessly ; 
 Of counsel mocked ; of talents made 
 
 Haply for high and pure designs, 
 But oft, like Israel's incense, laid 
 
 Upon unholy, earthly shrines ; 
 Of nursing many a wrong desire ; 
 
 Of wandering after Love too far, 
 And taking every meteor fire 
 
 That crossed my pathway for his star ! 
 All this it tells, and could I trace 
 
 The imperfect picture o'er again, 
 With power to add, retouch, efface 
 
 The lights and shades, the joy and pain, 
 How little of the past would stay ! 
 How quickly all should melt away 
 All but that freedom of the mind 
 
 W T hich hath been more than wealth to me ; 
 Those friendships in my boyhood twined, 
 
 And kept till now unchangingly ; 
 And that dear home, that saving ark 
 
 Where Love's true light at last I've found, 
 Cheering within when all grows dark 
 
 And comfortless and stormy round. 
 
CHARLES WOLFE 
 
 CHARLES WOLFE 
 
 THE world is often spoken of as dull and blind to true 
 excellence. It is a shallow view. Humanity bristles with 
 sensitive tentacles which rarely fail to grasp and draw in any- 
 thing that will nourish it, even if they sometimes, for a time, 
 lay hold of things useless and unwholesome. Even thus the 
 world's tentacles get hold of things, like the DISCOURSES of 
 Epictetus or the RELIGIO MEDICI, that never were intended for 
 publicity, nor do they fail to search out minuter things too. 
 The Rev. Charles Wolfe, an obscure Irish clergyman, 
 writes a short poem which a friend who had learned it recites 
 to a casual travelling acquaintance. The latter publishes 
 it in the Newry Telegraph. Soon it is on the lips of 
 Shelley and Byron, and now there is hardly a reader of the 
 English language who has not read the ' Burial of Sir John 
 Moore.' Few indeed are the ' occasional ' poems that possess 
 so enduring a power to move the heart. Its note of pride and 
 sorrow is tuned to that of all the lofty sorrows of the world, 
 and the very music of the lines, with their long, deep vowel 
 sounds, like the burst of solemn passion in Beethoven's 
 Funeral March, will carry their meaning and emotion to 
 readers of many generations hence. 
 
 Wolfe wrote but little poetry in his short life, and little of 
 what he wrote can compare with the ' Burial Ode.' But the 
 ' Song ' which he wrote under the influence of a strain of Irish 
 music, to which he was keenly sensitive, has a remarkable 
 intensity of feeling and sweetness of melody. He had a keen 
 affection for his native land and all that it produced, and though 
 a descendant of the dominant class, and what we should now 
 call an Imperialist, he could write lines like the following from 
 his long poem on ' Patriotism ' : 
 
 O Erin ! O my mother ! I will love thee ! 
 Whether upon thy green Atlantic throne 
 Thou sitt'st august, majestic and sublime ; 
 
 K2 
 
52 BOOK II 
 
 Or on thy empire's last remaining fragment 
 Bendest forlorn, dejected and forsaken, 
 Thy smiles, thy tears, thy blessings and thy woes, 
 Thy glory and thy infamy, be mine ! 
 
 The selection here given includes one poem a sonnet 
 not previously printed. It is taken from a manuscript insertion 
 bound up in a volume of the LIFE AND REMAINS OF THE 
 REV. C. WOLFE (third edition, 1827) which was purchased in a 
 second-hand bookshop in Dublin in 1888, The volume has 
 also bound up with it a leaf from Bentley's Magazine, vol. v., 
 containing a German version of the ' Burial Ode,' and a copy 
 of a note from Mr. Edmund Gosse in Ward's ENGLISH POETS, 
 vol. iv. (1880), on the history of the Ode. After these come 
 two quarto leaves of older paper, and written in a quite differ- 
 ent and evidently earlier handwriting. They contain three 
 hitherto unknown pieces alleged to be by Wolfe. The first is 
 entitled The Contrast : Lines written by the Rev. C. Wolfe 
 while standing under Windsor Terrace.' It is a poem on 
 George III., reading like a hasty -impromptu sketch of what 
 might have been made a powerful piece of verse. I may 
 quote two stanzas : 
 
 We have fought the fight. From his lofty throne 
 
 The foe to our land we tumbled, 
 And it gladdened each heart, save his alone 
 
 For whom that foe was humbled : 
 His silver beard o'er a bosom spread 
 
 Unvaried by life's emotion, 
 Like a yearly lengthening snowdrift spread 
 
 On the calm of a frozen ocean. 
 
 Still o'er him Oblivion's waters lay, 
 
 Though the tide of life kept flowing ; 
 When they spoke of the King, 'twas but to say, 
 
 ' The old man's strength is going.' 
 At intervals thus the waves disgorge, 
 
 By weakness rent asunder, 
 A piece of the wreck of the ' Royal George,' 
 
 For the people's pity and wonder. 
 
 Then comes the sonnet given below, and finally a poem 
 
CHARLES WOLFE 53 
 
 On hearing ' The Last Rose of Summer' a. melody on which 
 Wolfe wrote a prose story now extant. The last stanza runs : 
 
 Sweet mourner, cease that melting strain, 
 Too well it suits the grave's cold slumbers ; 
 
 Too well the heart that loved in vain 
 Breathes, lives, and weeps in those wild numbers. 
 
 T. W. ROLLESTON. 
 
 Charles Wolfe was the son of Theobald Wolfe, a landowner of the 
 County Kildare, of the same family as the hero of Quebec, now represented 
 by Richard Wolfe, Esq., of Forenaghts, County Kildare. One of Theobald 
 Wolfe's tenants was Peter Tone, a coachmaker of Dublin, who called his 
 eldest son after his landlord - Theobald Wolfe and thus caused the 
 name to be written deep in Irish history. Charles Wolfe was born 
 in 1791, and was educated at Winchester, and Trinity College, Dublin, 
 where he was distinguished for high intellectual attainments and successes. 
 He took orders in 1817 (the year in which the ' Burial Ode ' was published), 
 and held curacies at Drumclog and Castle Caulfield, County Tyrone. He 
 was intensely beloved by all conditions of people among his flock, for whom 
 he ruined his weak constitution in devoted work. He died of consumption 
 in 1823, after a vain attempt to restore his health by a voyage to France. 
 His LIFE AND REMAINS have been published (1825) by the Rev. Arch- 
 deacon Russell. 
 
 THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE 
 
 NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 
 As his corse to the rampart we hurried ; 
 
 Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 
 O'er the grave where our hero we buried. 
 
 II 
 We buried him darkly at dead of night, 
 
 The sods with our bayonets turning ; 
 By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, 
 
 And the lantern dimly burning. 
 
 in 
 No useless coffin enclosed his breast, 
 
 Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him 
 But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, 
 
 With his martial cloak around him. 
 
54 BOOK II 
 
 IV 
 
 Few and short were the prayers we said, 
 And we spoke not a word of sorrow ; 
 
 But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, 
 And we bitterly thought of the morrow. 
 
 We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed, 
 
 And smooth'd down his lonely pillow, 
 That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, 
 
 And we far away on the billow ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, 
 
 And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ; 
 But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on 
 
 In the grave where a Briton has laid him. 
 
 VII 
 
 But half of our heavy task was done 
 
 When the clock struck the hour for retiring, 
 
 And we heard the distant and random gun 
 That the foe was sullenly firing. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Slowly and sadly we laid him down 
 
 From the field of his fame fresh and gory ; 
 
 We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone 
 But we left him alone with his glory ! 
 
 SONNET WRITTEN DURING HIS RESIDENCE IN COLLEGE 
 
 MY spirit's on the mountains, where the birds 
 
 In wild and sportive freedom wing the air, 
 Amidst the heath-flowers and the browsing herds, 
 
 Where Nature's altar is, my spirit's there. 
 It is my joy to tread the pathless hills, 
 
 Though but in fancy for my mind is free, 
 And walks by sedgy ways and trickling rills, 
 
 While I'm forbid the use of libertv. 
 
CHARLES WOLFE 55 
 
 This is delusion, but it is so sweet 
 
 That I could live deluded. Let me be 
 
 Persuaded that my springing soul may meet 
 The eagle on the hills and I am free. 
 
 Who'd not be flatter'd by a fate like this ? 
 
 To fancy is to feel our happiness. 
 
 LINES WRITTEN TO Music 
 
 IF I had thought thou couldst have died 
 
 I might not weep for thee ; 
 But I forgot, when by thy side, 
 
 That thou couldst mortal be : 
 It never through my mind had past 
 
 The time would e'er be o'er, 
 And I on thee should look my last, 
 
 And thou shouldst smile no more. 
 
 And still upon that face I look, 
 
 And think 'twill smile again ; 
 And still the thought I will not brook, 
 
 That I must look in vain ! 
 But when I speak thou dost not say 
 
 What thou ne'er left'st unsaid ; 
 And now I feel, as well I may, 
 
 Sweet Mary, thou art dead ! 
 
 If thou wouldst stay e'en as thou art, 
 
 All cold and all serene, 
 I still might press thy silent heart, 
 
 And where thy smiles have been. 
 While e'en thy chill bleak corse I have, 
 
 Thou seemest still mine own : 
 But there I lay thee in thy grave 
 
 And now I am alone ! 
 
 I do not think, where'er thou art, 
 
 Thou hast forgotten me, 
 And I perhaps may soothe this heart 
 
 In thinking too of thee : 
 
56 BOOK II 
 
 Yet there was round thee such a dawn 
 
 Of light, ne'er seen before, 
 As Fancy never could have drawn, 
 
 And never can restore. 
 
 LUKE AYLMER CONOLLY 
 
 THE following poem is frequently printed as anonymous. It 
 was written by Conolly, and is in his LEGENDARY TALES IN 
 VERSE, published anonymously in Belfast in 1813. He was 
 born at Ballycastle, County Antrim, graduated at Trinity 
 College, Dublin, in 1806, and entered the Church. He died 
 in or about 1833. 
 
 THE ENCHANTED ISLAND 
 
 To Rathlin's Isle I chanced to sail 
 
 When summer breezes softly blew, 
 And there I heard so sweet a tale 
 
 That oft I wished it could be true. 
 
 They said, at eve, when rude winds sleep, 
 
 And hushed is ev'ry turbid swell, 
 A mermaid rises from the deep, 
 
 And sweetly tunes her magic shell. 
 
 And while she plays, rock, dell, and cave, 
 
 In dying falls the sound retain, 
 As if some choral spirits gave 
 
 Their aid to swell her witching strain. 
 
 Then, summoned by that dulcet note, 
 
 Uprising to th' admiring view, 
 A fairy island seems to float 
 
 With tints of many a gorgeous hue. 
 
 And glittering fanes, and lofty towers, 
 
 All on this fairy isle are seen : 
 And waving trees, and shady bowers, 
 
 With more than mortal verdure green. 
 
LUKE AYLMER CO NOLLY 57 
 
 And as it moves, the western sky 
 
 Glows with a thousand varying rays ; 
 And the calm sea, tinged with each dye, 
 
 Seems like a golden flood of haze. 
 
 They also say, if earth or stone 
 
 From verdant Erin's hallowed land 
 Were on this magic island thrown, 
 
 For ever fixed it then would stand. 
 
 But when for this some little boat 
 
 In silence ventures from the shore 
 The mermaid sinks hushed is the note 
 
 The fairy isle is seen no more. 
 
 MARGUERITE A. POWER 
 
 NIECIC of Lady Blessington, and a clever writer of verse. 
 Landor praised her poems on more than one occasion. She 
 was born about 1815, and died in July 1867. She wrote much 
 poetry for periodicals (such as The Irish Metropolitan Maga- 
 zine, 1857-8) edited by herself, her aunt, and others, and also 
 several novels and a book of travel. The following is from 
 her best poem, 'Virginia's Hand,' which was separately published 
 in 1860 : 
 
 A HIDDEN ROSE-TREE 
 
 .... LATE at morning's prime I roved, 
 
 Where erst a garden bloomed, where now a waste 
 
 Of tangled vegetation, rank and wild, 
 
 Held sole pre-eminence or so I deemed 
 
 Till, turning from an alley long untrod, 
 
 And densely sheltered by o'er-arching boughs, 
 
 From whence, scarce half a foot above my head, 
 
 The shrieking blackbirds darted from the nest 
 
 My presence had invaded, I arrived 
 
 Upon a little space hedged closely round 
 
$8 BOOK II 
 
 With dark-leaved evergreens, but at the top 
 
 The blue sky spread its canopy, unbarred 
 
 By crossing boughs, and in his daily course 
 
 From east to west the genial sun would still 
 
 Grant it a smile in passing. 'Mid the shrubs 
 
 A strong white forest-rose had taken root 
 
 (Perchance been planted by a hand mine knew, 
 
 Now mouldering O my heart, thou knowest where ! ) 
 
 And all the stem and lower boughs concealed 
 
 Amid the thicker evergreens, its top 
 
 Had struggled upwards towards the heaven above 
 
 'Gainst obstacles incredible, till now 
 
 Far o'er my head, among dark, polished leaves 
 
 Of laurel and stiff holly, it outspread 
 
 Its clusters exquisite of bud and bloom, 
 
 Some yet green-sheathed, some tinted at the heart 
 
 With faintest yellow, others shedding down 
 
 Their petals white, that lay like pearly shells 
 
 Receding waves have left on lonely shores. 
 
 GEORGE BARLEY 
 
 THE poems of George Darley are among the most curious 
 phenomena of literature. There are surely few as yet un- 
 acquainted with him who can read the verses here given 
 as specimens of his work without eagerly desiring to know 
 more of the writer. There are probably none who would 
 not be disappointed with the result of further researches. 
 Darley the recluse, the poet, the mathematician, living 
 without distraction the ardent life of the spirit could, as at 
 times in NEPENTHE, breathe forth a strain of such glorious 
 music that one might think it could only have been uttered 
 by a poetic genius of the highest order. But we read on, 
 and the brain becomes exhausted and benumbed. Dazzled 
 and weaiy, we seek a refuge from the unvarying blaze of 
 
GEORGE DARLEY 59 
 
 verbal splendour ; and there is no refuge but to shut the book. 
 The Celtic intoxication of sounding rhythm and glittering 
 phrase was never better illustrated than by George Darley. 
 Frequently it happens that his verse, though always preserving 
 in some curious way the outward characteristics of fine poetry, 
 becomes a sort of caput morfaum ; the glow of life fades out of 
 it. Or, again, it gives us only ' splendours that perplex ' and 
 leaves the spirit faint and bewildered. But when, as sometimes 
 happens, spirit and sound, light and life, come together in 
 their miraculous accord and form a living creation of spiritual 
 ecstasy, then indeed we can yield ourselves wholly to the 
 spell of the Celtic enchantment. 
 
 George Barley's work of course won cordial recognition 
 from his brother-poets of the day. Tennyson offered to pay 
 the expenses of publishing his verse ; Browning was inspired 
 by SYLVIA ; Carey, the translator of Dante, thought that drama 
 the finest poem of the day. But Darley, misanthropic, way- 
 ward, and afflicted with an exceptionally painful impediment 
 in his speech which drove him from society in morbid isolation, 
 seems never to have met his peers in wholesome human 
 contact, and lived alone, burying himself in the study of 
 mathematics, of Gaelic, and what not, weaving his rich and 
 strange fancies, apparently indifferent to public approval 
 or criticism, which indeed the public spared him by entirely 
 ignoring him. He was author of several mathematical works 
 said to show remarkable merit and originality. 
 
 T. W. ROLLESTON. 
 
 George Darley was born in Dublin, 1795 '> tne eldest son of Arthur 
 Darley,of the Scalp, County Wicklow. His family is believed to have come 
 into Ireland with the Ulster Plantation. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, 
 in 1815, and graduated in 1820. In 1822 he settled in London, and in the 
 same year produced his ERROURS OF ECSTACIE (a dialogue with the moon), 
 which was no doubt written in Ireland. Then followed THE LABOURS OF 
 IDLENESS (prose and verse) by Guy Penseval, 1826 ; SYLVIA, a fairy 
 drama, in 1827 ; and NEPENTHE, an indescribable rhapsody, in 1839. 
 1840 and 1841 saw respectively the publication of two tragedies, THOMAS 
 A BECKET and ETHELS IAN, dramas in which the light of poetry plays but 
 fitfully. He died in London in 1846. 
 
60 BOOK II 
 
 A memorial volume of his poems containing several till then unprinted 
 pieces has been published for private circulation by R. and M. J. 
 Livingstone (A. Holden, Church Street, Liverpool). 
 
 From NEPENTHE 
 
 OVER hills and uplands high 
 
 Hurry me, Nymphs ! O hurry me ! 
 
 Where green Earth from azure sky 
 Seems but one blue step to be ; 
 
 Where the Sun in wheel of gold 
 
 Burnishes deeply in her mould, 
 
 And her shining walks uneven 
 
 Seem declivities of Heaven. 
 
 Come ! where high Olympus nods, 
 
 Ground-sill to the hill of Gods ! 
 
 Let me through the breathless air 
 
 Soar insuperable, where 
 
 Audibly in mystic ring 
 
 The angel orbs are heard to sing ; 
 
 And from that bright vantage ground, 
 
 Viewing nether heaven profound, 
 
 Mark the eagle near the sun 
 
 Scorching to gold his pinions dun ; 
 
 With fleecy birds of paradise 
 
 Upfloating to their native skies ; 
 
 Or hear the wild swans far below 
 
 Faintly whistle as they row 
 
 Their course on the transparent tide 
 
 That fills the hollow welkin wide. 
 
 HYMN TO THE SUN 
 
 BEHOLD the world's great wonder, 
 
 The Sovereign Star arise ! 
 'Midst Ocean's sweet dead thunder, 
 
 Earth's silence and the skies. 
 
 The sea's rough slope ascending, 
 
 He steps in all his beams, 
 Each wave beneath him bending 
 
 His throne of glory seems. 
 
GEORGE DARLEY 61 
 
 Of red clouds round and o'er him 
 
 His canopy is roll'd, 
 The broad ooze burns before him, 
 
 A field of cloth of gold. 
 
 Now strike his proud pavilion ! 
 
 He mounts the blue sublime, 
 And throws in many a million 
 
 His wealth from clime to clime. 
 
 TRUE LOVELINESS 1 
 
 IT is not beauty I demand, 
 A crystal brow, the moon's despair, 
 
 Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, 
 Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair. 
 
 Tell me not of your starry eyes, 
 Your lips that seem on roses fed, 
 
 Your breasts, where Cupid tumbling lies, 
 Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed. 
 
 A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks, 
 Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours, 
 
 A breath that softer music speaks 
 
 Than summer winds a-wooing flowers, 
 
 These are but gauds. Nay, what are lips ? 
 
 Coral beneath the ocean-stream, 
 Whose brink, when your adventurer slips, 
 
 Full oft he perisheth on them. 
 
 And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft 
 That wave hot youths to fields of blood ? 
 
 Did Helen's breast, though ne'er so soft, 
 Do Greece or Ilium any good ? 
 
 Eyes can with baleful ardour burn ; 
 
 Poison can breathe, that erst perfumed ; 
 There's many a white hand holds an urn 
 
 With lovers' hearts to dust consumed. 
 
 1 In the first edition of the GOLDEN TREASURY this poem was printed 
 as anonymous among the seventeenth-century writers in Book II. 
 
62 BOOK II 
 
 For crystal brows there's nought within, 
 They are but empty cells for pride ; 
 
 He who the Siren's hair would win 
 Is mostly strangled in the tide. 
 
 Give me, instead of beauty's bust, 
 A tender heart, a loyal mind, 
 
 Which with temptation I would trust, 
 Yet never linked with error find 
 
 One in whose gentle bosom I 
 
 Could pour my secret heart of woes, 
 
 Like the care-burthened honey-fly 
 That hides his murmurs in the rose. 
 
 My earthly comforter ! whose love 
 
 So indefeasible might be, 
 That when my spirit wonn'd above, 
 
 Hers could not stay for sympathy. 
 
 THE FALLEN STAR 
 
 A STAR is gone ! a star is gone ! 
 
 There is a blank in Heaven, 
 One of the cherub choir has done 
 
 His airy course this even. 
 
 He sat upon the orb of fire 
 
 That hung for ages there, 
 And lent his music to the choir 
 
 That haunts the nightly air. 
 
 But when his thousand years are passed 
 
 With a cherubic sigh 
 He vanished with his car at last 
 
 For even cherubs die ! 
 
 Hear how his angel-brothers mourn 
 The 'minstrels of the spheres 
 
 Each chiming sadly in his turn 
 And dropping splendid tears. 
 
GEORGE DARLEY 63 
 
 The planetary sisters all 
 
 Join in the fatal song, 
 And weep this hapless brother's fall 
 
 Who sang with them so long. 
 
 But deepest of the choral band 
 
 The Lunar Spirit sings, 
 And with a bass-according hand 
 
 Sweeps all her sullen strings. 
 
 From the deep chambers of the dome 
 
 Where sleepless Uriel lies 
 His rude harmonic thunders come 
 
 Mingled with mighty sighs. 
 
 The thousand car-borne cherubim 
 
 The wandering Eleven, 
 All join to chant the dirge of him 
 
 Who fell just now from Heaven. 
 
 From THE FIGHT OF THE FORLORN 
 
 THE CHIEF loquitur: 
 
 BARD ! to no brave chief belonging, 
 
 Hath green Eire no defenders ? 
 See her sons to battle thronging, 
 
 Gael's broad-swords and Ir's bow-benders ! 
 
 Clan Tir-oer ! Clan Tir-conel ! 
 
 Atha's royal sept of Connacht ! 
 Desmond red ! and dark O'Donel ! 
 
 Fierce O'More ! and stout MacDonacht 
 
 Hear the sounding spears of Tara * 
 
 On the blue shields how they rattle ! 
 Hear the reckless Lord of Lara 
 
 Humming his short song of battle ! 2 
 
 1 Darley has a note deriving ' Tara,' originally ' Teamur,'from Teach- 
 mor, or ' Great House ' the palace of the Irish Kings. 
 
 2 This phrase evidently refers to the metrical structure of the Gaelic 
 Rosg-catha, or battle-song. 
 
64 BOOK II 
 
 Ullin's chief, the great O'Nial, 
 
 Sternly with his brown axe playing, 
 
 Mourns for the far hour of trial 
 And disdains this long delaying ! 
 
 Gray O'Ruark's self doth chide me, 
 Thro' his iron beard and hoary, 
 
 Murmuring in his breast beside me 
 ' On to our old fields of glory ! ' 
 
 Red-branch crests, like roses flaming, 
 Toss with scorn around Hi-Dalian, 
 
 Battle, blood, and death proclaiming 
 Fear'st thou still for Inisfallan ? 
 
 SAMUEL LOVER 
 
 THE versatility of Lover is one of the stock examples in Irish 
 biography, and it is somewhat difficult to say in which of his 
 various capacities he best succeeded. I am inclined to think 
 that it is as a humorous poet that he ranks highest. He has 
 many competitors in other branches of intellectual activity, 
 but there are very few indeed who can be placed on the same 
 level as a humorist in verse. His work as a miniature 
 painter, as a composer, and as a novelist, excellent as it is, is 
 likely to be forgotten long before such racy songs as ' Widow 
 Machree,' 'Molly Carew,' 'Barney O'Hea,' and 'Rory 
 O'More,' to name but a few of his best-known pieces, have 
 become obsolete. There is an archness, an irresistible gaiety 
 in these effusions to which it is difficult to find a parallel even 
 among Irish writers. When he attempts the serious or 
 sentimental, he generally fails lamentably. Humour is his 
 most legitimate quality he is the arch-humorist among Irish 
 poets. He was born in Dublin on February 24, 1797, and 
 gave early indication of his literary and musical gifts, to the an- 
 noyance of his father, a worthy stockbroker, whose intention it 
 was to train him in business, and who disliked the arts. Finally 
 
SAMUEL LOVER 65 
 
 his scruples were overcome, but the result was a permanent 
 estrangement. The younger Lover began his career as a 
 painter, and obtained very considerable reputation by his 
 admirable miniatures of Paganini, Thalberg, and others, which 
 were declared by competent judges to be worthy of the best 
 professors of the art. Weakness of sight compelled him to 
 turn to another means of livelihood, and he wrote many clever 
 short stories, afterwards collected together in the two volumes 
 of LEGENDS AND STORIES OF IRELAND. Subsequently he 
 produced the longer stories known to most readers as HANDY 
 ANDY ; RORY O'MoRE ; and TREASURE TROVE : OR, HE 
 WOULD BE A GENTLEMAN. These were illustrated by capital 
 comic etchings of his own. Meanwhile his songs, nearly three 
 hundred of which were set to music as well as written by 
 himself, extended his fame far and wide. His more ambitious 
 poetical efforts are weak, and the same thing may be practically 
 said of his stories. He has never done anything in fiction 
 better than BARNEY O'REARDON THE NAVIGATOR, and certainly 
 his richly humorous songs are the only tolerable efforts of his 
 Muse. He was granted a Civil List pension of ioo/. in 1856, 
 and after a long and prosperous life died in Jersey on July 6, 
 1868. In person he was almost as diminutive as his country- 
 men, Tom Moore and Crofton Croker ; and, like them, he was 
 very popular with all who had the pleasure of meeting him. 
 
 D. J. O DONOGHUE. 
 
 WIDOW MACHREE 
 
 WIDOW MACHREE, it's no wonder you frown, 
 
 Och hone 1 Widow Machree, 
 
 Faith, it ruins your looks, that same dirty black gown, 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 
 How altered your air 
 
 With that close cap you wear, 
 
 'Tis destroying your hair 
 
 That should be flowing free ; 
 
 Be no longer a churl 
 
 Of its black silken curl, 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 
66 BOOK II 
 
 Widow Machree, now the summer is come, 
 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree , 
 
 When everything smiles, should a beauty look glum ? 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 See, the birds go in pairs, 
 And the rabbits and hares 
 Why, even the bears 
 Now in couples agree 
 And the mute little fish, 
 Though they can't spake, they wish 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 
 Widow Machree, and when winter comes in, 
 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree, 
 
 To be poking the fire all alone is a sin, 
 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 
 Sure the shovel and tongs 
 
 To each other belongs, 
 
 While the kettle sings songs 
 
 Full of family glee ! 
 
 Yet alone with your cup, 
 
 Like a hermit you sup, 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 
 And how do you know, with the comforts I've towld, 
 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree, 
 
 But you're keeping some poor fellow out in the cowld ? 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 
 With such sins on your head 
 
 Sure your peace would be fled, 
 
 Could you sleep in your bed 
 
 Without thinking to see 
 
 Some ghost or some sprite 
 
 That would wake you at night, 
 Crying, * Och hone ! Widow Machree ! ' 
 
 Then take my advice, darling Widow Machree, 
 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree, 
 And, with my advice, faith, I wish you'd take me, 
 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree. 
 
SAMUEL LOVER 67 
 
 You'd have me to desire 
 Then to stir up the fire ; 
 And sure Hope is no liar 
 In whisp'ring to me 
 That the ghosts would depart 
 When you'd me near your heart, 
 Och hone ! Widow Machree ! 
 
 BARNEY O'HEA 
 
 Now let me alone, though I know you won't, 
 
 Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 It makes me outrageous 
 
 When you're so contagious, 
 And you'd better look out for the stout Corney Creagh ; 
 
 For he is the boy 
 
 That believes I'm his joy, 
 So you'd better behave yourself, Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 Impudent Barney, 
 
 None of your blarney, 
 
 Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 I hope you're not going to Bandon Fair, 
 
 For indeed I'm not wanting to meet you there, 
 
 Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 For Corney's at Cork, 
 
 And my brother's at work, 
 And my mother sits spinning at home all the day, 
 
 So no one will be there 
 
 Of poor me to take care, 
 So I hope you won't follow me, Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 Impudent Barney, 
 
 None of your blarney, 
 
 Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 But as I was walking up Bandon Street, 
 
 Just who do you think that myself should meet, 
 
 But impudent Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 He said I looked killin', 
 
 I called him a villain, 
 
 F2 
 
68 BOOK II 
 
 And bid him that minute get out of the way 
 
 He said I was joking, 
 
 And grinned so provoking, 
 I couldn't help laughing at Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 Impudent Barney, 
 
 None of your blarney, 
 
 Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 He knew 'twas all right when he saw me smile, 
 For he was the rogue up to ev'ry wile, 
 
 Impudent Barney O'Hea ! 
 
 He coaxed me to choose him, 
 
 For if I'd refuse him 
 He swore he'd kill Corney the very next day ; 
 
 So, for fear 'twould go further, 
 
 And just to save murther, 
 I think I must marry that madcap, O'Hea ! 
 
 Bothering Barney, 
 
 'Tis he has the blarney 
 
 To make a girl Mistress O'Hea. 
 
 RORY O'MORE 
 
 YOUNG Rory O'More courted Kathleen bawn, 
 He was bold as a hawk, and she soft as the dawn ; 
 He wish'd in his heart pretty Kathleen to please, 
 And he thought the best way to do that was to tease. 
 
 * Now, Rory, be aisy,' sweet Kathleen would cry, 
 Reproof on her lips, but a smile in her eye ; 
 
 * With your tricks I don't know, in troth, what I'm about ; 
 Faith, you've teased till I've put on my cloak inside out.' 
 
 ' Oh ! jewel,' says Rory, ' that same is the way 
 You've thrated my heart for this many a day, 
 And 'tis plaz'd that I am, and why not, to be sure ? 
 For 'tis all for good luck,' says bold Rory O'More. 
 
 * Indeed, then,' says Kathleen, 'don't think of the like, 
 For I half gave a promise to soothering Mike ; 
 
 The ground that I walk on he loves, I'll be bound.' 
 
 ' Faith,' says Rory, ' I'd rather love you than the ground.' 
 
SAMUEL LOVER 69 
 
 * Now, Rory, I'll cry, if you don't let me go ; 
 Sure I dream ev'ry night that I'm hating you so ! } 
 ' Oh ! ' says Rory, that same I'm delighted to hear, 
 For dhrames always go by contrairies, my dear ! 
 Oh ! jewel, keep dreaming that same till you die, 
 And bright morning will give dirty night the black lie ; 
 And 'tis plaz'd that I am, and why not, to be sure ? 
 Since 'tis all for good luck,' says bold Rory O'More. 
 
 4 Arrah, Kathleen, my darlint, you've teaz'd me enough, 
 
 Sure I've thrash'd, for your sake, Dinny Grimes and Jim Duff ; 
 
 And I've made myself, drinking your health, quite a baste, 
 
 So I think, after that, I may talk to the priest.' 
 
 Then Rory, the rogue, stole his arm round her neck, 
 
 So soft and so white, without freckle or speck, 
 
 And he look'd in her eyes that were beaming with light, 
 
 And he kiss'd her sweet lips, don't you think he was right ? 
 
 ' Now, Rory, leave off, sir ; you'll hug me no more ; 
 
 That's eight times to-day that you've kiss'd me before.' 
 
 ' Then here goes another,' says he, ' to make sure, 
 
 For there's luck in odd numbers,' says Rory O'More. 
 
 CHARLES JAMES LEVER 
 
 SCATTERED through Lever's novels are numerous songs, often 
 as brilliant and racy as his inimitable prose. Unlike his later 
 prose, however, which in novels like THE O'DoNOGHUE and 
 THE KNIGHT OF GWYNNE showed a power responsive to the 
 deepening intellectual interest of his work, his verse, when 
 he tried to be serious, rarely achieved more than senti- 
 mentality. The pieces here given seem as good as things of 
 the kind can be. Their gay humour is irresistible, and their 
 language and rhythm are handled by a veritable master of his 
 craft. 
 
 Lever was born in Dublin in 1806, and was the son of an 
 English contractor. He graduated in Trinity College, Dublin, 
 
70 BOOK II 
 
 1827, and afterwards became an M.D. of Louvain. He did 
 much journalistic work in Dublin, besides practising successfully 
 as a physician, and edited The Dublin University Magazine 
 with which so many distinguished Irish men of letters have 
 been connected from 1842 to 1845. He received a Consular 
 appointment at Spezzia in 1858, and died Consul at Trieste 
 in 1872. 
 
 LARRY M'HALE 
 
 OH, Larry M'Hale he had little to fear, 
 
 And never could want when the crops didn't fail ; 
 He'd a house and demesne and eight hundred a year, 
 
 And a heart for to spend it, had Larry M'Hale ! 
 The soul of a party, the life of a feast, 
 
 And an illigant song he could sing, I'll be bail ; 
 He would ride with the rector, and drink with the priest, 
 
 Oh ! the broth of a boy was old Larry M'Hale. 
 
 It's little he cared for the Judge or Recorder ; 
 
 His house was as big and as strong as a gaol ; 
 With a cruel four-pounder he kept in great order 
 
 He'd murder the country, would Larry M'Hale. 
 He'd a blunderbuss too ; of horse-pistols a pair ! 
 
 But his favourite weapon was always a flail ; 
 I wish you could see how he'd empty a fair, 
 
 For he handled it nately, did Larry M'Hale. 
 
 His ancestors were kings before Moses was born, 
 
 His mother descended from great Grana Uaile : 
 He laughed all the Blakes and the Frenches to scorn ; 
 
 They were mushrooms compared to old Larry M'Hale. 
 He sat down every day to a beautiful dinner, 
 
 With cousins and uncles enough for a tail ; 
 And, though loaded with debt, oh ! the devil a thinner 
 
 Could law or the sheriff make Larry M'Hale. 
 
 With a larder supplied and a cellar well stored, 
 
 None lived half so well, from Fair-Head to Kinsale ; 
 
 As he piously said, ' I've a plentiful board, 
 
 And the Lord He is good to old Larry M'Hale.' 
 
CHARLES JAMES LEVER 71 
 
 * 
 
 So fill up your glass, and a high bumper give him, 
 It's little we'd care for the tithes or Repale ; 
 
 For Ould Erin would be a fine country to live in, 
 If we only had plenty like LARRY M'HALE. 
 
 THE WIDOW MALONE 
 
 DID ye hear of the widow Malone, 
 
 Ohone ! 
 - Who lived in the town of Athlone, 
 
 Alone ? 
 
 Oh ! she melted the hearts 
 Of the swains in them parts 
 So lovely the widow Malone, 
 
 Ohone ! 
 So lovely the widow Malone. 
 
 Of lovers she had a full score 
 
 Or more ; 
 And fortunes they all had galore, 
 
 In store ; 
 
 From the minister down 
 To the Clerk of the Crown, 
 All were courting the widow Malone, 
 
 Ohone ! 
 All were courting the widow Malone. 
 
 But so modest was Mistress Malone, 
 'Twas known 
 
 No one ever could see her alone, 
 Ohone ! 
 
 Let them ogle and sigh, 
 
 They could ne'er catch her eye 
 
 So bashful the widow Malone, 
 Ohone ! 
 
 So bashful the widow Malone. 
 
 Till one Mr. O'Brien from Clare- 
 How quare ! 
 
 It's little for blushing they care 
 
 Down there 
 
72 BOOK II 
 
 Put his arm round her waist, 
 
 Took ten kisses at laste 
 
 ' Oh,' says he, ' you're my Molly Malone 
 
 My own !' 
 ' Oh,' says he, ' you're my Molly Malone ! ' 
 
 And the widow they all thought so shy, 
 
 My eye ! 
 Ne'er thought of a simper or sigh 
 
 For why ? 
 
 But, ' Lucius,' says she, 
 ' Since you've now made so free, 
 You may marry your Molly Malone, 
 
 Ohone ! 
 You may marry your Molly Malone.' 
 
 There's a moral contained in my song, 
 Not wrong, 
 
 And, one comfort, it's not very long, 
 But strong : 
 
 If for widows you die, 
 
 Learn to kiss, not to sigh, 
 
 For they're all like sweet Mistress Malone ! 
 Ohone ! 
 
 Oh ! they're very like Mistress Malone ! 
 
 FRANCIS SYLVESTER MAHONY 
 ('FATHER PROUT') 
 
 THE well-known scholar and wit was born in Cork in 1804, and 
 died in Paris on May 18, 1866. He became a Jesuit priest, 
 but concerned himself more with literature and journalism than 
 with a religious calling. He wrote the famous ' Reliques of 
 Father Prout ' for Prater's Magazine, and afterwards became 
 Roman correspondent of The Daily Neivs and Paris 
 correspondent of The Globe. Most of his writings have been 
 collected. The following is his nearest approach to poetry : 
 
< FATHER PROUT' 73 
 
 THE BELLS OF SHANDON 
 
 WITH deep affection and recollection 
 I often think of the Shandon bells, 
 Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood, 
 
 Fling round my cradle their magic spells. 
 On this I ponder, where'er I wander, 
 
 And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee ; 
 With thy bells of Shandon, 
 That sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 
 
 I have heard bells chiming full many a clime in, 
 
 Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine ; 
 While at a glib rate brass tongues would vibrate, 
 
 But all their music spoke nought to thine ; 
 For memory dwelling on each proud swelling 
 Of thy belfry knelling its bold notes free, 
 Made the bells of Shandon 
 Sound far more grand on 
 The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 
 
 I have heard bells tolling ' old Adrian's mole ' in, 
 
 Their thunder rolling from the Vatican, 
 With cymbals glorious, swinging uproarious 
 
 In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame ; 
 But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of Peter 
 Flings o'er the Tiber, pealing solemnly. 
 Oh ! the bells of Shandon 
 Sound far more grand on 
 The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 
 
 There's a bell in Moscow, while on tower and Kiosko 
 
 In St. Sophia the Turkman gets, 
 And loud in air calls men to prayer 
 
 From the tapering summit of tall minarets. 
 Such empty phantom I freely grant 'em, 
 But there's an anthem more dear to me : 
 'Tis the bells of Shandon, 
 That sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 
 
74 BOOK II 
 
 JOHN FRANCIS WALLER 
 
 BORN in Limerick in 1809, and graduated LL.D. at Trinity 
 College, Dublin, in 1852. He was called to the Irish Bar, 
 but mainly occupied himself with literature. He wrote much 
 verse and prose. for The Dublin University Magazine, which 
 he edited for a time, and received an official appointment in 
 Dublin in 1867. He has written many poems, including some 
 excellent lyrics, and is also the author and editor of other works. 
 His poems are to be found in five different volumes RAVENS- 
 CROFT HILL, 1852 ; THE DEAD BRIDAL, 1854 ; POEMS, 1854; 
 OCCASIONAL ODES, 1864 ; PETER BROWN, 1872. 
 
 THE SPINNING- WHEEL 
 
 MELLOW the moonlight to shine is beginning, 
 
 Close by the window young Eileen is spinning ; 
 
 Bent o'er the fire her blind grandmother, sitting, 
 
 Is crooning, and moaning, and drowsily knitting : 
 
 * Eileen, achora, I hear some one tapping.' 
 
 ' 'Tis the ivy, dear mother, against the glass flapping.' 
 
 ' Eily, I surely hear somebody sighing.' 
 
 "Tis the sound, mother dear, of the summer wind dying.' 
 
 Merrily, cheerily, noiselessly whirring, 
 
 Swings the wheel, spins the wheel, while the foot's stirring ; 
 
 Sprightly, and brightly, and airily ringing 
 Thrills the sweet voice of the young maiden singing. 
 
 4 What's that noise that I hear at the window, I wonder ? ' 
 ' 'Tis the little birds chirping the holly-bush under.' 
 ' What makes you be shoving and moving your stool on, 
 And singing, all wrong, that old song of " The Coolun " ? ' 
 There's a form at the casement the form of her true love 
 And he whispers, with face bent, ' I'm waiting for you, love ; 
 Get up on the stool, through the lattice step lightly, 
 We'll rove in the grove while the moon's shining brightly 
 Merrily, cheerily, noiselessly whirring, &c. 
 
JOHN FRANCIS WALLER 75 
 
 The maid shakes her head, on her lips lays her fingers, 
 Steals up from her seat longs to go, and yet lingers ; 
 A frightened glance turns to her drowsy grandmother, 
 Puts one foot on the stool, spins the wheel with the other. 
 Lazily, easily, swings now the wheel round, 
 Slowly and lowly is heard now the reel's sound ; 
 Noiseless and light to the lattice above her 
 The maid steps then leaps to the arms of her lover. 
 Slower and slower and slower the wheel swings ; 
 ' Lower and lower and lower the reel rings ; 
 Ere the reel and the wheel stopped their ringing and 
 
 moving, 
 
 Through the grove the young lovers by moonlight are 
 roving. 
 
 KITTY NEIL 
 
 AH, sweet Kitty Neil, rise up from that wheel, 
 
 Your neat little foot will be weary from spinning. 
 Come, trip down with me to the sycamore-tree ; 
 
 Half the parish is there, and the dance is beginning. 
 The sun is gone down, but the full harvest moon 
 
 Shines sweetly and cool in the dew-whitened valley ; 
 While all the air rings with the soft loving things 
 
 Each little bird sings in the green-shaded alley. 
 
 With a blush and a smile Kitty rose up the while, 
 
 Her eye in the glass, as she bound her hair, glancing ; 
 'Tis hard to refuse when a young lover sues 
 
 So she couldn't but choose to go off to the dancing. 
 And now on the green the glad couples are seen, 
 
 Each gay-hearted lad with the lass of his choosing ; 
 And Pat without fail leads out sweet Kitty Neil 
 
 Somehow, when he asked, she ne'er thought of refusing. 
 
 Now Felix Magee puts his pipes to his knee, 
 And with flourish so free sets each couple in motion ; 
 
 With a cheer and a bound the boys patter the ground, 
 The maids move around just like swans on the ocean, 
 
76 BOOK II 
 
 Cheeks bright as the rose, feet light as the doe's, 
 Now coyly retiring, now boldly advancing ; 
 
 Search the world all around, from the sky to the ground, 
 No such sight can be found as an Irish lass dancing. 
 
 Sweet Kate, who could view your bright eyes of deep blue, 
 
 Beaming humidly through their dark lashes so mildly, 
 Your fair-turned arm, heaving breast, rounded form, 
 
 Nor feel his heart warm, and his pulses throb wildly ? 
 Young Pat feels his heart, as he gazes, depart, 
 
 Subdued by the smart of such painful, yet sweet love ; 
 The sight leaves his eye, as he cries with a sigh, 
 
 * Dance light, for my heart it lies under your feet, love.' 
 
 WILLIAM CARLETON 
 
 THE great Irish novelist was born at Prillisk, County Tyrone, 
 in 1794 ; the son of a small farmer. He was educated chiefly 
 by one Patrick Frayne, whose unfading portrait as Mat 
 Kavanagh was afterwards drawn in ' The Hedge School.' He 
 was at first, like many of the clever sons of Irish peasant 
 families, intended for the priesthood. The experiences of his 
 schooldays, the story how he became a Ribbonman, the 
 Orange and Catholic disturbances, the merry-makings of the 
 people, Carleton's fights, loves, early marriage, and adventures 
 in search of education and livelihood, are told in his own 
 inimitable manner in the AUTOBIOGRAPHY, lately edited by 
 Mr. D. J. O'Donoghue. Having become a Protestant, he 
 made his debut in literature as a contributor of stories of 
 Irish peasant life to The Christian Examiner, lately started by 
 Caesar Otway. He contributed a few poems to the same 
 magazine. 'Sir Turlough' appeared in 1839 in The National 
 Magazine, edited by Charles Lever. After a life in which 
 there was much of gaiety, much of gloom, and in spite of his 
 literary success much struggle with penury, he died, famous 
 
WILLIAM CARLETON 77 
 
 and beloved, in 1869. Since 1848 he had been in receipt of 
 a Civil List penson of 2oo/. a year. 
 
 4 
 
 SIR TURLOUGH ; OR, THE CHURCHYARD BRIDE l 
 
 In the churchyard of Erigle Truagh, in the barony of Truagh, County 
 Monaghan, there is said to be a Spirit which appears to persons whose families 
 are there interred. Its appearance, which is generally made in the following 
 manner, is uniformly fatal, being an omen of death to those who are so un- 
 happy as to meet with it. When a funeral takes place, it watches the person 
 who remains last in the graveyard, over whom it possesses a fascinating influ- 
 ence. If the loiterer be a young man, it takes the shape of a beautiful female, 
 inspires him with a charmed passion, and exacts a promise to meet in the 
 churchyard on a month from that day ; this promise is sealed by a kiss, which 
 communicates a deadly taint to the individual who receives it. It then dis- 
 appears, and no sooner does the young man quit the churchyard than he remem- 
 bers the history of the spectre - which is well known in the parish sinks into 
 despair, dies, and is buried in the place of appointment on the day when the 
 promise was to have been fulfilled. If, on the contrary, it appears to a female, 
 it assumes the form of a young man of exceeding elegance and beauty. Some 
 years ago I was shown the grave of a young person, about eighteen years of age, 
 who was said to have fallen a victim to it : and it is not more than ten months 
 since a man in the same parish declared that he gave the promise and the fatal 
 kiss, and consequently looked upon himself as lost. He took a fever, died, and 
 was buried on the day appointed for the meeting, which was exactly a month 
 from that of the interview. There are several cases of the same kind men- 
 tioned, but the two now alluded to are the only ones that came within my per- 
 sonal knowledge. It appears, however, that the spectre does not confine its 
 operations to the churchyard, as there have been instances mentioned of its 
 appearance at weddings and dances, where it never failed to secure its victims 
 by dancing them into pleuritic fevers. I am unable to say whether this is a 
 strictly local superstition, or whether it is considered peculiar to other church- 
 yards in Ireland or elsewhere. In its female shape it somewhat resembles the 
 Elle maids of Scandinavia ; but I am acquainted with no account of fairies or 
 apparitions in which the sex is said to be changed, except in that of the Devil 
 himself. The country people say it is Death. Author 's note. 
 
 The bride she bound her golden hair 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 And her step was light as the breezy air 
 When it bends the morning flowers so fair, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 1 'The " Sir Turlough " of Carleton is perhaps the most successful 
 legendary ballad of modern times.' Mr. Theodore Martin, in The Dublin 
 University Magazine, 1839. 
 
78 BOOK II 
 
 And oh, but her eyes they danc'd so bright, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 
 As she longed for the dawn of to-morrow's light, 
 Her bridal vows of love to plight, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 The bridegroom is come with youthful brow, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 To receive from his Eva her virgin vow ; 
 'Why tarries the bride of my bosom now?' 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 A cry ! a cry ! 'twas her maidens spoke, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 t Your bride is asleep she has not awoke ; 
 And the sleep she sleeps will be never broke,' 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 Sir Turlough sank down with a heavy moan, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy! 
 
 And his cheek became like the marble stone 
 ' Oh, the pulse of my heart is for ever gone ! 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 The keen is loud ; it comes again, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy / 
 And rises sad from the funeral train, 
 As in sorrow it winds along the plain, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 And oh, but the plumes of white were fair 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 When they flutter'd all mournful in the air, 
 As rose the hymn of the requiem prayer, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 There is a voice but one can hear, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy / 
 And it softly pours, from behind the bier, 
 Its note of death on Sir Turlough's ear, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
WILLIAM CARLETON 79 
 
 The keen is loud, but that voice is low, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 And it sings its song of sorrow slow, 
 And names young Turlough's name with woe 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 Now the grave is closed, and the mass is said, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 And the bride she sleeps in her lonely bed, 
 The fairest corpse among the dead, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 The wreaths of virgin-white are laid, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 By virgin hands, o'er the spotless maid ; 
 And the flowers are strewn, but they soon will fade, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 ' Oh ! go not yet not yet away, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy! 
 Let us feel that life is near our clay,' 
 The long-departed seem to say, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 But the tramp and the voices of life are gone, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 And beneath each cold forgotten stone 
 The mouldering dead sleep all alone, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 But who is he that lingereth yet ? 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 The fresh green sod with his tears is wet 
 And his heart in the bridal grave is set, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 Oh, who but Sir Turlough, the young and brave 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 Should bend him o'er that bridal grave, 
 And to his death-bound Eva rave ? 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
8o BOOK II 
 
 * Weep not weep not,' said a lady fair, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy / 
 ' Should youth and valour thus despair, 
 And pour their vows to the empty air ? ' 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 There's charmed music upon her tongue, 
 
 Killeevy ', O Killeevy ! 
 
 Such beauty bright, and warm and young- 
 Was never seen the maids among, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 A laughing light, a tender grace, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy! 
 Sparkled in beauty around her face, 
 That grief from mortal heart might chase, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 * The maid for whom thy salt tears fall, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 Thy grief or love can ne'er recall ; 
 She rests beneath that grassy pall, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 * My heart it strangely cleaves to thee, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy / 
 And now that thy plighted love is free 
 Give its unbroken pledge to me, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 
 
 The charm is strong upon Turlough's eye, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy! 
 His faithless tears are already dry, 
 And his yielding heart has ceased to sigh, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 * To thee,' the charmed chief replied, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 ' I pledge that love o'er my buried bride ; 
 Oh ! come, and in Turlough's hall abide, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 
 
WILLIAM CARLETON 81 
 
 Again the funeral voice came o'er 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 The passing breeze, as it wailed before, 
 And streams of mournful music bore, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 c If I to thy youthful heart am dear, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 
 One month from hence thou wilt meet me here 
 Where lay thy bridal Eva's bier, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 
 
 He pressed her lips as the words were spoken, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 
 And his banshee's wail now far and broken 
 Murmured ' Death,' as he gave the token 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 * Adieu ! adieu ! ' said the lady bright, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 And she slowly passed like a thing of light, 
 Or a morning cloud, from Sir Turlough's sight, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 Now Sir Turlough has death in every vein, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 
 And there's fear and grief o'er his wide domain, 
 And gold for those who will calm his brain, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 ' Come, haste thee, leech ; right swiftly ride, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 
 Sir Turlough the brave, Green Truagha's pride, 
 Has pledged his love to the churchyard bride, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 
 
 The leech groaned loud : * Come, tell me this, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy! 
 By all thy hopes of weal and bliss, 
 Has Sir Turlough given the fatal kiss 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy?' 
 
 G 
 
82 BOOK II 
 
 1 The banshees cry is loud and long, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy f 
 At eve she weeps her funeral song, 
 And it floats on the twilight breeze along, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 
 
 ' Then the fatal kiss is given. The last 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 Of Turlough's race and name is past ; 
 His doom is seal'd, his die is cast, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 
 
 ' Leech, say not that thy skill is vain ; 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 Oh, calm the power of his frenzied brain, 
 And half his lands thou shalt retain, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy.' 
 
 The leech has failed, and the hoary priest, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 With pious shrift his soul released, 
 And the smoke is high of his funeral feast, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 The shanachies now are assembled all, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 
 And the songs of praise, in Sir Turlough's hall, 
 To the sorrowing harp's dark music fall, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 And there is trophy, banner, and plume, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 
 And the pomp of death, with its darkest gloom, 
 O'ershadows the Irish chieftain's tomb, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
 The month is clos'd, and Green Truagha's pride, 
 
 Killeevy, O Killeevy ! 
 Is married to death and, side by side, 
 He slumbers now with his churchyard bride, 
 
 By the bonnie green woods of Killeevy. 
 
WILLIAM CARLE TON 83 
 
 A SIGH FOR KNOCKMANY 
 
 TAKE, proud ambition, take thy fill 
 
 Of pleasures won through toil or crime ; 
 Go, learning, climb thy rugged hill, 
 
 And give thy name to future time. 
 Philosophy, be keen to see 
 
 Whate'er is just, or false, or vain ; 
 Take each thy meed, but oh, give me 
 
 To range my mountain glens again. 
 
 Pure was the breeze that fanned my cheek, 
 
 As o'er Knockmany's brow I went ; 
 When every lovely dell could speak 
 
 In airy music, vision-sent. 
 False world, I hate thy cares and thee ; 
 
 I hate the treacherous haunts of men ; 
 Give back my early heart to me, 
 
 Give back to me my mountain glen. 
 
 How light my youthful visions shone 
 
 When spanned by Fancy's radiant form ! 
 But now her glittering bow is gone, 
 
 And leaves me but the cloud and storm ; 
 With wasted form and cheek all pale, 
 
 With heart long seared by grief and pain, 
 Dunroe, I'll seek thy native gale, 
 
 I'll tread my mountain glens again. 
 
 Thy breeze once more may fan my blood, 
 
 The valleys all are lovely still ; 
 And I may stand as once I stood, 
 
 In lonely musings on thy hill. 
 But ah ! the spell is gone. No art 
 
 In crowded town, or native plain, 
 Can teach a crushed and breaking heart 
 
 To pipe the songs of youth again. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 BOOK II 
 
 GERALD GRIFFIN 
 
 GERALD GRIFFIN l was born in 1803 at Limerick, and his 
 youth was spent not far from the Shannon, at Fairy Lawn, 
 Adare, and Pallas Kenry. The historical monuments and 
 memories around gave direction to his work, and the pastoral 
 calm reappears in his poetry. Though a home-lover, he was 
 adventurous. At twenty he went to London to seek his 
 fortune in letters, inspired by the success of Banim, who 
 befriended him. He endured privations courageously for 
 some years, and finally got anchorage in the Press. His 
 principal and most popular works are his novels, one of which, 
 THE COLLEGIANS, was dramatised by Dion Boucicault and 
 remains a favourite, under the name of THE COLLEEN BAWN. 
 He himself had written for the stage. He took with him to 
 London a piece called AGUIRE, and three other tragedies. 
 GISIPPUS survives. Charles Kean read it, and ' was fully 
 impressed with the beauty of the language and the high talent 
 displayed throughout,' but feared for its success as an acting 
 play. Macready, however, was decidedly favourable. It was 
 warmly received when produced at Drury Lane in 1842, two 
 years after the author's death. In Dublin it was repeatedly 
 acted by T. C. King, with great effect. It belongs to the 
 classic school. Had he given to the stage the tragic realities 
 of life around him, such as he gave to his novels, he might 
 have formed a successful national drama. His riper mind 
 found fresher paths. It should be counted to him that he was 
 the first to present several of our folk-customs, tales, and 
 ancient legends in English prose. In poetry his longer pieces 
 fail in freshness, vigour, and local colour ; they are conventional 
 compositions, carefully worked, with pleasing imagery and 
 pensive reflections. In his lyrics, however, where his native 
 genius is free, he is at his best, impassioned at times (though 
 never passionate), tender, delicate, yet strong with a certain 
 
 1 Rectl O'Griobta (O'Greeva). 
 
GERALD GRIFFIN 85 
 
 dramatic grasp of his subject. There is a curious prudence, 
 somewhat Edgeworthian, in certain of his verses, which controls 
 passion and may be due to the influence of a Quaker lady 
 whose friend he was. Even the Shannon suggests that he 
 should fulfil his appointed course 'with tranquil breast and 
 ordered will.' The tender and delicate feeling displayed in 
 ' A Place in thy Memory, Dearest,' ' Old Times ! Old Times ! ' 
 ' I love my Love in the Morning,' and others have won them a 
 wide popularity. He also, like Callanan, but more often than 
 he, introduces Gaelic terms and lines : thus, he embodies the 
 old ballad refrain of 'Siubal a niin ' (Shule Aroon) in 'My 
 Mary of the Curling Hair.' * Gile machree ' (Brightness of 
 my Heart) is his most characteristic ballad. ' Eileen Aroon,' 
 composed after an Irish model, but without its passion, is 
 perfect of its kind, and was a prime favourite with Tennyson. 
 The * Sister of Charity ' is a paean on self-denial. In several 
 poems, such as ' Sleep that like a Couched Dove,' ' The 
 Bridal Wake,' 'The Wake without a Corpse,' he commemorates 
 incidents of custom and folk-lore not yet passed away. 
 ' Folta volla ' and * O'Driscoll's War-song ' show his more 
 vigorous moods. In ' Cead Mile Failte ' the last of the 
 pagan Gael welcome, with grave pathos, their Christian 
 supplanter. His love of Nature and aerial fancy are shown in 
 * Lines to a Sea-gull seen off the Cliffs of Moher.' Gerald 
 Griffin retired in 1838 from active literary work, became a 
 Christian Brother, and devoted himself to the teaching of the 
 poor ; he died of fever in 1840, at the early age of thirty-six, 
 in the North Monastery, Cork, where he lies at peace. 
 
 GEORGE SIGERSON. 
 
 The LIFE OF GERALD GRIFFIN was written by his brother (1842). THE 
 POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS OF GERALD GRIFFIN was published 
 by Duffy, Dublin, 1895. 
 
 GILE MACHREE 
 GILE MACHREE, 
 Sit down by me, 
 We now are joined and ne'er shall sever ; 
 
86 BOOK II 
 
 This hearth's our own, 
 Our hearts are one, 
 And peace is ours for ever ! 
 
 When T was poor, 
 Your father's door 
 
 Was closed against your constant lover ; 
 W T ith care and pain 
 I tried in vain 
 My fortunes to recover. 
 I said, ' To other lands I'd roam, 
 
 Where fate may smile on me, love ; ' 
 I said, ' Farewell, my own old home ! ' 
 And I said, ' Farewell to thee, love ! ' 
 Sing, Gile machree, &c. 
 
 I might have said, 
 My mountain maid, 
 
 Come live with me, your own true lover 
 I know a spot, 
 A silent cot, 
 
 Your friends can ne'er discover, 
 Where gently flows the waveless tide 
 
 By one small garden only ; 
 Where the heron waves his wings so wide, 
 And the linnet sings so lonely ! 
 
 Sing, Gile machree, &c. 
 
 I might have said, 
 My mountain maid, 
 A father's right was never given 
 True hearts to curse 
 With tyrant force 
 That have been blest in heaven. 
 But then I said, ' In after years, 
 
 When thoughts of home shall find her, 
 My love may mourn with secret tears 
 Her friends thus left behind her.' 
 
 Sing, Gile machree, &c. 
 
GERALD GRIFFIN 87 
 
 Oh no, I said, 
 My own dear maid, 
 For me, though all forlorn, for ever 
 That heart of thine 
 Shall ne'er repine 
 O'er slighted duty never. 
 From home and thee, though wandering far, 
 
 A dreary fate be mine, love ; 
 I'd rather live in endless war 
 Than buy my peace with thine, love. 
 Sing, Gile machree, &c. 
 
 Far, far away, 
 By night and day, 
 I toiled to win a golden treasure ; 
 And golden gains 
 Repaid my pains 
 In fair and shining measure. 
 I sought again my native land, 
 
 Thy father welcomed me, love ; 
 I poured my gold into his hand, 
 And my guerdon found in thee, love. 
 
 Sing, Gile machree, 
 
 Sit down by me, 
 We now are joined and ne'er shall sever ; 
 
 This hearth's our own, 
 
 Our hearts are one, 
 And peace is ours for ever ! 
 
 CfiAD MfLE FAILTE, ELIM ! 
 (SONG FROM ' THE INVASION ') 
 
 CE"AD mile fdilte ! child of the Ithian ! 
 
 Cdad milefdilte, Elim / 
 Aisneach, thy temple in ruins is lying, 
 In Druim na Druid the dark blast is sighing. 
 Lonely we shelter in grief and in danger, 
 Yet have we welcome and cheer for the stranger. 
 Ctad milefdilte ! child of the Ithian / 
 CJad milefdilte, Elim ! 
 
BOOK II 
 
 Woe for the weapons that guarded our slumbers, 
 Tamreach, they said, was too small for our numbers ; 
 Little is left for our sons to inherit, 
 Yet, what we have, thou art welcome to share it. 
 Cead milefdilte ! child of the Ithian / 
 Cead milefdilte, Elim / 
 
 Gorman, thy teachers have died broken-hearted ; 
 Voice of the Trilithon, thou art departed ! 
 All have forsaken our mountains so dreary 
 All but the spirit that welcomes the weary 
 Ce"ad milefdilte ! child of the Ithian ! 
 Cead milefdilte, Elim ! 
 
 Vainly the Draithe, alone in the mountain, 
 Looks to the torn cloud or eddying fountain ; 
 The spell of the Christian has vanquished their power, 
 Yet is he welcome to rest in our bower. 
 Ctad mitefdilte ! child of the Ithian ! 
 Cead milefdilte, Elim ! 
 
 Wake for the Christian your welcoming numbers ! 
 Strew the dry rushes to pillow his slumbers. 
 Long let him cherish, with deep recollection, 
 The eve of our feast, and the Druids' affection. 
 Cead milefdilte ! child of the Ithian! 
 Cead mile fdilte, Elim / 
 
 LINES ADDRESSED TO A SEAGULL, SEEN OFF THE CLIFFS 
 OF MOHER, IN THE COUNTY OF CLARE 
 
 WHITE bird of the tempest ! O beautiful thing ! 
 With the bosom of snow and the motionless wing, 
 Now sweeping the billow, now floating on high, 
 Now bathing thy plumes in the light of the sky, 
 Now poising o'er ocean thy delicate form, 
 Now breasting the surge with thy bosom so warm, 
 Now darting aloft with a heavenly scorn, 
 Now shooting along like a ray of the morn, 
 Now lost in the folds of the cloud-curtained dome, 
 Now floating abroad like a flake of the foam, 
 
GERALD GRIFFIN 89 
 
 Now silently poised o'er the war of the main, 
 Like the spirit of Charity brooding o'er pain, 
 Now gliding with pinion all silently furled, 
 Like an angel descending to comfort the world ! 
 Thou seem'st to my spirit, as upward I gaze, 
 And see thee, now clothed in mellowest rays, 
 Now lost in the storm-driven vapours that fly 
 Like hosts that are routed across the broad sky, 
 Like a pure spirit true to its virtue and faith, 
 'Mid the tempests of Nature, of passion, and death ! 
 
 Rise, beautiful emblem of purity, rise ! 
 
 On the sweet winds of heaven to thine own brilliant skies ; 
 
 Still higher still higher till lost to our sight, 
 
 Thou hidest thy wings in a mantle of light ; 
 
 And I think, how a pure spirit gazing on thee, 
 
 Must long for the moment the joyous and free 
 
 When the soul disembodied from nature shall spring 
 
 Unfettered at once to her Maker and King ; 
 
 When the bright day of service and suffering past, 
 
 Shapes fairer than thine shall shine round her at last, 
 
 While, the standard of battle triumphantly furled, 
 
 She smiles like a victor, serene on the world ! 
 
 THE WAKE OF THE ABSENT 
 
 THE dismal yew and cypress tall 
 
 Wave o'er the churchyard lone, 
 Where rest our friends and fathers all, 
 
 Beneath the funeral stone. 
 Unvexed in holy ground they sleep, 
 
 Oh ! early lost ! o'er thee 
 No sorrowing friend shall ever weep, 
 
 Nor stranger bend the knee. 
 
 Mo Chuma ! l lorn am I ! 
 Hoarse dashing rolls the salt sea wave 
 Over our perished darling's grave. 
 
 1 Mo CJnima : My grief ; or, Woe is me. 
 
90 BOOK II 
 
 The winds the sullen deep that tore 
 
 His death-song chanted loud, 
 The weeds that line the clifted shore 
 
 Were all his burial shroud. 
 For friendly wail and holy dirge. 
 
 And long lament of love, 
 Around him roared the angry surge, 
 
 The curlew screamed above. 
 
 Mo Chuma / lorn am I ! 
 My grief would turn to rapture now, 
 Might I but touch that pallid brow. 
 
 The stream-born bubbles soonest burst 
 
 That earliest left the source ; 
 Buds earliest blown are faded first 
 
 In Nature's wonted course. 
 With guarded pace her seasons creep, 
 
 By slow decay expire ; 
 The young above the aged weep, 
 
 The son above the sire. 
 
 Mo Chuma ! lorn am I ! 
 That death a backward course should hold, 
 To smite the young and spare the old. 
 
 EILEEN AROON l 
 
 When, like the early rose, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 Beauty in childhood blows, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 When, like a diadem, 
 Buds blush around the stem, 
 Which is the fairest gem ? 
 
 Eileen aroon / 
 
 Is it the laughing eye ? 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 Is it the timid sigh? 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
 Eibhlin a rtiin : Eileen, my treasure. 
 
GERALD GRIFFIN 91 
 
 Is it the tender tone, 
 Soft as the stringed harp's moan ? 
 Oh ! it is Truth alone, 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
 When, like the rising day, 
 
 Eileen aroon / 
 Love sends his early ray, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
 What makes his dawning glow 
 Changeless through joy or woe ? 
 Only the constant know, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
 I know a valley fair, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 I knew a cottage there, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 Far in that valley's shade 
 I knew a gentle maid, 
 Flower of a hazel glade, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
 Who in the song so sweet ? 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 Who in the dance so fleet ? 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
 Dear were her charms tc me, 
 Dearer her laughter free, 
 Dearest her constancy, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
 Youth must with time decay, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 Beauty must fade away, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 Castles are sacked in war, 
 Chieftains are scattered far 
 Truth is a fixed star, 
 
 Eileen aroon ! 
 
92 BOOK II 
 
 , JEREMIAH 1 JOSEPH CALLANAN 
 
 CALLANAN'S nature was sensitive, scrupulous, and shifting, if 
 not shiftless : a Bohemian of a good type, honourable and 
 refined. Intended for the priesthood of a yet unemancipated 
 people, he withdrew from Maynooth on finding himself inapt ; 
 then he gave attention to medicine, remained a student of 
 Trinity College, Dublin, for two years, won two prizes in verse 
 and retired. Some fertile years he spent ( ' wasted,' say 
 biographers) amid the romantic mountains of West Cork, 
 which were the true university that moulded his mind and 
 endowed it with the seeds of enduring life. Here his living 
 poetry had birth. Other years he passed teaching in schools 
 (one being that of Mr. Maginn, father of the well-known 
 writer), and the last two of his existence as a tutor in Lisbon, 
 for the sake of its milder climate, which led him gently to death. 
 Born in Cork in 1795, he died at Lisbon on September 19, 
 1829. 
 
 It was inevitable, perhaps, that the influence of Byron 
 should suggest and shape THE RECLUSE OF INCHIDONY, that of 
 Scott THE REVENGE OF DONAL COMM, and that of Moore 
 some of his lyrics. They are fine compositions, but the first 
 fails through the young man's non -knowledge of life's greater 
 agonies. All would have been failure, so far as good verse may 
 be, had he not known Irish and drunk at the high head- 
 fountains of his race. This gave his genius a youth and 
 freedom of its own. To this we owe his vigorous, stirring, and 
 thoroughly original poem on ' Gougaune Barra,' with its resonant 
 double-rimes, so characteristic of the Gael. His pride was to 
 have awakened the ancient harp and mingled with the voice of 
 southern waters the songs that even Echo had forgotten, he 
 says, invoking the * Least Bard of the Hills.' The claim was 
 
 1 It may be noted that * Jeremiah ' is for some slight resemblance in 
 sound the English form into which the Irish peasantry transpose the 
 Gaelic name Diarmuid. ' 
 
JEREMIAH JOSEPH CALL A NAN 93 
 
 justified. Moore unquestionably revived the spirit of Irish 
 melody and first infused into poetry the legends of the land. 
 It is Callanan's distinction a great one, though ignqred till 
 now that he was ihe first to give adequate versions of Irish 
 Gaelic poems. Compared with preceding and many subse- 
 quent attempts, they are marvellously close and true to their 
 originals. Take, for example, the passionate vehemence of the 
 'Dirge of O'Sullivan Bear,' the native simplicity of 'The Girl I 
 love ' and ' Brown Drimin,' the strain of weirdness in ' The 
 Outlaw of Loch Lene,' given in a metre unusual in English, but 
 known in Irish, and the pure ballad pathos of ' The Convict 
 of Clonmel.' The ' Lament of O'Gnive ' is a paraphrase and 
 somewhat Byronised : Ferguson's more faithful rendering is 
 more effective. Callanan was among the first (after the popular 
 balladists) to introduce a Gaelic refrain into English poetry, as 
 witness his verses entitled 'Tusa ta measg na reultan mor' 
 ( ' Thou who art among the greater planets ' ). He is not, in- 
 deed, one of the greater planets, but yet shines with a clear light. 
 
 GEORGE SIGERSON. 
 
 THE RECLUSE OF INCHIDONY was published in 1830, and a volume 
 of collected poems in 1861, since when there have been several reprints. 
 
 DIRGE OF O'SULLIVAN BEAR 
 (FROM THE IRISH) 
 
 One of the Sullivans of Bearhaven, who went by the mame of Morty Oge, 
 fell under the vengeance of the law. He had long been a very popular 
 character in the wild district which he inhabited, and was particularly ob- 
 noxious to the local authorities, who had good reason to suspect him of enlist- 
 ing men for the Irish Brigade in the French service, in which it was said he held a 
 captain's commission. Information of his raising these ' wild geese ' (the name 
 by which recruits were known) was given by a Mr. Puxley, on whom in conse- 
 quence O'Sullivan vowed revenge, which he executed by shooting him on 
 Sunday while on his way to church. This called for the interposition of the 
 higher powers, and accordingly a party of military was sent round from Cork 
 to attack O'Sullivan's house. He was daring and well armed ; and the house 
 was fortified, so that he made an obstinate defence. At last a confidential 
 servant of his, named Scully, was bribed to wet the powder in the guns and 
 pistols prepared for his defence, which rendered him powerless. He attempted 
 to escape, but while springing over a high wall in the rear of his house he 
 received a mortal wound in the back. They tied his body to a boat, and 
 
94 BOOK II 
 
 dragged it in that manner through the sea from Bearhaven to Cork, where his 
 head was cut off and fixed on the county gaol, where it remained for several 
 years. Such is the story current among the people of Bearhaven. The dirge 
 is supposed to have been the composition of O'Sullivan's aged nurse. Authors 
 note. 
 
 THE sun on Ivera 
 
 No longer shines brightly, 
 The voice of her music 
 
 No longer is sprightly, 
 No more to her maidens 
 
 The light dance is dear. 
 Since the death of our darling 
 
 O'Sullivan Bear. 
 
 Scully ! thou false one, 
 
 You basely betrayed him, 
 In his strong hour of need, 
 
 When thy right hand should aid him ; 
 He fed thee he clad thee 
 
 You had all could delight thee : 
 You left him you sold him 
 
 May Heaven requite thee ! 
 
 Scully ! may all kinds 
 
 Of evil attend thee ! 
 On thy dark road of life 
 
 May no kind one befriend thee ! 
 May fevers long burn thee, 
 
 And agues long freeze thee ! 
 May the strong hand of God 
 
 In His red anger seize thee ! 
 
 Had he died calmly 
 
 I would not deplore him, 
 Or if the wild strife 
 
 Of the sea- war closed o'er him ; 
 But with ropes round his white limbs 
 
 Through ocean to trail him, 
 Like a fish after slaughter 
 
 'Tis therefore I wail him. 
 
JEREMIAH JOSEPH CALLANAN 95 
 
 Long may the curse 
 
 Of his people pursue them : 
 Scully that sold him, 
 
 And soldier that slew him ! 
 One glimpse of heaven's light 
 
 May they see never ! 
 May the hearthstone of hell 
 
 Be their best bed for ever ! 
 
 In the hole which the vile hands 
 
 Of soldiers had made thee, 
 Unhonour'd, unshrouded, 
 
 And headless they laid thee ; 
 No sigh to regret thee, 
 
 No eye to rain o'er thee, 
 No dirge to lament thee, 
 
 No friend to deplore thee ! 
 
 Dear head of my darling, 
 
 How gory and pale 
 These aged eyes see thee, 
 
 High spiked on their gaol ! 
 That cheek in the summer sun 
 
 Ne'er shall grow warm ; 
 Nor that eye e'er catch light, 
 
 But the flash of the storm. 
 
 A curse, blessed ocean, 
 
 Is on thy green water, 
 From the haven of Cork 
 
 To Ivera of slaughter : 
 Since thy billows were dyed 
 
 With the red wounds of fear, 
 Of Muiertach Oge, 
 
 Our O'Sullivan Bear ! 
 
96 BOOK II 
 
 THE CONVICT OF CLONMEL 
 (FROM THE IRISH) 
 
 HOW hard is my fortune, 
 
 And vain my repining ! 
 The strong rope of fate 
 
 For this young neck is twining. 
 My strength is departed, 
 
 My cheek sunk and sallow, 
 While I languish in chains 
 
 In the gaol of Clonmala. 1 
 
 No boy in the village 
 
 Was ever yet milder. 
 I'd play with a child, 
 
 And my sport would be wilder ; 
 I'd dance without tiring 
 
 From morning till even, 
 And the goal-ball I'd strike 
 
 To the lightning of heaven. 
 
 At my bed-foot decaying, 
 
 My hurlbat is lying ; 
 Thro' the boys of the village 
 
 My goal-ball is flying; 
 My horse 'mong the neighbours 
 
 Neglected may fallow, 
 While I pine in my chains 
 
 In the gaol of Clonmala. 
 
 Next Sunday the patron 
 
 At home will be keeping, 
 And the young active hurlers 
 
 The field will be sweeping ; 
 With the dance of fair maidens 
 
 The evening they'll hallow, 
 While this heart, once so gay, 
 
 Shall be cold in Clonmala. 
 
 Cluain meala (' Field of honey ') : Irish of ' Clonmel. 
 
JERFMIAH JOSEPH C ALLAN AN 97 
 
 GOUGAUNE BARRA 
 
 THERE is a green island in lone Gougaune Barra, 
 Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow, 
 In deep-vallied Desmond a thousand wild fountains 
 Come down to that lake from their home in the mountains. 
 There grows the wild ash, and a time-stricken willow 
 Looks chidingly down on the mirth of the billow, 
 As, like some gay child that sad monitor scorning, 
 It lightly laughs back to the laugh of the morning. 
 
 And its zone of dark hills oh ! to see them all bright'ning, 
 When the tempest flings out its red banner of lightning, 
 And the waters rush down, 'mid the thunder's deep rattle 
 Like clans from the hills at the voice of the battle \ 
 And brightly the fire-crested billows are gleaming, 
 And wildly from Mullagh the eagles are screaming, 
 Oh ! where is the dwelling, in valley or highland, 
 So meet for a bard as this lone little island ? 
 
 How oft when the summer sun rested on Clara, 
 
 And lit the dark heath on the hills of Ivera, 
 
 Have I sought thee, sweet spot, from my home by the ocean, 
 
 And trod all thy wilds with a minstrel's devotion, 
 
 And thought of thy bards when, assembling together 
 
 In the clefts of thy rocks or the depth of thy heather, 
 
 They fled from the Saxon's dark bondage and slaughter 
 
 And waked their last song by the rush of thy water. 
 
 High sons of the lyre, oh ! how proud was the feeling, 
 
 To think while alone through that solitude stealing, 
 
 Though loftier minstrels green Erin can number, 
 
 I only awoke your wild harp from its slumber, 
 
 And mingled once more with the voice of those fountains 
 
 The songs even Echo forgot on her mountains ; 
 
 And glean'd each grey legend that darkly was sleeping 
 
 Where the mist and the rain o'er their beauty were creeping. 
 
 Least bard of the hills ! were it mine to inherit 
 The fire of thy harp and the wing of thy spirit, 
 
98 BOOK II 
 
 With the wrongs which, like thee, to our country have bound me, 
 
 Did your mantle of song fling its radiance around me, 
 
 Still, still in those wilds might young Liberty rally, 
 
 And send her strong shout over mountain and valley, 
 
 The star of the West might yet rise in its glory, 
 
 And the land that was darkest be brightest in story. 
 
 I too shall be gone ; but my name shall be spoken 
 When Erin awakes and her fetters are broken ; 
 Some minstrel will come, in the summer eve's gleaming, ' 
 When Freedom's young light on his spirit is beaming, 
 And bend o'er my grave with a tear of emotion, 
 Whore calm Avon-Bwee seeks the kisses of ocean, 
 Or plant a wild wreath from the banks of that river 
 O'er the heart and the harp that are sleeping for ever. 
 
 THE OUTLAW OF LOCH LENE 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 OH, many a day have I made good ale in the glen, 
 
 That came not of stream or malt, like the brewing of men. 
 
 My bed was the ground, my roof the greenwood above, 
 
 And the wealth that I sought, one fair kind glance from my love. 
 
 Alas ! on that night when the horses I drove from the field, 
 That I was not near from terror my angel to shield. 
 She stretched forth her arms her mantle she flung to the wind- 
 And swam o'er Loch Lene her outlawed lover to find. 
 
 Oh, would that a freezing, sleet-winged tempest did sweep, 
 
 And I and my love were alone far off on the deep ! 
 
 I'd ask not a ship, or a bark, or pinnace to save ; 
 
 With her hand round my waist I'd fear not the wind or the wave. 
 
 'Tis down by the lake where the wild tree fringes its sides 
 The maid of my heart, the fair one of heaven, resides ; 
 I think as at eve she wanders its mazes along 
 The birds go to sleep by the sweet, wild twist of her song. 
 
EDWARD WALSH 99 
 
 EDWARD WALSH 
 
 EDWARD WALSH was born in Londonderry, 1805, and became 
 a school-teacher. He was appointed a schoolmaster to convicts 
 on Spike Island, and died in 1850. When John Mitchel was 
 on his way to penal servitude at the Bermudas he stopped at 
 Spike Island and saw Walsh there, 'a tall gentleman-like 
 person in black but rather over-worn clothes. ... I knew his 
 face, but could not at first remember who he was; he was 
 Edward Walsh, author of " Mo craoibhin cno " and other sweet 
 songs, and of some very musical translations from old Irish 
 ballads. Tears stood in his eyes as he told me he had 
 contrived to get an opportunity of seeing and shaking hands 
 with me before I should leave Ireland. ... He stooped down 
 and kissed my hands. " Ah ! " said he, " you are now the man 
 of all Ireland most to be envied" ' Mitchel certainly did not 
 envy Walsh, whose life was a constant struggle with penury, and 
 who must have found a daily torture in the cruelly inappropriate 
 employment forced on his fine genius and sensitive nature. 
 
 Walsh's chief mission as a poet was to collect and make 
 known the waifs and strays of Gaelic poetry preserved among 
 the people. He was a frequent contributor to The Nation up 
 to 1848, but is, on the whole, rather to be ranged with 
 Callanan in this book than placed among the poets whose fame 
 is closely identified with that of the organ of Young Ireland. 
 
 RELIQUES OF IRISH JACOBITE POETRY, 1844 ; IRISH POPULAR 
 SONGS, with translations and notes, 1847. 
 
 Mo CRAOIBHIN CNO l 
 
 MY heart is far from Liffey's tide 
 
 And Dublin town ; 
 It strays beyond the southern side 
 
 Of Cnoc-maol-Donn, 2 
 
 1 Mo craoibhin cno literally means ' my cluster of nuts ' ; but it figura- 
 tively signifies ' my nut-brown maid. ' It is pronounced Ma Creeveen Kno. 
 
 2 Cnoc-maol-Donn (the brown bare hill '), Knockmealdown : a lofty 
 mountain between the county of Tipperary and that of Waterford, com- 
 manding a glorious prospect. 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo BOOK II 
 
 Where Cappoquin hath woodlands green, 
 
 Where Amhan-mhor's l waters flow, 
 Where dwells unsung, unsought, unseen, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno, 
 Low clustering in her leafy screen, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno ! 
 The high-bred dames of Dublin town 
 
 Are rich and fair, 
 With wavy plume, and silken gown, 
 
 And stately air ; 
 Can plumes compare thy dark brown hair ? 
 
 Can silks thy neck of snow ? 
 Or measur'd pace, thine artless grace, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno, 
 When harebells scarcely show thy trace, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno ? 
 
 I've heard the songs by Liffey's wave 
 
 That maidens sung 
 They sung their land the Saxon's slave, 
 
 In Saxon tongue. 
 Oh ! bring me here that Gaelic dear 
 
 Which cursed the Saxon foe, 
 When thou didst charm my raptured ear, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno ! 
 And none but God's good angels near, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno ! 
 
 I've wandered by the rolling Lee, 
 
 And Lene's green bowers ; 
 I've seen the Shannon's widespread sea 
 
 And Limerick's towers 
 And Liffey's tide, where halls of pride 
 
 Frown o'er the flood below ; 
 My wild heart strays to Amhan-mhor's side, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno / 
 With love and thee for aye to bide, 
 
 Mo craoibhin cno ! 
 
 1 Anihan-mhor (the ' Great River ') : the Blackwater, which flows into 
 the sea at Youghal. The Irish name is uttered in two sounds : Oan- Vore. 
 
EDWARD WALSH 101 
 
 HAVE You BEEN AT CARRiCK? 1 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 HAVE you been at Carrick, and saw you my true-love there, 
 And saw you her features, all beautiful, bright and fair ? 
 Saw you the most fragrant, flowery, sweet apple-tree ? 
 Oh ! saw you my loved one, and pines she in grief like me ? 
 
 * I have been at Carrick, and saw thy own true-love there ; 
 Arid saw, too, her features, all beautiful, bright and fair ; 
 And saw the most fragrant, flowering, sweet apple-tree 
 I saw thy loved one she pines not in grief like thee.' 
 
 Five guineas would price every tress of her golden hair 
 Then think what a treasure her pillow at night to share ! 
 These tresses thick-clust'ring and curling around her brow 
 
 Ringlet of Fairness ! I'll drink to thy beauty now ! 
 
 When, seeking to slumber, my bosom is rent with sighs 
 
 1 toss on my pillow till morning's blest beams arise ; 
 No aid, bright beloved ! can reach me save God above, 
 For a blood-lake is formed of the light of my eyes with love ! 
 
 Until yellow autumn shall usher the Paschal day, 
 And Patrick's gay festival come in its train alway 
 Until through my coffin the blossoming boughs shall grow, 
 My love on another I'll never in life bestow ! 
 
 Lo ! yonder the maiden illustrious, queen-like, high, 
 With long-flowing tresses adown to her sandal-tie 
 Swan, fair as the lily, descended of high degree, 
 A myriad of welcomes, dear maid of my heart, to thee ! 
 
 1 The translator remarks : ' This is a song of the South, but there are 
 so many places of the name of Carrick, such. as Carrick-on-Shannon, 
 Carrick-on-Suir, &c., that I cannot fix its precise locality. In this truly 
 Irish song, when the pining swain learns that his absent mistress is not 
 love-sick like himself, he praises the beauty of her copious hair, throws 
 off a glass to her health, enumerates his sufferings, and swears to forego 
 the sex for ever ; but she suddenly bursts upon his view, his resolves 
 vanish into thin air, and he greets his glorious maid.' 
 
102 BOOK II 
 
 THE DAWNING OF THE DAY 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 An extremely close rendering of the beautiful Gaelic song, Fdinne geal an 
 Lae. Contrary to his usual custom Walsh has preserved some of the internal 
 chimes characteristic of Irish verse : e.g. 
 
 ' At early dawn I once had been 
 Where Lene's blue waters flow.' 
 
 The ancient melody, which the words fit so well, is one of exquisite tenderness 
 and wistfulness. 
 
 AT early dawn I once had been 
 
 Where Lene's blue waters flow, 
 When summer bid the groves be green, 
 
 The lamp of light to glow. 
 As on by bower, and town, and tower, 
 
 And widespread fields I stray, 
 I meet a maid in the greenwood shade 
 
 At the dawning of the day. 
 
 II 
 
 Her feet and beauteous head were bare, 
 
 No mantle fair she wore ; 
 But down her waist fell golden hair, 
 
 That swept the tall grass o'er. 
 With milking-pail she sought the vale, 
 
 And bright her charms' display ; 
 Outshining far the morning star 
 
 At the dawning of the day. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Beside me sat that maid divine 
 Where grassy banks outspread. 
 
 * Oh, let me call thee ever mine, 
 
 Dear maid,' I sportive said. 
 
 * False man, for shame, why bring me blame ? ' 
 
 She cried, and burst away 
 The sun's first light pursued her flight 
 At the dawning of the day. 
 
EDWARD WALSH 103 
 
 LAMENT OF THE MANGAIRE SUGACH 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 Andrew Magrath, commonly called the Mangaire Sugach (or ' Jolly 
 Merchant '), having been expelled from the Roman Catholic Church for his 
 licentious life, offered himself as a convert to the doctrines of Protestantism , 
 but, the Protestant clergyman having also refused to accept him, the unfortu- 
 nate Mangaire gave vent to his feelings in this lament. A uthor's note. 
 
 BELOVED, do you pity not my doleful case, 
 Pursued by priest and minister in dire disgrace? 
 The churchmen brand the vagabond upon my brow 
 Oh ! they'll take me not as Protestant or Papist now ! 
 
 II 
 
 The parson calls me wanderer and homeless knave ; 
 And though I boast the Saxon creed with aspect grave. 
 He says that claim my Popish face must disallow, 
 Although I'm neither Protestant nor Papist now ! 
 
 in 
 
 He swears (and oh, he'll keep his oath) he's firmly bent 
 To hunt me down by penal Acts of Parliament ; 
 Before the law's coercive might to make me bow, 
 And choose between the Protestant and Papist now ! 
 
 IV 
 
 The priest me deems a satirist of luckless lay, 
 Whose merchant-craft hath often led fair maids astray, 
 And, worse than hunted fugitive all disavow, 
 He'll take me not a Protestant or Papist now ! 
 
 That, further, I'm a foreigner devoid of shame, N 
 Of hateful, vile, licentious life and evil name ; 
 A ranting, rhyming wanderer, without a cow, 
 Who now is deem'd a Protestant a Papist now 1 
 
104 BOOK II 
 
 VI 
 
 Alas ! it was not charity or Christian grace 
 That urged to drag my deeds before the Scotic race. 
 What boots it him to write reproach upon my brow, 
 Whether they deem me Protestant or Papist now ? 
 
 vil 
 
 Lo ! David, Israel's poet-king, and Magdalene, 
 And Paul, who of the Christian creed the foe had been 
 Did Heayen, when sorrow fill'd their heart, reject their vow 
 Though they were neither Protestant nor Papist now ? 
 
 VIII 
 
 Oh ! since I weep my wretched heart to evil prone, 
 A wanderer in the paths of sin, all lost and lone, 
 At other shrines with other flocks I fain must bow. 
 Who'll take me, whether Protestant or Papist, now ? 
 
 IX 
 
 Beloved, whither can I flee for peace at last, 
 
 When thus beyond the Church's pale I'm rudely cast? 
 
 The Arian creed, or Calvinist, I must avow, 
 
 When severed from the Protestant and Papist now ! 
 
 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 Lo, Peter th' Apostle, whose lapses from grace were three, 
 Denying the Saviour, was granted a pardon free ; 
 O God ! though the Mangaire from him Thy mild laws cast, 
 Receive him, like Peter, to dwell in THY HOUSE at last ! 
 
 GEORGE FOX 
 
 GEORGE Fox was born in Belfast; graduated in Trinity 
 College, Dublin, 1842 ; and not long after went to America. 
 Very little more is known of him except that Ferguson dedi- 
 cated to him his POEMS of 1880: 'Georgio, Amico, Con- 
 discipulo, Instauratori.' 
 
GEORGE FOX 105 
 
 THE COUNTY OF MAYO* 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 This specimen of our vernacular literature, written to a beautiful old 
 melody, is one of the most popular songs of the peasantry of the counties of 
 Mayo and Galway, and is doubtless a composition of the seventeenth or early 
 eighteenth century. The original Irish has been published by Mr. Hardiman, 
 in his IRISH MINSTRELSY. This translation, one of the supremely good things 
 in that line of literature, was first published by Samuel Ferguson in a review 
 of Hardiman's work (Dublin University Magazine, June 1834). 
 
 ON the deck of Patrick Lynch's boat I sat in woeful plight, 
 Through my sighing all the weary day and weeping all the night. 
 Were it not that full of sorrow from my people forth I go, 
 By the blessed sun, 'tis royally I'd sing thy praise, Mayo. 
 
 When I dwelt at home in plenty, and my gold did much abound, 
 In the company of fair young maids the Spanish ale went round. 
 'Tis a bitter change from those gay days that now I'm forced to go, 
 And must leave my bones in Santa Cruz, far from my own Mayo. 
 
 1 The following passage from an article by Mr. Standish O'Grady 
 appeared in The All-Ireland Review, while the proofs of this Anthology 
 were being read. It seems to demand quotation here : 
 
 * Our last Irish aristocracy was Catholic, intensely and fanatically 
 Royalist and Cavalier, and compounded of elements which were Norman- 
 Irish and Milesian-Irish. They worshipped the Crown when the Crown 
 had become a phantom or a ghost, and the god whom they worshipped 
 was not able to save them or himself. They were defeated and exter- 
 minated. They lost everything, but they never lost honour ; and because 
 they did not lose that, their overthrow was bewailed in songs and music 
 which will not cease to sound for centuries yet : 
 
 " Shaun O'Dwyer o'Glanna, 
 We're worsted in the game." 
 
 ' Worsted they were, for they made a fatal mistake ; and they had to 
 go ; but they carried their honour with them, and they founded noble or 
 princely families all over the Continent. 
 
 ' Who laments the destruction of our present Anglo-Irish aristocracy ? 
 Perhaps in broad Ireland not one. They fail from the land while 
 innumerable eyes are dry, and their fall will not be bewailed in one piteous 
 dirge or one mournful melody.' 
 
106 BOOK II 
 
 They are altered girls in Irrul now ; 'tis proud they're grown and 
 
 high, 
 With their hair-bags and their top-knots for I pass their buckles 
 
 by. 
 
 But it's little now I heed their airs, for God will have it so, 
 That I must depart for foreign lands, and leave my sweet Mayo. 
 
 'Tis my grief that Patrick Loughlin is not Earl in Irrul still, 
 And that Brian Duff no longer rules as Lord upon the Hill ; 
 And that Colonel Hugh MacGrady should be lying dead and low, 
 And I sailing, sailing swiftly from the county of Mayo. 
 
 JOHN BANIM 
 
 JOHN BANIM, who was born in Kilkenny on April 3, 1798, is 
 chiefly known through the powerful stories * by the O'Hara 
 Family,' which he wrote in conjunction with his brother 
 Michael ; but he published also a couple of volumes of verse 
 namely, THE CELT'S PARADISE : a Poem in Four Duans 
 (London, 1821) and CHAUNT OF THE CHOLERA : Songs for 
 Ireland (London, 1831). His tragedy, DAMON AND PYTHIAS, 
 was also published in London in 1821. 
 
 With the exception of one or two lyrics, these volumes 
 contain nothing worthy of note. Where his songs are 
 at all tolerable, they are full of fire and feeling, and written 
 with a quite natural simplicity and strength. Such are the 
 pieces here quoted. His chief fault is his general disregard of 
 metrical laws. 
 
 Banim's health failed while he was still a young man, and 
 his later years were passed in pain and misery. He was 
 granted a small Civil List pension, but did not long enjoy it, 
 dying on August i, 1842. His ' Soggarth Aroon ' l is one of 
 the most popular of Irish poems, and has found a place in 
 many anthologies. 
 
 D. J. O'DONOGHUE. 
 1 Sagart (sacerdos) a riiin : Priest, dear. 
 
JOHN BANIM 107 
 
 SOGGARTH AROON 
 
 AM I the slave they say, 
 
 Soggarth aroon ? 
 Since you did show the way, 
 
 Soggarth aroon, 
 Their slave no more to be, 
 While they would work with me 
 Old Ireland's slavery, 
 
 Soggarth aroon ! 
 
 Loyal and brave to you, 
 
 Soggarth aroon, 
 Yet be not slave to you 
 
 Soggarth aroon, 
 Nor, out of fear to you, 
 Stand up so near to you 
 Och ! out of fear to you, 
 
 Soggarth aroon / 
 
 Who, in the winter's night, 
 
 Soggarth aroon, 
 When the cold blast did bite, 
 
 Soggarth aroon, 
 Came to my cabin door, 
 And, on the earthen floor, 
 Knelt by me, sick and poor, 
 
 Soggarth aroon ? 
 
 Who, on the marriage day, 
 
 Soggarth aroon, 
 Made the poor cabin gay, 
 
 Soggarth aroon ? 
 And did both laugh and sing, 
 Making our hearts to ring, 
 At the poor christening, 
 
 Soggarth aroon f 
 
io8 BOOK II 
 
 Who, as friend only met, 
 
 Soggarth aroon, 
 Never did flout me yet, 
 
 Soggarth arc on? 
 And when my heart was dim 
 Gave, while his eye did brim, 
 What I should give to him, 
 
 Soggarth aroon ? 
 
 Och, you and only you, 
 Soggarth aroon! 
 And for this I was true to you, 
 
 Soggarth aroon ; 
 In love they'll never shake, 
 When for Old Ireland's sake 
 We a true part did take, 
 Soggarth aroon ! 
 
 HE SAID THAT HE WAS NOT OUR BROTHER 
 
 This ferocious attack was provoked by some utterances of the Duke of 
 Wellington about Ireland. 
 
 HE said that he was not our brother 
 
 The mongrel ! he said what we knew. 
 No, Eire ! our dear Island-mother, 
 
 He ne'er had his black blood from you ! 
 And what though the milk of your bosom 
 
 Gave vigour a-nd health to his veins ? 
 He was but a foul foreign blossom, 
 
 Blown hither to poison our plains ! 
 
 He said that the sword had enslaved us 
 
 That still at its point we must kneel. 
 The liar ! though often it braved us, 
 
 We cross'd it with hardier steel ! 
 This witness his Richard our vassal ! 
 His Essex whose plumes we trod down ! 
 His Willy whose peerless sword-tassel 
 
 We tarnish'd at Limerick town ! 
 
JOHN BANIM 109 
 
 No ! falsehood and feud were our evils, 
 
 While force not a fetter could twine. 
 Come Northmen come Normans come Devils ! 
 
 We give them our Sparth l to the chine ! 
 And if once again he would try us, 
 
 To the music of trumpet and drum, 
 And no traitor among us or nigh us 
 
 Let him come, the Brigand ! let him come ! 
 
 THE IRISH MOTHER IN THE PENAL DAYS 
 
 Now welcome, welcome, baby-boy, unto a mother's fears, 
 The pleasure of her sufferings, the rainbow of her tears, 
 The object of your father's hope, in all he hopes to do, 
 A future man of his own land, to live him o'er anew ! 
 
 How fondly on thy little brow a mother's eye would trace, 
 And in thy little limbs, and in each feature of thy face, 
 His beauty, worth, and manliness, and everything that's his, 
 Except, my boy, the answering mark of where the fetter is ! 
 
 Oh ! many a weary hundred years his sires that fetter wore, 
 And he has worn it since the day that him his mother bore ; 
 And now, my son, it waits on you, the moment you are born, 
 The old hereditary badge of suffering and scorn ! 
 
 Alas, my boy so beautiful ! alas, my love so brave ! 
 And must your gallant Irish limbs still drag it to the grave? 
 And you, my son, yet have a son, foredoomed a slave to be, 
 Whose mother still must weep o'er him the tears I weep o'er thee ! 
 
 Battle-axe. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 THE POETS OF THE NATION 
 
 THE NATION newspaper was founded in the autumn of 1842, 
 and its first proprietor and editor, Charles Gavan Duffy, 
 emigrated to Australia in 1855. These fourteen years fell into 
 two distinct periods the first ending with the imprisonment 
 of Duffy in 1848, the second with his emigration. They were 
 certainly the most eventful years that Ireland had experienced 
 since the Union. They witnessed the rise and fall of 
 O'ConnelPs Repeal movement ; the insurrection of '48 ; the 
 Famine ; the introduction into the British Parliament of Duffy's 
 scheme of Independent Opposition, and its failure ; and the 
 consequent wreck of the Tenant Right movement, through the 
 treachery of the ' Brigadiers ' and the madness of t'he people. 
 It is a record of heroic effort, of crushing disaster, and of 
 miserable defeat. Yet if these years were am^ng the most 
 calamitous in Irish history, it is none the less true that they 
 were the most fertile in the seeds of future success. Almost 
 everything that Ireland has since gained in the practical field 
 and she has gained much has been won by developing and 
 applying the ideas struck out at that time. And The Nation 
 newspaper was the forge of thought in which the most active 
 and ardent minds of the country wrought indefatigably at the 
 fabric of her freedom and prosperity. But it was not only 
 ideas and suggestions that were bequeathed to the future from 
 these fourteen years, it was also passion and inspiration. The 
 body of National poetry produced at this period first as 
 
H2 BOOK III 
 
 fugitive verse in the columns of the newspaper, afterwards 
 collected and reprinted in countless editions entered pro- 
 foundly into the heart and mind of Irishmen of that and sub- 
 sequent generations. 1 Other writers have produced poetic work 
 of a loftier order ; but of this it may be said, and of this alone, 
 that no one who is unacquainted with it can understand the 
 contemporary history of Ireland. 
 
 The story of the foundation and early career of The Nation 
 has been told so fully in so accessible a book as Sir Charles 
 Gavan Duffy's YOUNG IRELAND, that it is not necessary here 
 to describe these transactions at any length. Seldom, if ever, 
 has any journal exercised so great and so worthy an effect 
 on the political education of a people. The founders of The 
 Nation found the masses of their countrymen just emerging 
 from serfdom, unconscious of their power, ignorant of their 
 history ; the sense of nationality, such as there was, the 
 monopoly of one religious faction and the scorn of another ; 
 their aspirations either fantastically vague or crudely material. 
 On the ears of such a people fell sentences like these : 
 
 This country of ours is no sand-bank, thrown up by some recent 
 caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the archives of 
 civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour and its 
 sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river 
 of Irish mind. Long wars, vast organisations, subtle codes, beacon 
 crimes, leading virtues, and self-mighty men were here. If we live 
 influenced by wind and sun and tree, and not by the passions and 
 deeds of the PAST, we are a thriftless and hopeless people. DAVIS'S 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 Thus, and in a hundred essays, articles, and poems, 
 elaborating these conceptions in detail, did Thomas Davis, 
 Duffy, and their colleagues point their countrymen to their 
 past. And as for the future, we may recognise in the following 
 passage the kernel of multitudes of similar articles, essays, 
 poems, holding up before the Irish people a noble and severe 
 ideal of self-cultivation, of discipline and preparation, for great 
 
 1 * Deep down in the heart of every young Irishman,' says Mr. William 
 O'Brien, with absolute truth, ' you will find the spirit of The Nation.* 
 
POETS OF 1 THE NATION' 113 
 
 destinies which in those golden days seemed nearer at hand 
 than they can to the most sanguine now : 
 
 The elements of Irish nationality are not only combining in fact, 
 they are growing confluent in our minds. Such nationality as merits a 
 good man's help, and awakens a true man's ambition such nationality 
 as could stand against internal faction and foreign intrigue such 
 nationality as would make the Irish hearth happy, and the Irish name 
 illustrious, is becoming understood. It must contain and represent all 
 the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic ; it must not be Saxon ; it 
 must be Irish. The Brehon law, and the maxims of Westminster the 
 cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Sac- 
 sanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman - a literature which shall 
 exhibit in combination the passions and idioms of all, and which shall 
 equally express our mind in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and 
 its practical tendencies finally, a native government, which shall 
 know and rule by the might and right of all, yet yield to the arrogance 
 of none these are the components of such a nationality. DAVIS'S 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 The keynote of all the poetry which gave wings to the 
 purposes and propaganda of The Nation, and which has served 
 more than anything else to keep the fame of the Young 
 Irelanders fresh to day, was the doctrine of Irish nationality. 
 Nationality is indeed the diapason of all worthy imaginative 
 literature, 1 but in the case of The Nation poets at least, those 
 of the first period, up to 1848 it was generally also the 
 immediate theme or motive of their writings. They wrote for 
 a directly political purpose to inspire their countrymen with 
 national pride, and faith in the cause of Repeal, and also with 
 hatred of English rule. Lyrics of pure emotion like 'My 
 Grave,' by Davis, or Judge O'Hagan's beautiful poem, ' The 
 Old Story,' were rather by-products of their toil ; their direct 
 object was to influence opinion and action. Poetry produced 
 under this stimulus may not take rank with the creation of the 
 artist dreaming on eternal truths, eternal beauty, and expressing 
 them in the rich and arduous harmonies of music and thought 
 
 1 'Der starkste Antrieb zu geistigem und wirtschaftlichem Schaffen.' 
 Petition of German Authors and Professors to the Czar for the Liberties o) 
 Finland. 
 
H4 BOOK III 
 
 which we call poetry. Yet if the Young Irelanders worked for 
 an immediate practical aim, none the less did high truth and 
 noble passion inspire and inform their work, and their influence 
 on the mind and heart of their readers was altogether for good. 
 They awakened the intellect of Ireland from slumber, and they 
 made the written word a power in the land. 
 
 How, it may be asked, did all this poetic talent spring up 
 so suddenly ? One hardly knows. Duffy originated the idea 
 of publishing National songs and ballads in The Nation, and 
 Davis inaugurated the scheme with the finest poem he ever 
 wrote, the ' Lament for Owen Roe.' Other writers some of 
 them peasants, some artisans, some exiles who had made their 
 homes in far-distant lands whose gift for verse or sympathy with 
 their country would otherwise perhaps never have found utter- 
 ance, were inspired by the example of Davis and the passion of 
 the time. The Nation went far and wide through the country- 
 it reached the priest, the student, the schoolmaster, the Repeal 
 Committee man. Soon it found its way to the artisan and the 
 peasant ; it was read aloud in the chapel-yard on Sundays, or 
 round the forge fire of an evening. It told the people of an 
 Ireland they had never heard of before ; not the Ireland of 
 burlesque, or of bigoted misrepresentation, inhabited by Handy 
 Andies and Scullabogue murderers, but ' an old historic island, 
 the mother of soldiers and scholars, whose name was heard in 
 the roar of onset on a thousand battlefields, for whose dear 
 love the poor homesick exile in the garret or cloister of some 
 foreign city toiled or plotted . . . the one mother country 
 which a man loves as he loves the mother who held him to 
 her breast.' l To express the throng of new ideas, emotions, 
 aspirations, which crowded on the mind of the people, the 
 Irish genius turned naturally to song. From wholly new and 
 unsuspected quarters poems began to pour in upon The Nation 
 now it was some student who in a flame of patriotic passion 
 wrought a lyric to which the hearts of Irishmen will quiver for 
 all time ; now it was some gifted lady of the dominant classes 
 who stepped from her pride of place to become the stormy 
 1 C. G. Duffy. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION* 115 
 
 voice of an oppressed and perishing people ; now it was some 
 schoolboy in a provincial town who sent up, in a scarcely 
 legible manuscript, verses throbbing with fiery energy ; or a girl 
 nurtured in seclusion and in an atmosphere of tender piety 
 who added a strain of delicate sweetness to the martial music 
 which came most frequently and naturally to the poets of 
 The Nation. 
 
 Intensely patriotic as this poetry was, there was yet one 
 important aspect of patriotism which found, and perhaps 
 could find, no distinct expression in it ; it had little or nothing 
 of the Gaelic note. In reading Mangan, whose orbit coincided 
 for a while with that of The Nation, but who must, on the 
 whole, be considered as a star that dwelt apart, and Ferguson, 
 who was united to The Nation writers by ties of friendship 
 and of political sympathy, but not by literary association, one 
 feels that these writers have behind them the moulding 
 influences of a body of literature quite other than the English 
 a literature marked by a peculiar strain of mingled homeliness 
 and grandeur, of simplicity and elaboration, of sensuousness 
 and mysticism. This was the ancient literature of the Gael 
 the one literature of modern Europe which grew up spon- 
 taneously, untouched by the mighty influences of classic culture. 
 And Mangan and Ferguson are the progenitors of those writers 
 of our own day, like Standish O'Grady and Yeats, who are the 
 representatives of the old Gaelic tradition, though they hand 
 it forward in the English tongue. The Nation writers, however, 
 recall not the Gaelic but the English tradition. Davis's ' Lament 
 for Owen Roe ' has a certain Gaelic afflatus, and Edward Walsh 
 knew how to * turn a simple verse true to the Gaelic ear ' ; but 
 for the most part, though the poets of The Nation loved to 
 sprinkle their verses with Irish phrases, the qualities which 
 remind us that there was once a Gaelic literature lie rather on 
 the surface than in the substance of their work. Nor at that 
 time could it well have been otherwise. The ancient tongue 
 was still living ; but Nationalist opinion, represented by 
 O'Connell, regarded it as a sort of incubus, and of the old 
 literature little was known or understood. 
 
 i2 
 
ii6 BOOK III 
 
 With this general introduction the poets of The Nation 
 may now be left to speak for themselves. The selections 
 which follow are taken from the two excellent collections of 
 The Nation poetry, the SPIRIT OF THE NATION (Jas. Duffy, 
 Dublin) and the NEW SPIRIT OF THE NATION (T. Fisher 
 Unwin, London), and also in some cases from the other 
 writings of authors who are represented in these volumes, and 
 who won their earliest or principal distinction as writers for 
 The Nation during the editorship of Charles Gavan Duffy. 
 After his emigration the paper was ably conducted, and with 
 special care for its literary repute, by Mr. A. M. Sullivan ; but 
 no poetic movement comparable to that which is illustrated in 
 the two volumes I have mentioned has ever again been 
 associated with politics or journalism in Ireland. 
 
 T. W. ROLLESTON. 
 
 THOMAS DAVIS 
 
 THE poetical work of Thomas Davis fell within the last three 
 years of his short life, from the date when he joined The 
 Nation enterprise in 1842 to his death in 1845. He never 
 put forth his full strength in this direction, and his history, 
 which has been fully written by his friend and colleague, 
 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, is the history of a man of action, not 
 of a litterateur. His songs were things which he paused to do 
 often hastily, and by the way as he was pressing forward to his 
 aim. Yet his poetry, written as it was straight from the heart 
 and on the themes that vitally interested and moved him, was 
 not only a powerful auxiliary to his work as a political guide 
 and teacher, but has high and enduring attractions of its own, 
 and has added peculiar fragrance to a memory worthy on so 
 many grounds of being cherished by his countrymen. It was 
 in his poetry that he most intimately revealed himself. And 
 though Thomas Davis was extraordinarily fertile in ideas, and 
 indefatigable in methodic industry, the best thing he gave to 
 
POETS OF 1 THE NATION' 117 
 
 the Irish people was not an idea or an achievement of any sort, 
 but simply the gift of himself. He was the ideal Irishman. 
 North and south, east and west, the finest qualities of the 
 population that inhabit this island seemed to be combined in 
 him, developed to their highest power, and coloured deeply 
 with whatever it is in character and temperament that makes 
 the Irish one of the most separate of races. The nation saw 
 itself transfigured in him, and saw the dreams nourished by its 
 long memories and ancestral pride coming true. Hence the 
 intense personal devotion felt towards Davis by the ardent and 
 thoughtful young men who were associated with him, and the 
 sense of irreparable loss caused by his early death. He stood 
 for Ireland for all Ireland as no other man did, and it was 
 hardly possible to distinguish the cause from his personality. 
 Yet perhaps the best evidence of the potency and the nobility 
 of his influence was the fact that this sense of loss was 
 overcome by the recollection of the ideals he had held up, and 
 that his memory was honoured by the undaunted pursuance of 
 his work, and the maintenance of the pure and lofty ardour 
 with which he wrought. 
 
 Thomas Davis was born in 1814 at Mallow, County Cork. 
 His father was a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, of Welsh 
 origin ; his mother belonged to a well-known Irish family, the 
 Atkins of Firville. As a boy he is said to have been shy, very 
 sensitive, and not at all quick at learning ; but at Trinity 
 College the passion of the student took possession of him, and 
 though he never competed for honours and prizes he became, 
 and remained all his life, a diligent and omnivorous reader. 
 He was called to the Bar in 1838, but speedily abandoned 
 that profession for literature and journalism. With Charles 
 Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon he took part in the 
 founding of The Nation and in its subsequent management. 
 His ' Lament of Owen Roe ' was among the first of the National 
 poems and ballads which soon formed so marked a feature in 
 the propaganda carried on by that paper. On September 16, 
 1845, he died of scarlet fever, and was followed to his grave by 
 the lamentations of his countrymen of every creed and every 
 
ii8 BOOK 111 
 
 political party. ' Beloved and honoured,' as his friend 
 
 O'Hagan wrote, 
 
 * . . . With a sphere 
 Of proud exertion widening near, 
 In manhood's power and might arrayed, 
 Cold in the grave we saw him laid. 
 
 Not dying, as he yearned to die, 
 Keened by his country's victor-cry ; 
 But struck by swift and stern disease. 
 How strange to man are God's decrees ! 
 
 Davis's prose writings were edited in 1845 by C. G. Duffy, and in 
 1889 an enlarged edition was brought out by Walter Scott, London. His 
 poems have been collected and edited by T. Wallis, with an excellent 
 introduction (James Duffy, Dublin). His Life has been written by Sir 
 Charles Gavan Dutfy (Kegan Paul). 
 
 CELTS AND SAXONS 
 
 WE hate the Saxon and the Dane, 
 
 We hate the Norman men 
 We cursed their greed for blood and gain, 
 
 We curse them now again. 
 Yet start not, Irish-born man ! 
 
 If you're to Ireland true, 
 We heed not blood, nor creed, nor clan 
 
 We have no curse for you. 
 
 We have no curse for you or yours, 
 
 But Friendship's ready grasp, 
 And Faith to stand by you and yours 
 
 Unto our latest gasp 
 To stand by you against all foes, 
 
 Howe'er or whence they come, 
 With traitor arts, or bribes, or blows, 
 
 From England, France, or Rome. 
 
 What matter that at different shrines 
 
 We pray unto one God ? 
 What matter that at different times 
 
 Our fathers won this sod ? 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION 119 
 
 In fortune and in name we're bound 
 
 By stronger links than steel ; 
 And neither can be safe nor sound 
 
 But in the other's weal. 
 
 As Nubian rocks and Ethiop sand, 
 
 Long drifting down the Nile, 
 Built up old Egypt's fertile land 
 
 For many a hundred mile : 
 So Pagan clans to Ireland came, 
 
 And clans of Christendom, 
 Yet joined their wisdom and their fame 
 
 To build a nation from. 
 
 Here came the brown Phcenician, 
 
 The man of trade and toil- 
 Here came the proud Milesian, 
 
 A-hungering for spoil ; 
 And the Firbolg and the Cymry, 
 
 And the hard, enduring Dane, 
 And the iron Lords of Normandy, 
 
 With the Saxons in their train. 
 
 And oh ! it were a gallant deed 
 
 To show before mankind, 
 How every race and every creed 
 
 Might be by love combined 
 Might be combined, yet not forget 
 
 The fountains whence they rose, 
 As, filled b'y many a rivulet, 
 
 The stately Shannon flows. 
 
 Nor would we wreak our ancient feud 
 
 On Belgian or on Dane, 
 Nor visit in a hostile mood 
 
 The hearths of Gaul or Spain ; 
 But long as on our country lies 
 
 The Anglo-Norman yoke, 
 Their tyranny we'll stigmatise, 
 
 And God's revenge invoke. 
 
120 BOOK II T 
 
 We do not hate, we never cursed, 
 
 Nor spoke a foeman's word 
 Against a man in Ireland nursed, 
 
 Howe'er we thought he erred. 
 So start not, Irish-born man ! 
 
 If you're to Ireland true, 
 We heed not race, nor creed, nor clan 
 
 We've hearts and hands for you. 
 
 LAMENT FOR THE DEATH OF EOGHAN RUADH O'NEILL 1 
 
 Time. November 10, 1649. Scene. Ormond's Camp, County Waterford. 
 Speakers. A veteran of Eoghan O'Neill's clan, and one of the horsemen, just 
 arrived with an account of his death. 
 
 ' DID they dare did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neill ? ' 
 'Yes, they slew with poison him they feared to meet with steel.' 2 
 ' May God wither up their hearts ! May their blood cease to flow ! 
 May they walk in living death who poisoned Owen Roe ! 
 
 ' Though it break my heart to hear, say again the bitter words.' 
 1 From Derry, against Cromwell, he marched to measure swords ; 
 But the weapon of the Sacsanach met him on his way, 
 And he died at Cloch Uachtar 3 upon St. Leonard's Day. 
 
 1 Wail, wail ye for the Mighty One ! Wail, wail, ye for the Dead ! 
 Quench the hearth, and hold the breath with ashes strew the head. 
 How tenderly we loved him ! How deeply we deplore ! 
 Holy Saviour ! but to think we shall never see him more ! 
 
 ' Sagest in the council was he, kindest in the hall : 
 Sure, we never won a battle 'twas Owen won them all. 
 Had he lived had he lived, our dear country had been free ; 
 But he's dead but he's dead, and 'tis slaves we'll ever be. 
 
 1 Commonly called Owen Roe O'Neill. The Life of this great general 
 and noble Irishman has been admirably written for the ' New Irish Library ' 
 by Mr. J. F. Taylor, Q.C. (Fisher Unwin). 
 
 2 This is an anachronism. Poison was freely employed against the 
 Irish in Elizabethan but not in Cromwellian times. Yet the suspicion 
 lives among the people even to the present day witness the street-ballad 
 ' By Memory Inspired,' Book I. 
 
 8 Clough Oughter. 
 
POETS OF 1 THE NATION* 121 
 
 ' O'Farrell and Clanrickarde, Preston and Red Hugh, 
 Audley and MacMahon, ye are valiant, wise, and true ; 
 But what what are ye all to our darling who is gone ? 
 The Rudder of our ship was he our Castle's corner-stone ! 
 
 1 Wail, wail him through the island ! Weep, weep for our pride ! 
 Would that on the battlefield our gallant chief had died ! 
 Weep the victor of Beinn Burb weep him, young men and old ! 
 Weep for him, ye women your Beautiful lies cold ! 
 
 ' We thought you would not die we were sure you would not go, 
 And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell's cruel blow- 
 Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky 
 Oh ! why did you leave us, Owen ? Why did you die ? 
 
 ' Soft as woman's was your voice, O'Neill ! Bright was your eye. 
 Oh ! why did you leave us, Owen ? Why did you die ? 
 Your troubles are all over ; you're at rest with God on high : 
 But we're slaves, and we're orphans, Owen ! Why did you die?' 
 
 THE SACK OF BALTIMORE 1 
 
 This was the last poem written by Thomas Davis. As a specimen of his 
 power in a narrative poem it seems far superior to his perhaps better-known 
 ballad on Fontenoy. Miss Mitforcl in her MEMOIRS wrote of it : ' Not only is 
 it full of spirit and melody . . . but the artistic merit is so great. . . . There 
 is no careless line or a word out of place ; and how the epithets paint " fibrous 
 sod," "heavy balm," " shearing sword " ! ' 
 
 THE summer sun is falling soft on Carbery's hundred isles ; 
 
 The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel's rough defiles ; 
 
 1 Baltimore is a small seaport in the barony of Carbery, in South 
 Munster. It grew up round a astle of O'Driscoll's, and was, after his 
 ruin, colonised by the English. On June 20, 1631, the crew of two 
 Algerine galleys landed in the dead of the night, sacked the town, and 
 bore off into slavery all who were not too old or too young or too 
 fierce for their purpose. The pirates were steered up the intricate 
 channel by one Hackett, a Dungarvan fisherman, whom they had taken 
 at sea for the purpose. Two years after he was convicted and executed 
 for the crime. Baltimore never recovered this. To the artist, the 
 antiquary, and the naturalist, its neighbourhood is most interesting. 
 (See THE ANCIENT AND PRESENT STATE OF THE COUNTY AND CITY OF 
 CORK, by Charles Smith, M.D.) 
 
122 BOOK III 
 
 Old Inisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird ; 
 And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard ; 
 The hookers lie upon the beach ; the children cease their play ; 
 The gossips leave the little inn ; the households kneel to pray ; 
 And full of love and peace and rest its daily labour o'er 
 Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore. 
 
 A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there ; 
 No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth or sea or air. 
 The massive capes and ruined towers seem conscious of the 
 
 calm ; 
 
 The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm. 
 So still the night, these two long barques round Dunashad that 
 
 glide 
 
 Must trust their oars methinks not few against the ebbing tide. 
 Oh ! some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the 
 
 shore 
 They bring some lover to his bride, who sighs in Baltimore ! 
 
 All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky street, 
 And these must be the lover's friends, with gently gliding feet 
 A stifled gasp ! a dreamy noise ! ' The roof is in a flame ! ' 
 From out their beds, and to their doors, rush maid and sire and 
 
 dame 
 
 And meet, upon the threshold stone, the gleaming sabre's fall, 
 And o'er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl ; 
 The yell of ' Allah ' breaks above the prayer and shriek and roar 
 Oh, blessed God ! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore ! 
 
 Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword ; 
 Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was 
 
 gored ; 
 Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching 
 
 wild ; 
 
 Then fled the maiden, moaning faint, and nestled with the child. 
 But see, yon pirate strangled lies, and crushed with splashing 
 
 heel, 
 
 While o'er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian steel 
 Though virtue sink and courage fail, and misers yield their store, 
 There's one hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore ! 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION* 123 
 
 Midsummer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds began to sing 
 They see not now the milking-maids deserted is the spring ! 
 Midsummer day this gallant rides from distant Bandon's town 
 These hookers crossed from stormy Skull, that skiff from Affa- 
 
 down ; 
 They only found the smoking walls, with neighbours' blood 
 
 besprent, 
 
 And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went 
 Then dashed to sea, and passed Cape Clear, and saw five leagues 
 
 before 
 The pirate galleys vanishing that ravaged Baltimore. 
 
 Oh ! some must tug the galley's oar, and some must tend the 
 
 steed 
 
 This boy will bear a Scheik's chibouk, and that a Bey's jerreed. 
 Oh ! some are for the arsenals, by beauteous Dardanelles ; 
 And some are in the caravan to Mecca's sandy dells. 
 The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey 
 She's safe he's dead she stabbed him in the midst of his Serai. 
 And when to die a death of fire that noble maid they bore, 
 She only smiled O'DriscolPs child she thought of Baltimore. 
 
 'Tis two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band, 
 And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand, 
 Where, high upon a gallows-tree, a yelling wretch is seen 
 'Tis Hackett of Dungarvan he who steered the Algerine ! 
 He fell amid a sullen shout, with scarce a passing prayer, 
 For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there. 
 Some muttered of MacMurchadh, who brought the Norman o'er 
 Some cursed him with Iscariot, that day in Baltimore. 
 
 THE GIRL OF DUNBWY 
 
 Tis pretty to see the girl of Dunbwy 
 Stepping the mountain statelily 
 Though ragged her gown and naked her feet, 
 No lady in Ireland to match her is meet. 
 
 Poor is her diet, and hardly she lies 
 
 Yet a monarch might kneel for a glance of her eyes ; 
 
124 BOOK III 
 
 The child of a peasant yet England's proud Queen 
 Has less rank in her heart and less grace in her mien. 
 
 Her brow 'neath her raven hair gleams, just as if 
 
 A breaker spread white -'neath a shadowy cliff 
 
 And love and devotion and energy speak 
 
 From her beauty-proud eye and her passion -pale cheek. 
 
 But, pale as her cheek is, there's fruit on her lip, 
 And her teeth flash as white as the crescent moon's tip, 
 And her form and her step, like the red-deer's, go past 
 As lightsome, as lovely, as haughty, as fast. 
 
 I saw her but once, and I looked in her eye, 
 And she knew that I worshipped in passing her by. 
 The saint of the wayside she granted my prayer 
 Though we spoke not a word ; for her mother was there. 
 
 I never can think upon Bantry's bright hills, 
 But her image starts up, and my longing eye fills ; 
 And I whisper her softly : ' Again, love, we'll meet ! 
 And I'll lie in your bosom, and live at your feet.' 
 
 NATIONALITY 
 
 A NATION'S voice, a nation's voice 
 
 It is a solemn thing ! 
 It bids the bondage-sick rejoice 
 
 'Tis stronger than a king. 
 'Tis like the light of many stars, 
 
 The sound of many waves ; 
 Which brightly look through prison-bars 
 
 And sweetly sound in caves. 
 Yet is it noblest, godliest known, 
 When righteous triumph swells its tone. 
 
 A nation's flag, a nation's flag 
 
 If wickedly unrolled, 
 May foes in adverse battle drag 
 
 Its every fold from fold. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION 125 
 
 But in the cause of Liberty, 
 
 Guard it 'gainst Earth and Hell ; 
 
 Guard it till Death or Victory- 
 Look you, you guard it well ! 
 
 No saint or king has tomb so proud 
 
 As he whose flag becomes his shroud. 
 
 A nation's right, a nation's right 
 
 God gave it, and gave, too, 
 A nation's sword, a nation's might, 
 
 Danger to guard it through. 
 'Tis freedom from a foreign yoke, 
 
 Tis just and equal laws, 
 Which deal unto the humblest folk 
 
 As in a noble's cause. 
 On nations fixed in right and truth 
 God would bestow eternal youth. 
 
 May Ireland's voice be ever heard 
 
 Amid the world's applause ! 
 And never be her flag-staff stirred 
 
 But in an honest cause ! 
 May freedom be her very breath, 
 
 Be Justice ever dear : 
 And never an ennobled death 
 
 May son of Ireland fear ! 
 So the Lord God will ever smile, 
 With guardian grace, upon our isle. 
 
 JOHN DE JEAN FRAZER 
 
 BORN in the King's County about 1809, and wrote largely 
 for The Nation, The Irish Felon, c. He was a cabinet- 
 maker by trade. Died in Dublin 1852. His 'Song for 
 July 1 2th' represents with much literary grace and skill the 
 form of thought prevalent among The Nation writers towards 
 Orangeism. 
 
126 BOOK III 
 
 SONG FOR JULY i2TH, 1843 
 
 Air ' Boyne Water ' 
 
 COME ! pledge again thy heart and hand 
 
 One grasp that ne'er shall sever ; 
 Our watchword be * Our native land ! ' 
 
 Our motto ' Love for ever ! ' 
 And let the Orange lily be 
 
 Thy badge, my patriot-brother 
 The everlasting Green for me ; 
 
 And we for one another. 
 
 Behold how green the gallant stem 
 
 On which the flower is blowing ; 
 How in one heavenly breeze and beam 
 
 Both flower and stem are glowing. 
 The same good soil, sustaining both, 
 
 Makes both united flourish ; 
 But cannot give the Orange growth, 
 
 And cease the green to nourish. 
 
 Yea, more the hand that plucks the fiWr 
 
 Will vainly strive to cherish ; 
 The stem blooms on but in that hour 
 
 The flower begins to perish. 
 Regard them, then, of equal worth 
 
 While lasts their genial weather ; 
 The time's at hand when into earth 
 
 The two shall sink together. 
 
 Ev'n thus be, in our country's cause, 
 
 Our rjarty feelings blended ; 
 Till lasting peace, from equal laws, 
 
 On both shall have descended. 
 Till then the Orange lily be 
 
 Thy badge, my patriot-brother 
 The everlasting Green for me ; 
 
 And we for one another. 
 
POETS OF <THE NATION* 127 
 
 JOHN O'HAGAN 
 
 O'HAGAN (born at Newry 1822) entered the ranks of The 
 Nation writers when a young barrister fresh from Trinity 
 College, Dublin, and contributed to that journal much spirited 
 verse over the signature 'Sliabh Cuilinn ' (Slieve Cullan 
 the mountain vulgarly known as the Great Sugarloaf). 'A 
 boyish face, a frank smile, and a readiness to engage in 
 badinage ' were, according to Sir C. G. Duffy, the first character- 
 istics that impressed themselves on his associates ; but he 
 soon showed gifts of character and intellect that made him 
 one of the most influential and trusted members of the Young 
 Ireland party. After a distinguished career at the Bar he was 
 appointed by Mr. Gladstone first chairman of the Irish Land 
 Commission, and died in 1890. 
 
 THE SONG OF ROLAND, translated from the French, 1880 ; THE 
 CHILDREN'S BALLAD ROSARY, 1890. 
 
 OURSELVES ALONE 
 
 THE work that should to-day be wrought, 
 
 Defer not till to-morrow ; 
 The help that should within be sought, 
 
 Scorn from without to borrow. 
 Old maxims these yet stout and true 
 
 They speak in trumpet tone, 
 To do at once what is to do, 
 
 And trust OURSELVES ALONE. 
 
 Too long our Irish hearts we schooled 
 
 In patient hope to bide, 
 By dreams of English justice fooled 
 
 And English tongues that lied. 
 That hour of weak delusion's past 
 
 The empty dream has flown : 
 Our hope and strength, we find at last, 
 
 Is in OURSELVES ALONE. 
 
128 BOOK III 
 
 Aye ! bitter hate or cold neglect, 
 
 Or lukewarm love at best, 
 Is all we've found, or can expect, 
 
 We Aliens of the West. 
 No friend, beyond our own green shore, 
 
 Can Erin truly own ; 
 Yet stronger is her trust, therefore, 
 
 In her brave sons ALONE. 
 
 Remember, when our lot was worse 
 
 Sunk, trampled to the dust 
 'Twas long our weakness and our curse 
 
 In stranger aid to trust. 
 And if, at length, we proudly trod 
 
 On bigot laws o'erthrown, 
 Who won that struggle ? Under God, 
 
 Ourselves OURSELVES ALONE. 
 
 Oh ! let its memory be enshrined 
 
 In Ireland's heart for ever ! 
 It proves a banded people's mind 
 
 Must win in just endeavour ; 
 It shows how wicked to despair, 
 
 How weak to idly groan 
 If ills at others' hand ye bear, 
 
 The cure is in YOUR OWN. 
 
 The foolish word ' impossible ' 
 
 At once, for aye, disdain ! 
 No power can bar a people's will, 
 
 A people's right to gain. 
 Be bold, united, firmly set, 
 
 Nor flinch in word or tone 
 We'll be a glorious nation yet, 
 
 REDEEMED ERECT ALONE ! 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION 1 129 
 
 THE OLD STORY 
 
 Old as the universe, yet not outworn.' The Island. 
 
 HE came across the meadow-pass, 
 
 That summer eve of eves ; 
 The sunlight streamed along the grass 
 
 And glanced amid the leaves ; 
 And from the shrubbery below, 
 
 And from the garden trees, 
 He heard the thrushes' music flow, 
 
 And humming of the bees. 
 The garden-gate was swung apart 
 
 The space was brief between ; 
 But there, for throbbing of his heart, 
 
 He paused perforce to lean. 
 
 He leaned upon the garden-gate ; 
 
 He looked, and scarce he breathed ; 
 Within the little porch she sate, 
 
 With woodbine overwreathed ; 
 Her eyes upon her work were bent 
 
 Unconscious who was nigh ; 
 But oft the needle slowly went, 
 
 And oft did idle lie ; 
 And ever to her lips arose 
 
 Sweet fragments faintly sung, 
 But ever, ere the notes could close, 
 
 She hushed them on her tongue. 
 
 ' Why should I ever leave this spot, 
 
 But gaze until I die ? ' 
 A moment from that bursting thought 
 
 She felt his footstep nigh. 
 One sudden lifted glance but one, 
 
 A tremor and a start, 
 So gently was their greeting done 
 
 That who would guess their heart? 
 
 Long, long the sun had sunken down, 
 And all his golden trail 
 
130 BOOK III 
 
 Had died away to lines of brown, 
 
 In duskier hues that fail. 
 The grasshopper was chirping shrill 
 
 No other living sound 
 Accompanied the tiny rill 
 
 That gurgled underground 
 No other living sound, unless 
 
 Some spirit bent to hear 
 Low words of human tenderness, 
 
 And mingling whispers near. 
 
 The stars, like pallid gems at first, 
 
 Deep in the Jiquid sky, 
 Now forth upon the darkness burst, 
 
 Sole kings and lights on high 
 In splendour, myriad-fold, supreme 
 
 No rival moonlight strove, 
 Nor lovelier e'er was Hesper's beam, 
 
 Nor more majestic Jove. 
 But what if hearts there beat that night 
 
 That recked not of the skies, 
 Or only felt their imaged light 
 
 In one another's eyes ? 
 
 And if two worlds of hidden thought 
 
 And fostered passion met, 
 Which, passing human language, sought 
 
 And found an utterance yet ; 
 And if they trembled like to flowers 
 
 That droop across a stream, 
 The while the silentstarry hours 
 
 Glide o'er them like a dream ; 
 And if, when came the parting time, 
 
 They faltered still and clung ; 
 What is it all ? an ancient rhyme 
 
 Ten thousand times besung 
 That part of paradise which man 
 
 Withojt the portal knows 
 Which hath been since the world began, 
 
 And shall be till its close. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION* 131 
 
 PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY 
 
 ' A Protestant King, a Protestant House of Lords and Commons, a Protes- 
 tant Hierarchy ; the courts of Justice, the army, the navy, and the revenue, in 
 all their branches and details, Protestant - and this system fortified and main- 
 tained by a connection with the Protestant State of Great Britain. 
 
 1 The Protestants of Ireland will never relinquish their political position, 
 which their fathers won with their swords, and which they, therefore, regard as 
 their birthright.' Letter of the Dublin Corporation, 1793. 
 
 GREAT fabric of oppression 
 
 By tyrant plunderers planned, 
 So giant-vast, so iron-fast, 
 That were not God's great fiat pass'd 
 That man's injustice shall not last 
 
 Thou might'st eternal stand ; 
 Black fortress of Ascendency, 
 
 Beneath whose wasting sway 
 Sprang crime and strife, so deadly rife 
 
 What rests of thee to-day ? 
 
 A few unsightly fragments, 
 
 The scoff and scorn of all, 
 Long pierc'd and rent by freedom's power 
 They rot and crumble hour by hour, 
 And wait the lightest storm to lour, 
 
 In hapless wreck to fall. 
 What show of faded banners, 
 
 What shouts of angry men, 
 Or doughty threat or sullen fret, 
 
 Will raise that pile again ? 
 
 Vain ! vain ! go seek the charnel 
 
 Where haughty Clare lies low ; 
 Tell him how ruin darkens o'er 
 The cause he sav'd in flames and gore, 
 How his strong will is needed sore 
 
 In this your day of woe 
 Rouse bloody Toler, summon all 
 
 Clan Beresford to gorge and prey, 
 And acrid Saurin's heart of gall 
 
 And serpent Castlereagh. 
 
 K2 
 
132 BOOK III 
 
 And those dry bones shall hearken 
 
 And smite with ghastly fear 
 This isle once more, ere ye restore 
 
 Their dead dominion here. 
 
 Vain ! vain ! can ye roll backward 
 
 The world for fifty years ? 
 From thrice three glowing millions drain 
 Their strength and substance, heart and brain ? 
 Where thought and daring impulse reign, 
 
 Plant old derided fears ? 
 Get their strong limbs your yoke to bear, 
 
 Your grasp upon their purse ? 
 Your maddest madman would not dare 
 
 So wild a dream to nurse 
 Awake ! awake ! your paths to take 
 
 For better or for worse. 
 
 The better lies before you, 
 
 The noblest ever trod ; 
 To meet your brothers face to face, 
 Quell idle feuds of creed or race, 
 And take your gallant grandsires' place 
 
 To free your native sod. 
 Make recreant statesmen tremble, 
 
 And ingrate England quail, 
 And win and wear the proudest share 
 
 In Ireland's proudest tale. 
 
 The worse 'tis yours to choose it 
 
 In helpless rage to stand : 
 To see the gulf and, trembling, wait 
 To writhe beneath o'ermastering fate, 
 Repelling with a scowl of hate 
 
 Your brother's outstretched hand- 
 In history known as tigers 
 
 Whose teeth and fangs were drawn, 
 Whose heart and will were murderous still 
 
 When means and strength were gone. 
 
POETS OF 777.fi- NATION* 133 
 
 Know, Protestants of Ireland, 
 
 That, doomed among mankind 
 Marked with the fatal mark are they 
 Who will not know their place or day, 
 But cling to phantoms pass'd away, 
 
 And sow the barren wind. 
 Life's ever- shifting currents 
 
 Brave men put forth to try ; 
 They wait beside the ebbing tide 
 
 Till darkness finds them dry. 
 
 SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY 
 
 C. G. DUFFY was born in Monaghan, 1816. He was educated 
 in that town, and entered journalism in Dublin at a very early 
 age. In 1842 he launched The Nation newspaper. In the 
 words of Mr. Martin MacDermott, the great gift which he 
 brought to the National movement was * the power of initiation 
 and organisation, without which, notwithstanding Davis's 
 splendid talents, there never would have been a Nation news- 
 paper or a Young Ireland party.' THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND 
 and in later days THE NEW IRISH LIBRARY were originated 
 by him, and his BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND is an 
 invaluable collection of Irish verse. He was arrested in 
 1848, but after several abortive trials, in which the anxiety of 
 the Crown to obtain a conviction overreached itself, he was 
 released. After the Famine, he projected and carried out a 
 national agitation for land reform, in which political differences 
 on other questions were laid aside, and entered Parliament in 
 connection with this movement. It failed when apparently on 
 the eve of success, owing largely to the opposition of Cardinal 
 Cullen and some of the Catholic hierarchy, who supported 
 Sadlier and Keogh deserters from the Tenant League camp. 
 Duffy then emigrated to Australia, where he became Premier of 
 Victoria and received the honour of K.C.M.G. on the visit of 
 the Prince of Wales in 1873. In his later years he has lived 
 
134 BOOK III 
 
 at Nice, and has busied himself chiefly in recording in 
 volumes as fascinating as they are instructive the history of 
 the Irish movements in which he was engaged. 
 
 None of the Young Irelanders wrote in rhyme and metre 
 with more sinewy force than Duffy. His lines smite home, 
 like the axe of an Irish Gallowglass ; and though his mind, as 
 his whole career shows, was eminently that of a statesman, he 
 clearly thought and felt as a reckless fighter when he faced the 
 enemies of his cause with the keen blade of verse in his hand. 
 The rising of 1641 and the brigandage of the Rapparees were 
 among the features of the secular resistance of Ireland with 
 which the National cause was most often reproached, and for 
 which its leaders were expected to apologise. And those were 
 the very things that Duffy chose to flaunt before his shocked 
 (or delighted) readers, for the apologetic attitude then so 
 prevalent in Ireland, the tacit admission that the English 
 conquest was in any sense a triumph of civilisation over 
 barbarism, was utterly repugnant to him and his colleagues, and 
 their first object was to make their countrymen understand the 
 whole truth about their history and be proud of it. Duffy's 
 lyre had other strings too, which he touched with skill, as in the 
 ( Lay Sermon ' and other poems collected in the NEW SPIRIT OF 
 THE NATION, but it is in these warlike strains that his verse 
 has most strength and character. 
 
 Sir Charles Duffy's principal works are : YOUNG IRELAND ; THE 
 LEAGUE OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH (the Tenant League) ; LIFE 
 OF THOMAS DAVIS; A SHORT LIFE OF THOMAS DAVIS ('New Irish 
 Library'); and an edition of IRISH BALLAD POETRY (1843). He has 
 lately published his Reminiscences. 
 
 THE MUSTER OF THE NORTH 
 
 A.D. 1641 
 
 We deny and have always denied the alleged massacre of 1641. But that 
 (he people rose under their chiefs, seized the English towns and expelled the 
 Fnglish settlers, and in doing so committed many excesses, is undeniable - as 
 is equally their desperate provocation. The ballad here printed is not meant 
 as an apology for these excesses, which we condemn and lament, but as 
 a true representation of the feelings of the insurgents in the first madness of 
 success. A uthor's note. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION' 135 
 
 JOY ! joy ! the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride 
 And see ! our crackling bonfires light old Bann's rejoicing tide, 
 And gladsome bell and bugle-horn from Newry's captured towers, 
 Hark ! how they tell the Saxon swine this land is ours is OURS ! 
 
 Glory to God ! my eyes have seen the ransomed fields of Down, 
 My ears have drunk the joyful news, * Stout Phelim hath his own.' 
 Oh ! may they see and hear no more ! oh ! may they rot to clay ! 
 When they forget to triumph in the conquest of to-day. 
 
 Now, now we'll teach the shameless Scot to purge his tnievish 
 
 maw ; 
 
 Now, now the Court may fall to pray, for Justice is the Law ; 
 Now shall the Undertaker l square, for once, his loose accounts 
 WJll strike, brave boys, a fair result, from all his false amounts. 
 
 Come, trample down their robber rule, and smite its venal spawn, 
 Their foreign laws, their foreign Church, their ermine and their 
 
 lawn, 
 
 With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our own ; 
 And plant our ancient laws again beneath our lineal throne. 
 
 Our standard flies o'er fifty towers, o'er twice ten thousand men ; 
 Down have we plucked the pirate Red, never to rise again ; 
 The Green alone shall stream above our native field and flood 
 The spotless Green, save where its folds are gemmed with Saxon 
 blood ! 
 
 Pity ! 2 no, no, you dare not, priest not you, our Father, dare 
 Preach to us now that godless creed the murderer's blood to 
 
 spare ; 
 To spare his blood, while tombless still our slaughtered kin implore 
 
 * Graves and revenge ' from Gobbin cliffs and Carrick's bloody 
 
 shore ! 3 
 
 1 The Scotch and English adventurers planted in Ulster by James I. 
 were called; 4 Undertakers.' 
 
 2 Leland, the Protestant historian, states that the Catholic priests 
 
 * laboured zealously to moderate the excesses of war,' and frequently 
 protected the English by concealing them in their places of worship and 
 even under their altars. 
 
 8 The scene of the massacre of the unoffending inhabitants of Island 
 Magee by the garrison of Carrickfergus. 
 
136 BOOK III 
 
 Pity ! could we ' forget, forgive, 3 if we were clods of clay, 
 
 Our martyred priests, our banished chiefs, our race in dark decay, 
 
 And, worse than all you know it, priest the daughters of our 
 
 land 
 With wrongs we blushed to name until the sword was in our hand? 
 
 Pity ! well, if you needs must whine, let pity have its way 
 Pity for all our comrades true, far from our side to-day : 
 The prison-bound who rot in chains, the faithful dead who poured 
 Their blood 'neath Temple's lawless axe or Parsons' ruffian sword 
 
 They smote us with the swearer's oath and with the murderer's 
 
 knife ; 
 
 We in the open field will fight fairly for land and life ; 
 But, by the dead and all their wrongs, and by our hopes to-day, 
 One of us twain shall fight their last, or be it we or they. 
 
 They banned our faith, they banned our lives, they trod us into 
 
 earth, 
 
 Until our very patience stirred their bitter hearts to mirth. 
 Even this great flame that wraps them now, not we but they have 
 
 bred: 
 Yes, this is their own work ; and now their work be on their head ! 
 
 Nay, Father, tell us not of help from Leinster's Norman peers, 
 If we shall shape our holy cause to match their selfish fears 
 Helpless and hopeless be their cause who brook a vain delay ! 
 Our ship is launched, our flag's afloat, whether they come or stay. 
 
 Let silken Howth and savage Slane still kiss their tyrant's rod, 
 And pale Dunsany still prefer his master to his God ; 
 Little we'd miss their fathers' sons, the Marchmen of the Pale, 
 If Irish hearts and Irish hands had Spanish blade and mail ! 
 
 Then let them stay to bow and fawn, or fight with cunning words ; 
 I fear me more their courtly arts than England's hireling swords ; 
 Nathless their creed, they hate us still, as the despoiler hates ; 
 Could they love us, and love their prey, our kinsmen's lost estates ? 
 
 Our rude array's a jagged rock to smash the spoiler's pow'r 
 Or, need we aid, His aid we have who doomed this gracious hour ; 
 Of yore He led His Hebrew host to peace through strife and pain, 
 And us He leads the self-same path, the self-same goal to gain. 
 
POETS OF THE NATION* 137 
 
 Down from the sacred hills whereon a saint ' communed with God, 
 Up from the vale where Bagenal's blood manured the reeking sod, 
 Out from the stately woods of Truagh, M< Kenna's plundered home, 
 Like Malin's waves, as fierce arid fast, our faithful clansmen come. 
 
 Then, brethren, on ! O'Neill's dear shade would frown to see you 
 
 pause 
 Our banished Hugh, our martyred Hugh, is watching o'er your 
 
 cause 
 
 His generous error lost the land he deemed the Norman true ; 
 Oh, forward ! friends, it must not lose the land again in you ! 
 
 THE IRISH RAPPAREES 
 A PEASANT BALLAD 
 
 When Limerick was surrendered and the bulk of the Irish army took 
 service with Louis XIV., a multitude of the old soldiers of the Boyne, Aughrim 
 and Limerick, preferred remaining in the country at the risk of fighting for 
 their daily bread ; and with them some gentlemen, loath to part from their 
 estates or their sweethearts. The English army and the English law drove 
 them by degrees to the hills, where they were long a terror to the new and old 
 settlers from England, and a secret pride and comfort to the trampled peasantry, 
 who loved them even for their excesses. It was all they had left to take pride 
 in. Author s note. 
 
 RICH SHEMUS he has gone to France and left his crown behind : 
 Ill-luck be theirs, both day and night, put runnin' in his mind ! 
 Lord Lucan- followed after, with his slashers brave and true, 
 And now the doleful keen is raised ' What will poor Ireland do ? 
 
 'What must poor Ireland do? 
 
 Our luck, they say, has gone to France. What can poor Ireland 
 do?' 
 
 Oh, never fear for Ireland, for she has so'gers still, 
 
 For Remy's boys are in the wood, and Rory's on the hill ; 
 
 1 St. Patrick, whose favourite retreat was Lecale, in the County 
 Down. 
 
 '-' After the Treaty of Limerick, Patrick Sarsfield, Lord Lucan, sailed 
 with the Brigade to France, and was killed while leading his countrymen 
 to victory at the battle of Landen, in the Low Countries, July 29, 1693. 
 
138 BOOK III 
 
 And never had poor Ireland more loyal hearts than these 
 May God be kind and good to them, the faithful Rapparees ! 
 
 The fearless Rapparees ! 
 The jewel waar ye, Rory, with your Irish Rapparees ! 
 
 Oh, black's your heart, Clan Oliver, and coulder than the clay ! 
 Oh, high's your head, Clan Sassenach, since Sarsfield's gone away ! 
 It's little love you bear to us for sake of long ago 
 But howld your hand, for Ireland still can strike a deadly blow 
 
 Can strike a mortal blow 
 Och ! dar-a-Chriost ! 'tis she that still could strike the deadly blow ! 
 
 The master's bawn, the master's seat, a surly bodach ' fills ; 
 
 The master's son, an outlawed man, is riding on the hills ; 
 
 But, God be praised, that round him throng, as thick as summer 
 
 bees, 
 The swords that guarded Limerick walls his faithful Rapparees ! 
 
 His lovin' Rapparees ! 
 Who daar say 'No' to Rory Oge, who heads the Rapparees ! 
 
 Black Billy Grimes, of Latnamard, he racked us long and sore 
 God rest the faithful hearts he broke ; we'll never see them more ! 
 But I'll go bail he'll break no more while Truagh has gallows-trees, 
 For why ? he met one lonesome night the awful Rapparees ! 
 
 The angry Rapparees ! 
 They never sin no more, my boys, who cross the Rapparees. 
 
 Now, Sassenach and Cromweller, take heed of what I say 
 Keep down your black and angry looks that scorn us night and 
 
 day ; 
 
 For there's a just and wrathful Judge that every action sees, 
 And He'll make strong, to right our wrong, the faithful Rapparees ! 
 
 The fearless Rapparees ! 
 The men that rode at Sarsfield's side, the changeless Rapparees ! 
 
 1 Bodach : a severe, inhospitable man ; a churl. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION 139 
 
 WILLIAM B. McBURNEY 
 
 VERY little is known of this writer, who was an early con- 
 tributor to The Nation. He is said to have died recently 
 in the United States. He has also written under the name of 
 1 Carroll Malone.' 
 
 THE CROPPY BOY 
 
 A BALLAD OF '98 
 
 'GOOD men and true ! in this house who dwell, 
 To a stranger bouchal, I pray you tell 
 Is the Priest at home ? or may he be seen ? 
 I would speak a word with Father Green.' 
 
 ' The Priest's at home, boy, and may be seen ; 
 Tis easy speaking with Father Green ; 
 But you must wait, till I go and see 
 If the holy Father alone may be.' 
 
 The youth has entered an empty hall 
 What a lonely sound has his light foot-fall ! 
 And the gloomy chamber's chill and bare, 
 With a vested Priest in a lonely chair. 
 
 The youth has knelt to tell his sins. 
 
 ' Nomine Dei] the youth begins : 
 
 At * mea culpa ' he beats his breast, 
 
 And in broken murmurs he speaks the rest. 
 
 1 At the siege of Ross did my father fall, 
 And at Gorey my loving brothers all. 
 I alone am left of my name and race ; 
 I will go to Wexford and take their place. 
 
 * I cursed three times since last Easter Day 
 At Mass-time once I went to play ; 
 I passed the churchyard one day in haste, 
 And forgot to pray for my mother's rest 
 
140 BOOK III 
 
 ' I bear no hate against living thing ; 
 But I love my country above my King. 
 Now, Father ! bless me, and let me go 
 To die, if God has ordained it so.' 
 
 The Priest said nought, but a rustling noise 
 Made the youth look above in wild surprise ; 
 The robes were off, and in scarlet there 
 Sat a yeoman captain with fiery glare. 
 
 With fiery glare and with fury hoarse, 
 
 Instead of blessing, he breathed a curse : 
 
 ' 'Twas a good thought, boy, to come here and shrive ; 
 
 For one short hour is your time to live. 
 
 ' Upon yon river three tenders float ; 
 
 The Priest's in one, if he isn't shot ; 
 
 We hold his house for our Lord the King, 
 
 And " Amen," say I may all traitors swing ! ' 
 
 At Geneva barrack that young man died, 
 And at Passage they have his body laid. 
 Good people who live in peace and joy, 
 Breathe a prayer and a tear for the Croppy boy. 
 
 THE GOOD SHIP CASTLE DOWN 
 
 A REBEL CHAUNT, A.D. 1776 
 
 OH, how she plough'd the ocean, the good ship Castle Down, 
 That day we hung our colours out, the Harp without the Crown ! 
 A gallant barque, she topp'd the wave, and fearless hearts were 
 
 we, 
 
 With guns and pikes and bayonets, a stalwart company. 
 'Twas a sixteen yeais from THUROT ; and sweeping down the 
 
 bay 
 
 The ' Siege of Carrickfergus ' so merrily we did play : 
 And by the old castle's foot we went, with three right hearty 
 
 cheers, 
 And wav'd aloft our green cockades, for we were Volunteers, 
 
 Volunteers ! 
 Oh, we were in our prime that day, stout Irish Volunteers. 
 
POETS OF ^THE NATION' 141 
 
 'Twas when we heav'd our anchor on the breast of smooth 
 
 Garmoyle ; 
 
 Our guns spoke out in thunder : ' Adieu, sweet Irish soil ! 
 At Whiteabbey and Greencastle, and Holywood so gay, 
 Were hundreds waving handkerchiefs and many a loud huzza. 
 Our voices o'er the water struck the hollow mountains round 
 Young Freedom, struggling at her birth, might utter such a sound. 
 By that green slope beside Belfast, we cheer'd and cheer'd it still 
 For they had chang'd its name that year, and they call'd it 
 
 Bunker's Hill- 
 
 Bunker's Hill! 
 
 Oh, were our hands but with our hearts in the trench at Bunker's 
 Hill! 
 
 Our ship clear'd out for Quebec ; but thither little bent, 
 
 Up some New England river, to run her keel we meant ; 
 
 So we took a course due north as round the old Black Head we 
 
 steer'd, 
 
 Till Ireland bore south-west by south, and Fingal's rock appear'd. 
 Then on the poop stood Webster, while the ship'hung flutteringly, 
 About to take her tack across the wide, wide ocean sea 
 He pointed to th' Atlantic ' Sure, yon's no place for slaves : 
 Haul down these British badges, for Freedom rules the waves 
 
 Rules the waves ! ' 
 Three hundred strong men answered, shouting ' Freedom rules 
 
 the waves ! ' 
 
 Then all together rose and brought the British ensign down, 
 And up we haul'd our Irish Green, without the British Crown. 
 Emblazoned there a Golden Harp like a maiden undefiled, 
 A shamrock wreath around her head, look'd o'er the sea and 
 
 smiled. 
 
 A hundred days, with adverse wind, we kept our course afar, 
 On the hundredth day came bearing down a British sloop of war. 
 When they spied our flag they fired a gun, but as they nearM us 
 
 fast, 
 Old Andrew Jackson went aloft and nailed it to the mast 
 
 To the mast ! 
 A soldier was old Jackson, and he made our colours fast. 
 
142 BOOK III 
 
 Patrick Henry was our captain, as brave as ever sailed. 
 
 * Now we must do or die,' said he, * for the Green Flag is nailed. 
 
 Silently came the sloop along ; and silently we lay 
 
 Flat, till with cheers and loud broadside the foe began the fray. 
 
 Then the boarders o'er the bulwarks, like shuttlecocks, we cast ; 
 
 One close discharge from all our guns cut down the tapering mast. 
 
 4 Now, British tars ! St. George's Cross is trailing in the sea 
 
 How d'ye like the greeting and the handsel of the Free ? 
 
 Of the Free ! 
 How like you, lads, the greeting of the men who will be free ? ' 
 
 They answer 3 d us with cannon, as befitted well their fame ; 
 And to shoot away our Irish flag each gunner took his aim ; 
 They ripp'd it up in ribbons till it fluttered in the air, 
 And riddled it with shot-holes till no Golden Harp was there ; 
 But through the ragged holes the sky did glance and gleam in 
 
 light, 
 Just as the twinkling stars shine through God's unfurled flag at 
 
 night. 
 With dropping fire we sang, * Good- night, and fare ye well, brave 
 
 tars ! ' 
 Our captain looked aloft : * By Heaven ! the flag is Stripes and 
 
 Stars ! ' 
 
 Stripes and Stars ! 
 So into Boston port we sailed, beneath the Stripes and Stars. 
 
 JOHN KELLS INGRAM 
 (See J. K. Ingram, Book VI.) 
 
 THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD 
 
 WHO fears to speak of Ninety-Eight ? 
 
 Who blushes at the name ? 
 When cowards mock the patriot's fate, 
 
 Who hangs his head for shame ? 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION* 143 
 
 He's all a knave or half a slave 
 
 Who slights his country thus : 
 But a true man, like you, man, 
 
 Will fill your glass with us. 
 
 We drink the memory of the brave, 
 
 The faithful and the few 
 Some lie far off beyond the wave, 
 
 Some sleep in Ireland, too ; 
 All, all are gone but still lives on 
 
 The fame of those who died ; 
 And true men, like you, men, 
 
 Remember them with pride. 
 
 Some on the shores of distant lands 
 
 Their weary hearts have laid, 
 And by the stranger's heedless hands 
 
 Their lonely graves were made ; 
 But though their clay be far away 
 
 Beyond the Atlantic foam, 
 In true men, like you, men, 
 
 Their spirit's still at home. 
 
 The dust of some is Irish earth ; 
 
 Among their own they rest ; 
 And the same land that gave them birth 
 
 Has caught them to her breast ; 
 And we will pray that from their clay 
 
 Full many a race may start 
 Of true men, like you, men, 
 
 To act as brave a part. 
 
 They rose in dark and evil days 
 
 To right their native land ; 
 They kindled here a living blaze 
 
 That nothing shall withstand. 
 Alas ! that Might can vanquish Right 
 
 They fell, and passed away ; 
 But true men, like you, men, 
 
 Are plenty here to-day. 
 
144 BOOK III 
 
 Then here's their memory may it be 
 
 For us a guiding light, 
 To cheer our strife for liberty, 
 
 And teach us to unite ! 
 Through good and ill, be Ireland's still, 
 
 Though sad as theirs, your fate ; 
 And true men, be you, men, 
 
 Like those of Ninety-Eight. 
 
 MARTIN MAcDERMOTT 
 
 MARTIN MACDERMOTT was born in Dublin in 1823. He 
 contributed much graceful verse to The Nation, and has 
 recently edited the NEW SPIRIT OF THE NATION, a volume 
 which has been of much help towards this Anthology. He 
 took part in the political movements of the '48 period, being 
 deputed to represent the leaders of the attempted insurrection 
 in Paris. He has served for some years as Chief Architect to 
 the Office of Works of the Khedive of Egypt, and now lives in 
 England. He has taken some part in the work of the Irish 
 Literary Society of London. 
 
 GIRL OF THE RED MOUTH 
 
 GlRL of the red mouth, 
 
 Love me ! Love me ! 
 Girl of the red mouth, 
 
 Love me ! 
 
 'Tis by its curve, I know, 
 Love fashioneth his bow, 
 And bends it ah, even so ! 
 
 Oh, girl of the red mouth, love me ! 
 
 Girl of the blue eye, 
 
 Love me ! Love me ! 
 Girl of the dew eye, 
 
 Love me ! 
 
POETS OF < THE NATION* 145 
 
 Worlds hang for lamps on high ; 
 And thought's world lives in thy 
 Lustrous and tender eye 
 
 Oh, girl of the blue eye, love me ! 
 
 Girl of the swan's neck, 
 
 Love me ! Love me ! 
 Girl of the swan's neck, 
 
 Love me ! 
 
 As a marble Greek doth grow 
 To his steed's back of snow, 
 Thy white neck sits thy shoulder so, 
 
 Oh, girl of the swan's neck, love me ! 
 
 Girl of the low voice, 
 
 Love me ! Love me ! 
 Girl of the sweet voice, 
 
 Love me ! 
 
 Like the echo of a bell, 
 Like the bubbling of a well 
 Sweeter ! Love within doth dwell, 
 
 Oh, girl of the low voice, love me ! 
 
 RICHARD DALTON WILLIAMS 
 
 THE ' Munster War- Song ' was sent to The Nation by Williams 
 when a schoolboy at Carlo w. He was born in the County 
 Tipperary, 1821. He was tried for treason -felony in 1848, but 
 acquitted. In 1849 he to k his medical degree in Edinburgh, 
 practised in Dublin for a couple of years, and then emigrated 
 to the U.S.A. He became Professor of Belles Lettres ^n 
 Mobile (Ala.), and in 1856 took up practice as a physician at 
 New Orleans. He died in 1862. A monument has been raised 
 to him by a regiment of Irish-American soldiers who happened 
 to encamp near his grave during the Civil War. Williams wrote 
 a great deal of humorous as well as patriotic verse for The 
 Nation. With much grace, pathos, and energy, he had the 
 
 L 
 
146 BOOK III 
 
 1 fatal facility ' of many Irish verse-writers, and never achieved 
 all that he was capable of. His ' Dying Girl ' is, however, a 
 piece of verse which will not easily be forgotten. His poems 
 have been collected and published by P. A. Sillard, Dublin. 
 
 THE MUNSTER WAR-SONG 
 
 BATTLE OF AHERLOW, A.D. 1 190 
 
 CAN the depths of the ocean afford you not graves, 
 That you come thus to perish afar o'er the waves 
 To redden and swell the wild torrents that flow 
 Through the valley of vengeance, the dark Aherlow ? l 
 
 The clangour of conflict o'erburthens the breeze, 
 From the stormy Slieve Bloom to the stately Galtees ; 
 Your caverns and torrents are purple with gore, 
 Slievenamon, Glen Colaich, and sublime Galtee Mor ! 
 
 The Sunburst that slumbered, embalmed in our tears, 
 Tipperary ! shall wave o'er thy tall mountaineers ! 
 And the dark hill shall bristle with sabre and spear 
 While one tyrant remains to forge manacles here. 
 
 The riderless war-steed careers o'er the plain 
 With a shaft in his flank and a blood-dripping mane ; 
 His gallant breast labours, and glare his wild eyes ; 
 He plunges in torture falls shivers and dies. 
 
 Let the trumpets ring triumph ! The tyrant is slain ! 
 He reels o'er his charger deep-pierced through the brain ; 
 And his myriads are flying, like leaves on the gale 
 But who shall escape from our hills with the tale ? 
 
 For the arrows of vengeance are show'ring like rain, 
 And choke the strong rivers with islands of slain, 
 Till thy waves, lordly Shannon, all crimsonly flow, 
 Like the billows of hell, with the blood of the foe. 
 
 ' Aberlow Glen, County Tipperary. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION' 147 
 
 Ay ! the foemen are flying, but vainly they fly 
 Revenge with the fleetness of lightning can vie ; 
 And the septs of the mountains spring up from each rock 
 And rush down the ravines like wolves on the flock. 
 
 And who shall pass over the stormy Slieve Bloom, 
 
 To tell the pale Saxon of tyranny's doom, 
 
 When, like tigers from ambush, our fierce mountaineers 
 
 Leap along from the crags with their death -dealing spears ? 
 
 They came with high boasting to bind us as slaves, 
 But the glen and the torrent have yawned on their graves. 
 From the gloomy Ardrinnan to wild Temple Mor 
 From the Suir to the Shannon is red with their gore. 
 
 By the soul of Heremon ! our warriors may smile, 
 To remember the march of the foe through our isle ; 
 Their banners and harness were costly and gay, 
 And proudly they flashed in the summer sun's ray ; 
 
 The hilts of their falchions were crusted with gold, 
 And the gems of their helmets were bright to behold ; 
 By Saint Bride of Kildare ! but they moved in fair show 
 To gorge the young eagles of dark Aherlow ! 
 
 THE DYING GIRL 
 
 FROM a Munster vale they brought her, 
 
 From the pure and balmy air ; 
 An Ormond peasant's daughter, 
 
 With blue eyes and golden hair 
 They brought her to the city, 
 
 And she faded slowly there. 
 Consumption has no pity 
 
 For blue eyes and golden hair. 
 
 When I saw her first reclining 
 
 Her lips were mov'd in pray'r, 
 And the setting sun was shining 
 
 On her loosen'd golden hair. 
 
 L2 
 
148 BOOK III 
 
 When our kindly glances met her, 
 Deadly brilliant was her eye ; 
 
 And she said that she was better, 
 While we knew that she must die. 
 
 She speaks of Munster valleys, 
 
 The pattern, dance and fair. 
 And her thin hand feebly dallies 
 
 With her scattered golden hair. 
 When silently we listen'd 
 
 To her breath with quiet care, 
 Her eyes with wonder glisten'd 
 
 And she asked us, ' What was there ? 
 
 The poor thing smiled to ask it, 
 
 And her pretty mouth laid bare, 
 Like gems within a casket, 
 
 A string of pearlets rare. 
 We said that ve were trying 
 
 By the gushing of her blood 
 And the time she took in sighing 
 
 To know if she were good. 
 
 Well, she smil'd and chatted gaily, 
 
 Though we saw in mute despair 
 The hectic brighter daily, 
 
 And the death-dew on her hair. 
 And oft her wasted fingers 
 
 Beating time upon the bed : 
 O'er some old tune she lingers, 
 
 And she bows her golden head. 
 
 At length the harp is broken ; 
 
 And the spirit in its strings, 
 As the last decree is spoken, 
 
 To its source exulting springs. 
 Descending swiftly from the skies, 
 
 Her guardian angel came, 
 He struck God's lightning from her eyes, 
 
 And bore Him back the flame. 
 
POETS OF <THE NATION* 149 
 
 Before the sun had risen 
 
 Thro' the lark-loved morning air, 
 Her young soul left its prison, 
 
 Undefiled by sin or care. 
 I stood beside the couch in tears 
 
 Where pale and calm she slept, 
 And tho' I've gaz'd on death for years, 
 
 I blush not that I wept. 
 I check'd with effort pity's sighs 
 
 And left the matron there, 
 To close the curtains of her eyes 
 
 And bind her golden hair. 
 
 ELLEN MARY PATRICK DOWNING 
 
 KNOWN as * Mary of The Nation? her poems in that journal 
 being generally signed by the name * Mary ' alone. She was born 
 in Cork on March 19, 1828, and died on January 27, 1869. 
 In 1849 she had entered a convent. Her religious poems 
 have been collected in a couple of volumes, but her National 
 and love poems are still uncollected. Her poetry has the 
 simplicity and unconscious grace of a bird's song. 
 
 VOICES OF THE HEART, 1868, 1880 ; POEMS FOR CHILDREN, 1881. 
 
 MY OWEN 
 
 PROUD of you, fond of you, clinging so near to you, 
 Light is my heart now I know I am dear to you ! 
 Glad is my voice now, so free it may sing to you 
 All the wild love that is burning within for you ! 
 Tell me once more, tell it over and over, 
 The tale of that eve that first saw you my lover. 
 
 Now I need never blush 
 
 At my heart's hottest gush ; 
 The wife of my Owen her heart may discover. 
 
150 BOOK III 
 
 Proud of you, fond of you, having all right in you ! 
 Quitting all else through my love and delight in you ! 
 Glad is my heart, since 'tis beating so nigh to you ! 
 Light is my step, for it always may fly to you ! 
 Clasped in your arms, where no sorrow can reach to me, 
 Reading your eyes till new love they shall teach to me, 
 
 Though wild and weak till now, 
 
 By that blessed marriage vow, 
 More than the wisest know your heart shall preach to me. 
 
 THE OLD CHURCH AT LISMORE 
 
 This poem, inscribed in the MS. ' My Last Verses/ was the last written by 
 1 Mary ' before entering on her novitiate in 1849. 
 
 OLD Church, thou still art Catholic ! e'en dream they as they 
 
 may 
 
 That the new rites and worship have swept the old away ; 
 There is no form of beauty raised by Nature, or by art, 
 That preaches not God's saving truths to man's adoring heart ! 
 
 In vain they tore the altar down ; in vain they flung aside 
 
 The mournful emblem of the death which our sweet Saviour died ; 
 
 In vain they left no single trace of saint or angel here 
 
 Still angel-spirits haunt the ground, and to the soul appear. 
 
 I marvel how, in scenes like these, so coldly they can pray, 
 
 Nor hold sweet commune with the dead who once knelt down as 
 
 they ; 
 
 Yet not as they, in sad mistrust or sceptic doubt for, oh, 
 They looked in hope to the blessed saints, these dead of long ago. 
 
 And, then, the churchyard, soft and calm, spread out beyond the 
 
 scene 
 
 With sunshine warm and soothing shade and trees upon its green ; 
 Ah ! though their cruel Church forbid, are there no hearts will 
 
 pray 
 For the poor souls that trembling left that cold and speechless 
 
 clay? 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION^ 151 
 
 My God ! I am a Catholic ! I grew into the ways 
 
 Of my dear Church since first my voice could lisp a word of 
 
 praise ; 
 But oft I think though my first youth were taught and trained 
 
 awrong, 
 I still had learnt the one true faith from Nature and from song ! 
 
 For still, whenever dear friends die, it is such joy to know 
 They are not all beyond the care that healed their wounds below, 
 That We can pray them into peace, and speed them to the shore 
 Where clouds and cares and thorny griefs shall vex their hearts no 
 more. 
 
 And the sweet saints, so meek below, so merciful above ; 
 And the pure angels, watching still with such untiring love ; 
 And the kind Virgin, Queen of Heaven, with all her mother's care, 
 Who prays for earth, because she knows what breaking hearts are 
 there ! 
 
 Oh, let us lose no single link that our dear Church has bound, 
 To keep our hearts more close to Heaven, on earth's ungenial 
 
 ground ; 
 
 But trust in saint and martyr yet, and o'er their hallowed clay, 
 Long after we have ceased to weep, kneel faithful down to pray. 
 
 So shall the land for us be still the Sainted Isle of old, 
 
 Where hymn and incense rise to Heaven, and holy beads are 
 
 told; 
 And even the ground they tore from God, in years of crime and 
 
 woe, 
 Instinctive with His truth and love, shall breathe of long ago ! 
 
 ARTHUR GERALD GEOGHEGAN 
 
 AUTHOR of THE MONKS OF KILCREA, a collection of stories 
 in verse, which for many years remained anonymous, and was 
 much spoken of. It was first published in 1853, and a second 
 
152 BOOK III 
 
 edition was issued, with other poems, in 1861. It was trans- 
 lated into French in 1858. Its author was born in Dublin on 
 June i, 1 8 10, and entered the Excise in 1830. He became a 
 collector of Inland Revenue in 1857, and retired in 1877. He 
 died in Kensington on November 29, 1889, and was buried at 
 Kensal Green. His poems appeared chiefly in The Nation 
 and in other Dublin papers and magazines. 
 
 AFTER AUGHRIM 
 
 Do you remember, long ago, 
 
 Kathaleen ? 
 
 When your lover whispered low, 
 ' Shall I stay or shall I go, 
 
 Kathaleen ? ' 
 
 And you answered proudly, ' Go ! 
 And join King James and strike a blow 
 
 For the Green ! ' 
 
 Mavrone, your hair is white as snow, 
 
 Kathaleen ; 
 
 Your heart is sad and full of woe. 
 Do you repent you made him go, 
 
 Kathaleen ? 
 
 And quick you answer proudly, * No ! 
 For better die with Sarsfield so 
 Than live a slave without a blow 
 
 For the Green ! ' 
 
 DENNY LANE 
 
 BORN in Cork in 1818, and died 1896 in that city, where he 
 was a successful merchant and manufacturer. He is only 
 known as a poet by two pieces, both of which appeared in 
 The Nation in 1844 and 1845. The metrical structure of this 
 poem, whether intentionally or otherwise, is curiously close to 
 that of Gaelic verse. 
 
POETS OF 1 7HE NATION 1 153 
 
 THE LAMENT OF THE IRISH MAIDEN 
 
 ON Carrigdhoun the heath is brown, 
 
 The clouds are dark o'er Ardnalee, 
 And many a stream comes rushing down 
 
 To swell the angry Ownabwee. 
 The moaning blast is sweeping past 
 
 Through many a leafless tree, 
 And I'm alone for he is gone 
 
 My hawk is flown Ochone machree ! 
 
 The heath was brown on Carrigdhoun, 
 
 Bright shone the sun on Ardnalee, 
 The dark green trees bent, trembling, down 
 
 To kiss the slumbering Ownabwee. 
 That happy day, 'twas but last May 
 
 'Tis like a dream to me 
 When Donnell swore aye, o'er and o'er 
 
 We'd part no more astor machree / 
 
 Soft April showers and bright May flowers 
 
 Will bring the summer back again, 
 But will they bring me back the hours 
 
 I spent with my brave Donnell then ? 
 Tis but a chance, for he's gone to France, 
 
 To wear \htfleur-de-lis, 
 But I'll follow you, my Donnell Dhu, 
 
 For still I'm true to you, machree ! 
 
 MARY KELLY 
 
 BETTER known as ' Eva,' most of her poems having appeared 
 during the early years of The Nation over that name. Born at 
 Headfort, County Galway, about 1825, and now living in 
 Australia, where her husband, Dr. Kevin Izod O'Doherty, is a 
 successful physician. Her poems were published in a volume 
 at San Francisco in 1877. 
 
154 BOOK III 
 
 TlPPERARY 
 
 WERE you ever in sweet Tipperary, where the fields are so sunny 
 
 and green, 
 And the heath-brown Slieve-bloom and the Galtees look down 
 
 with so proud a mien ? 
 
 Tis there you would see more beauty than is on all Irish ground 
 God bless you, my sweet Tipperary, for where could your match 
 
 be found ? 
 
 They say that your hand is fearful, that darkness is in your eye : 
 But I'll not let them dare to talk so black and bitter a lie. 
 Oh ! no, macushla storin ! bright, bright, and warm are you, 
 With hearts as bold as the men of old, to yourselves and your 
 country true. 
 
 And when there is gloom upon you, bid them think who has 
 
 brought it there 
 Sure, a frown or a word of hatred was not made for your face so 
 
 fair ; 
 You've a hand for the grasp of friendship another to make them 
 
 quake, 
 And they're welcome to whichsoever it pleases them most to take. 
 
 Shall our homes, like the huts of Connaught, be crumbled before 
 
 our eyes ? 
 Shall we fly, like a flock of wild geese, from all that we love and 
 
 prize ? 
 
 No ! by those who were here before us, no churl shall our tyrant be ; 
 Our land it is theirs by plunder, but, by Brigid, ourselves are free. 
 
 No ! we do not forget the greatness did once to sweet Eire belong ; 
 No treason or craven spirit was ever our race among ; 
 And no frown or no word of hatred we give but to pay them back ; 
 In evil we only follow our enemies' darksome track. 
 
 Oh ! come for a while among us, and give us the friendly hand, 
 And you'll see that old Tipperary is a loving and gladsome land ; 
 From Upper to Lower Ormond, bright welcomes and smiles will 
 
 spring * 
 
 On the plains of Tipperary the stranger is like a king. 
 
POETS OF <THE NATION 155 
 
 JOHN KEEGAN 
 
 BORN in Queen's County about 1809, and died in 1849. He 
 was a frequent contributor to The Nation and other 
 periodicals. He was of peasant origin, and was educated at 
 one of those hedge-schools which have done more than is 
 commonly recognised for the cultivation of Irish intellect. 
 His poems are usually more distinguished for the simplicity 
 anci pathetic grace of the ' Dark Girl ' than for the rough 
 which marks this ' Harvest Hymn.' 
 
 THE IRISH REAPER'S HARVEST HYMN 
 
 ALL hail ! Holy Mary, our hope and our joy ! 
 Smile down, blessed Queen ! on the poor Irish boy 
 Who wanders away from his dear beloved home ; 
 O Mary ! be with me wherever I roam. 
 
 Be with me, O Mary ! 
 
 Forsake me not, Mary ! 
 
 From the home of my fathers in anguish I go, 
 To toil for the dark-livered, cold-hearted foe, 
 Who mocks me, and hates me, and calls me a slave, 
 An alien, a savage all names but a knave. 
 
 But, blessed be Mary ! 
 
 My sweet, holy Mary ! 
 The bodach, he never dare call me a knave. 
 
 From my mother's mud sheeling an outcast I fly, 
 With a cloud on my heart and a tear in my eye ; 
 Oh ! I burn as I think that if Some One would say, 
 ' Revenge on your tyrants !' but Mary ! I pray, 
 
 From my soul's depth, O Mary ! 
 
 And hear me, sweet Mary ! 
 For union and peace to Old Ireland I pray. 
 
156 BOOK III 
 
 The land that I fly from is fertile and fair. 
 
 And more than I ask or I wish for is there, 
 
 But / must not taste the good things that I see 
 
 * There's nothing but rags and green rushes for me.' 1 
 
 O mild Virgin Mary ! 
 
 O sweet Mother Mary ! 
 Who keeps my rough hand from red murder but thee ? 
 
 But, sure, in the end our dear freedom we'll gain, 
 And wipe from the green flag each Sassanach stain. 
 And oh ! Holy Mary, your blessing we crave ! 
 Give hearts to the timid, and hands to the brave ; 
 
 And then, Mother Mary ! 
 
 Our own blessed Mary ! 
 Light liberty's flame in the hut of the slave ! 
 
 THE 'DARK GIRL' BY THE 'HOLY WELL' 
 
 I think it was in the midsummer of 1832 that I joined a party of the pea- 
 santry of my native village, who were en route to a ' pilgrimage ' at St. John's 
 Well, near the town of Kilkenny. The journey (about twenty-five Irish miles) 
 was commenced early in the afternoon, and it was considerably after sunset 
 when we reached our destination. My companions immediately set about the 
 fulfilment of their vows, whilst I, who was but a mere boy, sat down on the green 
 grass, tired and in ill-humour, after my long and painful tramp over a hundred 
 stony hills and a thousand rugged fields, under the burning sun of a midsum- 
 mer afternoon. I was utterly unable to perform any act of devotion, nor, I 
 must confess, was I very much disposed to do so, even were I able ; so I seated 
 myself quietly amid the groups of beggars, cripples, ' dark people,' and the 
 other various classes of pilgrims who thronged around the sacred fountain. 
 Among the crowd I had marked two pilgrims, who, from the moment I saw 
 them, arrested my particular attention. One of these was an aged female, 
 decently clad -the other was a very fine young girl, dressed in a gown, shawl 
 and bonnet of faded black satin. The girl was of a tall and noble figure 
 strikingly beautiful, but stone blind. I learned that they were natives of the 
 county of Wexford ; that the girl had lost her sight in brain feve , in her 
 childhood ; that all human means had been tried for her cure, but in vain ; and 
 that now, as a last resource, they had travelled all the way to pray at the 
 shrine of St. John, and bathe her sightless orbs in the healing waters of his 
 well. It is believed that when Heaven wills the performance of cures, the sky 
 opens above the well, at the hour of midnight, and Christ, the Virgin Mother, 
 and St. John descend in the form of three snow-whites, and descend with the 
 
 1 Taken literally from a conversation with a young peasant on his way 
 to reap the harvest in England. 
 
POETS OF < THE NATION* 157 
 
 rapidity of lightning into the depths of the fountain. No person but those 
 destined to be cured can see this miraculous phenomenon, but everybody can 
 hear the musical sound of their wings as they rush into the well and agitate 
 the waters ! I cannot describe how sad I felt myself, too, at the poor girl's 
 anguish, for I had almost arrived at the hope that, though another ' miracle ' 
 was never wrought at St. John's Well, Heaven would relent on this occasion, 
 and restore that sweet Wexford girl to her long-lost sight. She returned, 
 however, as she came -a ' Dark Girl ' and I heard afterwards that she took 
 ill and died before she reached home. Authors note. 
 
 ' MOTHER ! is that the passing bell ? 
 
 Or, yet, the midnight chime ? 
 Or, rush of Angel's golden wings ? 
 
 Or is it near the Time 
 The time when God, they say, comes down 
 
 This weary world upon, 
 With Holy Mary at His right 
 
 And, at His left, St. John ! 
 
 ' I'm dumb ! my heart forgets to throb ; 
 
 My blood forgets to run ; 
 But vain my sighs in vain I sob 
 
 God's will must still be done. 
 I hear but tone of warning bell, 
 
 For holy priest or nun ; 
 On earth, God's face I'll never see ! 
 
 Nor Mary ! nor St. John ! 
 
 ' Mother ! my hopes are gone again ; 
 
 My heart is black as ever ; 
 Mother ! I say, look forth once more, 
 
 And see can you discover 
 God's glory in the crimson clouds 
 
 See does He ride upon 
 That perfumed breeze - or do you see 
 
 The Virgin, or St. John ? 
 
 * Ah, no ! ah, no ! Well, God of Peace, 
 
 Grant me Thy blessing still ; 
 Oh, make me patient with my doom 
 And happy at Thy will ; 
 
158 BOOK III 
 
 And guide my footsteps so on earth, 
 That, when I'm dead and gone, 
 
 My eyes may catch Thy shining light, 
 With Mary ! and St. John ? 
 
 * Yet, mother, could I see thy smile, 
 
 Before we part, below 
 Or watch the silver moon and stars 
 
 Where Slaney's ripples flow ; 
 Oh ! could I see the sweet sun shine 
 
 My native hills upon, 
 I'd never love my God the less, 
 
 Nor Mary, nor St. John ! 
 
 ' But no, ah no ! it cannot be ! 
 Yet, mother ! do not mourn 
 
 Come, kneel again, and pray to God, 
 In peace, let us return ; 
 
 The Dark Girl's doom must aye be mine- 
 But Heaven will light me on, 
 
 Until I find my way to God, 
 And Mary, and St. John ! ' 
 
 MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY 
 
 MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY was born in Cork about 1817, and 
 wrote much verse for The Nation up to the time of the '48 
 insurrection. He treated the result of that attempt as final, 
 and ceased his connection with the National movement. He 
 became a police magistrate in Dublin, but after a time 
 relinquished the appointment and went to live on the 
 Continent. He died in 1889. His poems are spirited and 
 energetic, but do not show signs of the brilliant wit which, as 
 
POETS OF <THE NATION* 159 
 
 Sir Charles G. Duffy tells us, used to delight his colleagues 
 in The Nation office. While he was a police magistrate, a 
 constable giving evidence before him against an Irish- American 
 suspected of seditious designs swore that the prisoner wore ' a 
 Republican hat.' * A Republican hat ! ' exclaimed the counsel 
 for the prisoner ; * does your worship know what that means ? ' 
 'I presume,' said his worship, 'a Republican hat means a hat 
 without a crown.' 
 
 Wrote ' The Kishoge Papers ' for The Dublin University Magazine. 
 Published in 1854 A WATERLOO COMMEMORATION FOR 1854 ; LAYS OF 
 THE WAR, 1856 ; HEINRICH AND LENORE, 1886. Edited SONGS OF 
 IRELAND, 1845. 
 
 THE SWORD 
 
 WHAT rights the brave ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 What frees the slave ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 What cleaves in twain 
 The despot's chain, 
 And makes his gyves and dungeons vain ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 Then cease thy proud task never 
 While rests a link to sever ! 
 
 Guard of the free, 
 
 We'll cherish thee, 
 And keep thee bright for ever ! 
 
 What checks the knave ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 What smites to save ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 
 What wreaks the wrong 
 Unpunished long, 
 At last, upon the guilty strong ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 
160 BOOK III 
 
 What shelters Right ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 What makes it might ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 
 What strikes the crown 
 Of tyrants down, 
 And answers with its flash their frown ? 
 
 The sword ! 
 
 CHORUS 
 Then cease thy proud task never, &c. 
 
 Still be thou true, 
 
 Good sword ! 
 We'll die or do, 
 
 Good sword ! 
 Leap forth to light 
 If tyrants smite, 
 And trust our arms to wield thee right, 
 
 Good sword ! 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 Yes ! cease thy proud task never 
 While rests a link to sever ! 
 
 Guard of the free, 
 
 W T e'll cherish thee, 
 And keep thee bright for ever ! 
 
 MICHAEL TORMEY 
 
 THE REV. MICHAEL TORMEY was born in Westmeath 1820, and 
 died in 1893. He edited The Tablets one. time, and was keenly 
 interested in the Tenant League movement which succeeded 
 the Famine, and was partly evoked by it. He was not 
 distinguished as a poet, but ' The Ancient Race ' has in it a 
 surge of heartfelt anguish and wrath which renders not unfitly 
 the master passion of the Irish peasant. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION* 161 
 
 THE ANCIENT RACE 
 
 This poem was written at the era of the Irish Tenant League (1850-56), 
 when the principles of the land struggle were first formulated. 
 
 WHAT shall become of the ancient race, 
 The noble Keltic island race ? 
 Like cloud on cloud o'er the azure sky, 
 When winter storms are loud and high, 
 Their dark ships shadow the ocean's face 
 What shall become of the Keltic race ? 
 
 What shall befall the ancient race 
 
 The poor, unfriended, faithful race ? 
 
 Where ploughman's song made the hamlet ring, 
 
 The hawk and the owlet flap their wing ; 
 
 The village homes, oh, who can trace 
 
 God of our persecuted race ! 
 
 What shall befall the ancient race ? 
 Is treason's stigma on their face ? 
 Be they cowards or traitors ? Go 
 Ask the shade of England's foe ; 
 See the gems her crown that grace ; 
 They tell a tale of the ancient race. 
 
 They tell a tale of the ancient race 
 Of matchless deeds in danger's face ; 
 They speak of Britain's glory fed 
 With blood of Kelts, right bravely shed ; 
 Of India's spoil and Frank's disgrace 
 Such tale they tell of the ancient race. 
 
 Then why cast out the ancient race ? 
 Grim want dwelt with the ancient race, 
 And hell-born laws, with prison jaws ; 
 And greedy lords, with tiger maws, 
 Have swallowed swallow still apace 
 The limbs and blood of the ancient race. 
 
 Will no one shield the ancient race ? 
 They fly their fathers' burial place ; 
 
162 BOOK UI 
 
 The proud lords with the heavy purse, 
 Their fathers' shame their people's curse- 
 Demons in heart, nobles in face 
 They dig a grave for the ancient race ! 
 
 What shall befall the ancient race ? 
 Shall all forsake their dear birthplace, 
 Without one struggle strong to keep 
 The old soil where their fathers sleep ? 
 The dearest land on earth's wide space 
 Why leave it so, O ancient race ? 
 
 What shall befall the ancient race ? 
 Light up one hope for the ancient race j 
 Oh, priest of God Soggarth Aroon ! 
 Lead but the way, we'll go full soon ; 
 Is there a danger we will not face, 
 To keep old homes for the Irish race ? 
 
 They shall not go, the ancient race 
 They must not go, the ancient race ! 
 Come, gallant Kelts, and take your stand- 
 And form a league to save the land ; 
 The land of faith, the land of grace, 
 The land of Erin's ancient race ! 
 
 They must not go, the ancient race ! 
 They shall not go, the ancient race ! 
 The cry swells loud from shore to shore, 
 From emerald vale to mountain hoar, 
 From altar high to market-place 
 * THEY SHALL NOT GO, the ancient race ! 5 
 
 THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE 
 
 OF all the rhetorical qualities of poetry rhythm and phrase 
 and picturesque diction McGee possessed a greater measure 
 than any other of The Nation poets. But he wrote with a 
 
POETS OF <THE NATION* 163 
 
 careless energy which, if it always produced something 
 remarkable, yet rarely left it strong and finished in every part. 
 He was born in Carlingford, County Louth, in 1825. After 
 much success as a journalist in America, where he edited The 
 Boston Pilot, he came home and joined The Nation and its 
 political movement in 1844. He escaped, with a price on his 
 head, after the outbreak of 1848, and eventually settled in 
 Canada, where he entered the legislature and became a 
 Minister of the Crown. He took a leading part in the federa- 
 tion of the Canadian States. He revisited Ireland during the 
 time of the Fenian movement, which he denounced with a 
 fervour which, in view of his own antecedents, caused intense 
 bitterness of feeling, and led to the dreadful crime of his assass- 
 ination in Ottawa in 1868. 
 
 McGee was a prolific and versatile writer. He published in 1847 IRISH 
 WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ; HISTORY OF THE IRISH 
 SETTLERS IN AMERICA, 1851; MEMOIRS OF C. G. DPFFY, 1849; L IF> E 
 OF BISHOP MAGIN, 1856 ; LIFE OF ARTMCMURROUGH, 1847 ; HISTORY 
 OF IRELAND ; and contributed numberless poems to The Nation and other 
 periodicals. A collected edition of his poems has been edited by Mrs. J. 
 Sadleir, New York, 1869. 
 
 THE DEAD ANTIQUARY O'DONOVAN 
 
 FAR are the Gaelic tribes and wide 
 Scattered round earth on every side, 
 
 For good or ill ; 
 
 They aim at all things, rise or fall, 
 Succeed or perish but, through all, 
 
 Love Erin still. 
 
 Although a righteous Heaven decrees J 
 'Twixt us and Erin stormy seas 
 
 And barriers strong 
 Of care, and circumstance, and cost 
 Yet count not all your absent lost, 
 
 Oh, Land of Song ! 
 
 These lines were written in America. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 BOOK III 
 
 Above your roofs no star can rise 
 That does not lighten in our eyes ; 
 
 Nor any set, 
 
 That ever shed a cheering beam 
 On Irish hillside, street or stream, 
 
 That we forget. 
 
 And thus it comes that even I, 
 Though weakly and unworthily, 
 
 Am moved by grief 
 To join the melancholy throng 
 And chant the sad entombing song 
 
 Above the Chief. 
 
 I would not do the dead a wrong : 
 If graves could yield a growth of song 
 
 Like flowers of May, 
 
 Then Mangan from the tomb might raise 
 One of his old resurgent lays 
 
 But, well-a-day ! 
 
 He, close beside his early friend, 
 By the stark shepherd safely penned, 
 
 Sleeps out the night ; 
 So his weird numbers never more 
 The sorrow of the isle shall pour, 
 
 In tones of might. 
 
 Though haply still, by Liffey's tide, 
 That mighty master must abide, 
 
 Who voiced our grief 
 O'er Davis lost ; l and he who gave 
 His free frank tribute to the grave 
 
 Of Eire's Chief; 2 
 
 1 Samuel Ferguson. 
 
 2 Denis Florence McCarthy, whose poem on the death of O'Connell 
 was one of the noblest tributes paid to the memory of the great Tribune. 
 Author's note. 
 
POETS OF ^THE NATION* 165 
 
 Yet must it not be said that we 
 Failed in the rites of minstrelsy, 
 
 So dear to souls 
 
 Like his whom lately death had ta'en, 
 Altho' the vast Atlantic main 
 
 Between us rolls ! 
 
 Too few, too few, among our great, 
 In camp or cloister, Church or State, 
 
 Wrought as he wrought ; 
 Too few, of all the brave we trace 
 Among the champions of our race, 
 
 Gave us his thought. 
 
 He toiled to make our story stand, 
 As from Time's reverent, Runic hand 
 
 It came undecked 
 By fancies false ; erect, alone, 
 The monumental Arctic stone 
 
 Of ages wrecked. 
 
 He marshalled Brian on the plain, 
 Sailed in the galleys of the Dane ; 
 
 Earl Richard too, 
 
 Fell Norman as he was and fierce 
 Of him and his he dared rehearse 
 
 The story true. 
 
 O'er all low limits still his mind 
 Soared catholic and unconfined, 
 
 From malice free. 
 On Irish soil he only saw 
 One State, One People, and One Law, 
 
 One Destiny. 
 
 Truth was his solitary test, 
 
 His star, his chart, his east, his west ; 
 
 Nor is there aught 
 In text, in ocean, or in mine, 
 Of greater worth, or more divine 
 
 Than this he sought. 
 
1 66 BOOK III 
 
 With gentle hand he rectified 
 The errors of old bardic pride, 
 
 And set aright 
 
 The story of our devious past. 
 And left it, as it now must last, 
 
 Full in the light. 
 
 To DUFFY IN PRISON 
 
 'TWAS but last night I traversed the Atlantic's furrow'd face 
 The stars but thinly colonised the wilderness of space 
 A white sail glinted here and there, and sometimes o'er the swell, 
 Rang the seaman's song of labour or the silvery night- watch bell ; 
 I dreamt I reached the Irish shore and felt my heart rebound 
 From wall to wall within my breast, as I trod that holy ground ; 
 sat down by my own hearth-stone, beside my love again 
 met my friends, and him the first of friends and Irish men. 
 
 saw once more the dome-like brow, the large and lustrous eyes ; 
 mark'd upon the sphinx-like face the cloud of thoughts arise, 
 heard again that clear quick voice that as a trumpet thrill'd 
 The souls of men, and wielded them even as the^peaker will'd 
 I felt the cordial-clasping hand that never feigned regard, 
 Nor ever dealt a muffled blow, or nicely weighed reward. 
 My friend ! my friend ! oh, would to God that you were here 
 
 with me 
 A-watching in the starry West for Ireland's liberty ! 
 
 Oh, brothers, I can well declare, who read it like a scroll, 
 What Roman characters were stamp'd upon that Roman soul. 
 The courage, constancy and love the old-time faith and truth - 
 The wisdom of the sages the sincerity of youth 
 Like an oak upon our native hills, a host might camp there-under, 
 Yet it bare the song-birds in its core, amid the storm and thunder ; 
 It was the gentlest, firmest soul that ever, lamp-like, showed 
 A young race seeking freedom up her misty mountain road. 
 
 Like a convoy from the flag-ship our fleet is scattered far, 
 And you, the valiant Admiral, chained and imprisoned are 
 Like a royal galley's precious freight flung on sea-sunderd strands, 
 The diamond wit and golden worth are far-cast on the lands, 
 
POETS OF <THE NATION' 167 
 
 And I, whom most you lov'd, am here, and I can but indite 
 My yearnings and my heart-hopes, and curse them while I write. 
 Alas ! alas ! ah, what are prayers, and what are moans or sighs, 
 When the heroes of the land are lost of the land that will not 
 
 RISE? 
 
 They will bring you in their manacles beneath their blood-red rag, 
 They will chain you like the conqueror to some sea-moated crag, 
 To their slaves it will be given your great spirit to annoy, 
 To fling falsehood in your cup, and to break your martyr joy ; 
 But you will bear it nobly, as Regulus did of eld, 
 The oak will be the oak, and honoured e'en when fell'd. 
 Change is brooding over earth ; it will find you 'mid the main, 
 And, throned between its wings, you'll reach your native land again. 
 
 INFELIX FELIX 
 
 Phelim or Felix O'Neill, leader of the rising of 1641, which began the Nine 
 Years' War. He was executed in Dublin by Cromwell, after having refused 
 to purchase liberty by implicating Charles I. in the rebellion. 
 
 WHY is his name unsung, O minstrel host ? 
 Why do ye pass his memory like a ghost ? 
 Why is no rose, no laurel, on his grave ? 
 Was he not constant, vigilant and brave ? 
 Why, when that hero-age ye deify, 
 Why do ye pass Infelix Felix by ? 
 
 He rose the first he looms the morning-star 
 Of the long, glorious, unsuccessful war. 
 England abhors him ! Has she not abhorred 
 All who for Ireland ventured life or word ? 
 What memory would she not have cast away 
 That Ireland hugs in her heart's heart to-day? 
 
 He rose in wrath to free his fetter'd land. 
 
 * There's blood there's Saxon blood upon his hand.' 
 
 Ay, so they say ! Three thousand, less or more, 
 
 He sent untimely to the Stygian shore. 
 
 They were the keepers of the prison-gate 
 
 He slew them his whole race to liberate. 
 
168 BOOK III 
 
 clear-eyed poets ! ye who can descry 
 Through vulgar heaps of dead where heroes lie 
 Ye, to whose glance the primal mist is clear 
 Behold, there lies a trampled noble here ! 
 
 Shall we not leave a mark ? shall we not do 
 Justice to one so hated and so true ? 
 
 If ev'n his hand and hilt were so distain'd 
 If he was guilty, as he has been blamed 
 His death redeem'd his life. He chose to die 
 Rather than get his freedom with a lie. 
 Plant o'er his gallant heart a laurel-tree, 
 So may his head within the shadow be. 
 
 1 mourn for thee, O hero of the North 
 God judge thee gentler than we do on earth ! 
 I mourn for thee, and for our land, because 
 She dare not own thee martyr in our cause ; 
 But they, our poets, they who justify 
 They will not let thy memory rot or die ! 
 
 SALUTATION TO THE KELTS 
 
 HAIL to our Keltic brethren, wherever they may be, 
 In the far woods of Oregon or o'er the Atlantic sea ; 
 Whether they guard the banner of St. George in Indian vales, 
 Or spread beneath the nightless North experimental sails 
 
 One in name and in fame 
 Are the sea-divided Gaels. 
 
 Though fallen the state of Erin, and changed the Scottish land, 
 Though small the power of Mona, though unwaked Lewellyn's 
 
 band, 
 
 Though Ambrose Merlin's prophecies are held as idle tales, 
 Though lona's ruined cloisters are swept by northern gales : 
 
 One in name and in fame 
 Are the sea-divided Gaels. 
 
 In Northern Spain and Italy our brethren also dwell 
 And brave are the traditions of their fathers that they tell : 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION* 169 
 
 The Eagle or the Crescent in the dawn of history pales 
 Before the advancing banners of the great Rome-conquering 
 Gaels. 
 
 One in name and in fame 
 Are the sea-divided Gaels. 
 
 A greeting and a promise unto them all we send ; 
 Their character our charter is, their glory is our end, 
 Their friend shall be our friend, our foe whoe'er assails 
 The glory or the story of the sea-divided Gaels. 
 
 One in name and in fame 
 Are the sea-divided Gaels. 
 
 DENIS FLORENCE MCCARTHY 
 
 DENIS FLORENCE MCCARTHY was born in Dublin in 1817. 
 He began to write for The Nation in 1843 and was a frequent 
 and valued contributor to it, both in prose and poetry. He 
 also wrote for The Dublin University Magazine and other 
 periodicals of the day. He was appointed Professor of 
 English Literature and Poetry in the Catholic University of 
 Ireland in 1854, and died in 1882. 
 
 He was an industrious writer, having produced five volumes 
 of original verse as well as numerous translations from Calderon, 
 and his work was always on a high level. The strain of 
 indignant satire in ' Cease to do Evil ' does not often recur 
 his imagination dwelt rather on the sweet and gracious aspects 
 of life and Nature, and these he rendered in verse marked by 
 sincere feeling, wide culture, and careful though unpretentious 
 art. 
 
 BALLADS, POEMS, AND LYRICS was published in Dublin, 1850; ODE 
 ON THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF BELFAST, 1854 ; UNDER-GLIMPSES 
 AND OTHER POEMS, 1857 ; THE BELL-FOUNDER AND OTHER POEMS, 
 1857 ; THE CENTENARY OF MOORE, 1880. His collected poems have 
 been published (with many omissions) in Dublin 1884. In 18.46 he edited 
 THE BOOK OF IRISH BALLADS and THE POETS AND DRAMATISTS OF 
 IRELAND. 
 
170 BOOK III 
 
 1 CEASE TO DO EVIL LEARN TO DO WELL.' 1 
 
 O THOU whom sacred duty hither calls, 
 
 Some glorious hours in freedom's cause to dwell, 
 
 Read the mute lesson on thy prison walls 
 ' Cease to do evil learn to do well ! ' 
 
 If haply thou art one of genius vast, 
 
 Of generous heart, of mind sublime and grand, 
 Who all the spring-time of thy life hast passed 
 
 Battling with tyrants for thy native land 
 If thou hast spent thy summer, as thy prime, 
 
 The serpent brood of bigotry to quell, 
 Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime 
 
 * Cease to do evil learn to do well ! ' 
 
 If thy great heart beat warmly in the cause 
 
 Of outraged man, whate'er his race might be 
 If thou hast preached the Christian's equal laws, 
 
 And stayed the lash beyond the Indian sea 
 If at thy call a nation rose sublime 
 
 If at thy voice seven million fetters fell, 
 Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime 
 
 ' Cease to do evil learn to do well ! ' 
 
 If thou hast seen thy country's quick decay, 
 
 And, like a prophet, raised thy saving hand, 
 And pointed out the only certain way 
 
 To stop the plague that ravaged o'er the land 
 If thou hast summoned from an alien clime 
 
 Her banished senate here at home to dwell, 
 Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime 
 
 ' Cease to do evil learn to do well ! ' 
 
 1 Inscription on the prison where O'Connell, his son John, T. M. Ray, 
 Thomas Steele, Richard Barrett, John Grey, and Charles Gavan Duffy 
 were imprisoned on the verdict for conspiracy, afterwards quashed by the 
 House of Lords. 
 
POETS OF THE NATION' 171 
 
 Or if, perchance, a younger man thou art, 
 Whose ardent soul in throjpbings doth aspire, 
 
 Come weal, come woe, to play the patriot's part 
 In the bright footsteps of thy glorious sire ! 
 
 If all the pleasures of life's youthful time 
 Thou hast abandoned for the martyr's cell, 
 
 Do thou repent thee of thy hideous crime 
 4 Cease to do evil learn to do well ! ' 
 
 Or art thou one l whom early science led 
 
 To walk with Newton through the immense of heaven, 
 Who soared with Milton and with Mina bled, 
 
 And all thou hadst in Freedom's cause hast given ? 
 Oh ! fond enthusiast in the after-time 
 
 Our children's children of your worth shall tell ! 
 England proclaims thy honesty a crime 
 
 * Cease to do evil learn to do well ! 
 
 Or art thou one 2 whose strong and fearless pen 
 
 Roused the young isle, and bade it dry its tears, 
 And gathered round thee ardent, gifted men, 
 
 The hope of Ireland in the coming years 
 Who dares in prose and heart-awakening rhyme 
 
 Bright hopes to breathe, and bitter truths to tell ? 
 Oh ! dangerous criminal, repent thy crime 
 
 4 Cease to do evil learn to do well ! ' 
 
 * Cease to do evil ' aye ! ye madmen, cease ! 
 
 Cease to love Ireland, cease to serve her well, 
 Make with her foes a foul and fatal peace, 
 
 And quick will ope your darkest, dreariest cell. 
 
 * Learn to do well ' aye ! learn to betray 
 
 Learn to revile the land in which you dwell ; 
 England will bless you on your altered way 
 ' Cease to do evil learn to do well ! ' 
 
 1 Thomas Steele, ' a young Protestant of Cromwellian descent, whose 
 enthusiasm for liberty led him to volunteer among the Spanish revolutionists 
 under Mina.' 
 
 2 C. G. Duffy. 
 
172 BOOK III 
 
 SPRING FLOWERS FROM IRELAND 
 
 9 
 
 ON RECEIVING AN EARLY CROCUS AND SOME VIOLETS IN A 
 SECOND LETTER FROM IRELAND 
 
 Mr. Aubrey de Vere has written the following criticism on this poem : 
 ' It seems to me to be one of singular indeed, of extraordinary beauty. It 
 has that union of pathos and moral thought, with fineness of execution, which 
 belongs to some of Wordsworth's later poems. The love of our native land 
 has never been expressed with finer feeling, or with a finer handling, than in 
 this poem.' 
 
 WITHIN the letter's rustling fold 
 
 I find, once more a glad surprise : 
 A little tiny cup of gold 
 
 Two lovely violet eyes ; 
 A cup of gold with emeralds set, 
 
 Once filled with wine from happier spheres ; 
 Two little eyes so lately wet 
 
 With spring's delicious dewy tears. 
 
 Oh ! little eyes that wept and laughed, 
 
 Now bright with smiles, with tears now dim ; 
 Oh ! little cup that once was quaffed 
 
 By fay-queens fluttering round thy rim. 
 I press each silken fringe's fold 
 
 Sweet little eyes, once more ye shine ; 
 I kiss thy lip, oh ! cup of gold, 
 
 And find thee full of memory's wine. 
 
 Within their violet depths I gaze, 
 
 And see, as in the camera's gloom, 
 The Island with its belt of bays, 
 
 Its chieftain'd heights all capped with broom ; 
 Which, as the living lens it fills, 
 
 Now seems a giant charmed to sleep 
 Now a broad shield embossed with hills, 
 
 Upon the bosom of the deep. 
 
 When will the slumbering giant wake ? 
 
 When will the shield defend and guard? 
 Ah, me ! prophetic gleams forsake 
 
 The once rapt eyes of seer or bard. 
 
POETS OF 'THE NATION' 173 
 
 Enough if, shunning Samson's fate, 
 
 It doth not all its vigour yield ; 
 Enough if plenteous peace, though late, 
 
 May rest beneath the sheltering shield. 
 
 I see the long and lone defiles 
 
 Of Keimaneigh's bold rocks uphurled ; 
 I see the golden-fruited isles 
 
 That gem the queen-lakes of the world ; 
 I see a gladder sight to me 
 
 By soft Shanganagh's silver strand 
 The breaking of a sapphire sea 
 
 Upon the golden-fretted sand. 
 
 Swiftly the tunnel's rock-hewn pass, 
 
 Swiftly, the fiery train runs through 
 Oh ! what a glittering sheet of glass ! 
 
 Oh ! what enchantment meets my view ! 
 With eyes insatiate I pursue, 
 
 Till Bray's bright headland bounds the scene 
 Tis Baiae by a softer blue ! 
 
 Gaeta by a gladder green ! 
 
 By tasselled groves, o'er meadows fair, 
 
 I'm carried in my blissful dream, 
 To where a monarch in the air 
 
 The pointed mountain reigns supreme ; 
 There, in a spot remote and wild, 
 
 I see once more the rustic seat 
 Where Carrigoona, like a child, 
 
 Sits at the mightier mountain's feet 
 
 There by the gentler mountain's slope 
 
 That happiest year of many a year, 
 That first swift year of love and hope 
 
 With her then dear and ever dear, 
 I sat upon the rustic seat 
 
 Jhe seat an aged bay-tree crowns 
 And saw outspreading from our feet 
 
 The golden glory of the Downs. 
 
174 BOOK in 
 
 The furze-crowned heights, the glorious glen, 
 
 The white-walled chapel glistening near, 
 The house of God, the homes of men, 
 
 The fragrant hay, the ripening ear ; 
 There, where there seemed nor sin, nor crime, 
 
 There in God's sweet and wholesome air 
 Strange book to read at such a time 
 
 We read of Vanity's false Fair. 
 
 We read the painful pages through 
 
 Perceived the skill, admired the art, 
 Felt them if true, n'ot wholly true 
 
 A truer truth was in our heart. 
 Save fear and love of ONE, hath proved 
 
 The sage, how vain is all below ; 
 And one was there who feared and loved, 
 
 And one who loved that she was so. 
 
 The vision spreads, the memories grow, 
 
 Fair phantoms crowd the more I gaze. 
 Oh ! cup of gold, with wine o'erflow, 
 
 I'll drink to those departed days : 
 And when I drain the golden cup 
 
 To them, to those, I ne'er can see, 
 With wine of hope I'll fill it up, 
 
 And drink to days that yet may be. 
 
 I've drunk the future and the past, 
 
 Now for a draught of warmer wine 
 One draught the sweetest and the last 
 
 Lady, I'll drink to thee and thine. 
 These flowers that to my breast I fold, 
 
 Into my very heart have grown 
 To thee I drain the cup of gold, 
 
 And think the violet eyes thine own. 
 
POETS OF 1 7HE NATION' 175 
 
 MICHAEL DOHENY 
 
 DOHENY was born at Brookhill, County Tipperary, in 1805. He 
 was a frequent contributor to The Nation. Like most of his 
 colleagues, he acted the lessons he had tried to teach in 1848, 
 and after the failure of the insurrection was ' on his keeping ' 
 in Ireland, with a reward of ^300 on his head, for some time, 
 during which the following poem may have been written. He 
 at last succeeded in evading the police and escaping to 
 New York, where he became a lawyer, and subsequently fought 
 in the Civil War. A small prose work of his, THE FELON'S 
 TRACK, has attained much popularity. 
 
 A CUSHLA GAL MO CHREE. 1 
 
 THE long, long wished-for hour has come, 
 
 Yet come, astor, in vain ; 
 And left thee but the wailing hum 
 
 Of sorrow and of pain ; 
 My light of life, my only love ! 
 
 Thy portion, sure, must be 
 Man's scorn below, God's wrath above 
 
 A cuisle geal mo chroidhe ! 
 
 I've given for thee my early prime, 
 
 And manhood's teeming years ; 
 I've blessed thee in my merriest time, 
 
 And shed with thee my tears ; 
 And, mother, though thou cast away 
 
 The ch'ild who'd die for thee, 
 My fondest wishes still should pray 
 
 For cuisle geal mo chroidhe ! 
 
 For thee I've tracked the mountain's sides, 
 
 And slept within the brake, 
 More lonely than the swan that glides 
 
 On Lua's fairy lake. 
 
 Bright vein of my heart. ' 
 
176 BOOK III 
 
 The rich have spurned me from their door, 
 
 Because I'd make thee free ; 
 Yet still I love thee more and more, 
 
 A cuisle geal mo chroidhe / 
 
 I've run the outlaw's wild career, 
 
 And borne his load of ill ; 
 His rocky couch his dreamy fear 
 
 With fixed, sustaining will ; 
 And should his last dark chance befall, 
 
 Even that shall welcome be ; 
 In death I'd love thee best of all, 
 
 A cuisle geal mo chroidhe ! 
 
 'Twas told of thee the world around, 
 
 'Twas hoped for thee by all, 
 That with one gallant sunward bound 
 
 Thou'dst burst long ages' thrall ; 
 Thy faith was tried, alas ! and those 
 
 Who perilled all for thee 
 Were cursed and branded as thy foes, 
 
 A cuisle geal mo chroidhe ! 
 
 What fate is thine, unhappy Isle, 
 
 When even the trusted few 
 Would pay thee back with hate and guile, 
 
 When most they should be true ! 
 'Twas not my strength or spirit quailed, 
 
 Or those who'd die for thee 
 Who loved thee truly have not failed, 
 
 A cuisle geal mo chroidhe / 
 
 LADY WILDE 
 
 JANE FRANCESCA ELGEE, the daughter of an archdeacon of 
 the Church of Ireland, was born in Wexford about 1820, and 
 began to write for The Nation in 1844. Her contributions 
 
POETS OF 1 THE NATION* 177 
 
 were usually signed * Speranza.' In 1851 she married Mr. 
 (afterwards Sir) W. R. Wilde, a distinguished oculist and 
 antiquary. The passionate rhetoric of her verse, which 
 reflected her own fearless and generous character, helped in 
 no small degree to make The Nation a political force, but, as in 
 the case of many other Irish writers of both prose and verse, 
 she won her true literary success in the former medium. Her 
 translation of the AMBER-WITCH and her ANCIENT LEGENDS 
 OF IRELAND are work of the highest order of their class. She 
 died in London in 1896. 
 
 THE FAMINE YEAR 
 
 WEARY men, what reap ye ? ' Golden corn for the stranger.' 
 What sow ye ? ' Human corses that await for the Avenger.' 
 Fainting forms, all hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing ? 
 
 * Stately ships to bear our food away amid the stranger's scoffing. 
 There's a proud array of soldiers what do they round your 
 
 door? 
 
 * They guard our master's granaries from the thin hands of the 
 
 poor.' 
 Pale mothers, wherefore weeping ? ' Would to God that we were 
 
 dead 
 Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread ! ' 
 
 Little children, tears are strange upon your infant faces, 
 
 God meant you but to smile within your mother's soft embraces. 
 
 'Oh ! we know not what is smiling, and we know not what is 
 
 dying ; 
 
 But we're hungry, very hungry, and we cannot stop our crying ; 
 And some of us grow cold and white we know not what it means. 
 But as they lie beside us we tremble in our dreams.' 
 There's a gaunt crowd on the highway are ye come to pray to 
 
 man, 
 With hollow eyes that cannot weep, and for words your faces wan ? 
 
 * No ; the blood is dead within our veins ; we care not now for life ; 
 Let us die hid in the ditches, far from children and from wife ; 
 We cannot stay to listen to their raving, famished cries 
 
 Bread ! Bread ! Bread ! and none to still their agonies. 
 
 N 
 
r/8 BOOK III 
 
 We left an infant playing with her dead mother's hand : 
 
 We left a maiden maddened by the fever's scorching brand : ' 
 
 Better, maiden, thou wert strangled in thy own dark-twisted 
 
 tresses ! 
 Better, infant, thou wert smothered in thy mother's first caresses. 
 
 ' We are fainting in our misery, but God will hear our groan ; 
 
 Yea, if fellow-men desert us, He will hearken from His throne ! 
 
 Accursed are we in our own land, yet toil we still and toil ; 
 
 But the stranger reaps our harvest the alien owns our soil. 
 
 O Christ, how have we sinned, that on our native plains 
 
 We perish houseless, naked, starved, with branded brow, like 
 
 Cain's? 
 
 Dying, dying wearily, with a torture sure and slow 
 Dying as a dog would die, by the wayside as we go. 
 
 ' One by one they're falling round us, their pale faces to the sky ; 
 We've no strength left to dig them graves there let them lie. 
 The wild bird, when he's stricken, is mourned by the others, 
 But we, we die in Christian land we die amid our brothers 
 In the land which God has given like a wild beast in his cave, 
 Without a tear, a prayer, a shroud, a coffin, or a grave. 
 Ha ! but think ye the contortions on each dead face ye see, 
 Shall not be read on judgment-day by the eyes of Deity? 
 
 ' We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your 
 
 pride, 
 But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ 
 
 died. 
 
 Now is your hour of pleasure, bask ye in the world's caress ; 
 But our whitening bones against ye will arise as witnesses, 
 From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffined 
 
 masses, 
 
 For the ANGEL OF THE TRUMPET will know them as he passes. 
 A ghastly, spectral army before great God we'll stand 
 And arraign ye as our murderers, O spoilers of our land ! ' 
 
 END OF POETS OF THE NATION 
 
ANONYMOUS 179 
 
 ANONYMOUS 
 
 A LAY OF THE FAMINE 
 
 HUSH ! hear you how the night wind keens around the craggy 
 
 reek ? 
 Its voice peals high above the waves that thunder in the creek. 
 
 ' Aroon ! aroon ! arouse thee, and hie thee o'er the moor ! 
 
 Ten miles away there's bread, they say, to feed the starving poor. 
 
 * God save thee, Eileen baivn astor, and guide thy naked feet, 
 And keep the fainting life in us till thou come back with meat. 
 
 * God send the moon to show thee light upon the way so drear, 
 And mind thou well the rocky dell, and heed the rushy mere.' 
 
 She kissed her father's palsied hand, her mother's pallid cheek, 
 And whirled out on the driving storm beyond the craggy reek. 
 
 All night she tracks, with bleeding feet, the rugged mountain way, 
 And townsfolks meet her in the street at flushing of the day. 
 
 But God is kinder on the moor than man is in the town, 
 
 And Eileen quails before the stranger's harsh rebuke and frown. 
 
 Night's gloom enwraps the hills once more and hides a slender 
 
 form 
 That shudders o'er the moor again before the driving storm. 
 
 No bread is in her wallet stored, but on the lonesome heath 
 She lifts her empty hands to God, and prays for speedy death. 
 
 Yet struggles onward, faint and blind, and numb to hope or fear, 
 Unmindful of the rocky dell or of the rushy mere. 
 
 But, ululu ! what sight is this ? what forms come by the reek ? 
 As white and thin as evening mist upon the mountain's peak. 
 
 Mist-like they glide across the heath a weird and ghostly band ; 
 The foremost crosses Eileen's path, and grasps her by the hand. 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o BOOK 111 
 
 1 Dear daughter, thou hast suffered sore, but we are well and free ; 
 For God has ta'en our life from us, nor wills it long to thee. 
 
 * So hie thee to our cabin lone, and dig a grave so deep, 
 And underneath the golden gorse our corpses lay to sleep 
 
 * Else they will come and smash the walls upon our mould'ring 
 
 bones, 
 
 And screaming mountain birds will tear our flesh from out the 
 stones. 
 
 1 And, daughter, haste to do thy work, so thou mayst quickly come, 
 And take with us our grateful rest, and share our peaceful home.' 
 
 The sun behind the distant hills far-sinking down to sleep ; 
 A maiden on the lonesome moor, digging a grave so deep ; 
 
 The moon above the craggy reek, silvering moor and wave, 
 And the pale corpse of a maiden young stretched on a new-made 
 grave. 
 
 JAMES McCARROLL 
 
 BORN at Lanesborough, County Longford, on August 3, 1814, 
 and died in New York in 1891. He was an active journalist, 
 and possessed much musical knowledge, and was also a 
 successful inventor and patentee. His collected poems were 
 published in 1889 He lived many years in America and 
 Canada. 
 
 THE IRISH WOLF 
 
 The Times once used this term to designate the Irish people. 
 
 SEEK music in the wolfs fierce howl 
 
 Or pity in his blood-shot eye, 
 When hunger drives him out to prowl 
 
 Beneath a rayless northern sky : 
 
JAMES McCARROLL 181 
 
 But seek not that we should forgive 
 The hand that strikes us to the heart, 
 
 And yet in mockery bids us live 
 To count our stars as they depart. 
 
 We've fed the tyrant with our blood ; 
 
 Won all his battles built his throne 
 Established him on land and flood, 
 
 And sought his glory next our own. 
 
 We raised him from his low estate ; 
 
 We plucked his pagan soul from hell, 
 And led him pure to heaven's gate, 
 
 Till he, for gold, like Judas fell. 
 
 And when in one long, soulless night 
 He lay unknown to wealth or fame, 
 
 We gave him empire riches light, 
 And taught him how to spell his name. 
 
 But now, ungenerous and unjust, 
 
 Forgetful of our old renown, 
 He bows us to the very dust ; 
 
 But wears our jewels in his crown. 
 
 JOHN SAVAGE 
 
 JOHN SAVAGE was born in Dublin 1828 and died in New 
 York 1888. After taking some part in the '48 movement he 
 emigrated to America and adopted the profession of journalism 
 there. In 1879 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. 
 from St. John's College, Fordham. He published several 
 volumes of poetry : LAYS OF THE FATHERLAND, 1850 ; SYBIL, 
 1850; FAITH AND FANCY, [864; POEMS, 1870. The following 
 powerful ballad has appeared in many Irish collections of 
 verse. An inferior first verse, apparently added as an after- 
 thought, has been here omitted, to the great gain of the poem 
 in dramatic energy. 
 
182 BOOK III 
 
 SHANE'S HEAD 
 
 Scene. Before Dublin Castle. Night. A clansman of Shane O'Neill's 
 discovers his Chief's head on a pole. 
 
 Is it thus, O Shane the haughty ! Shane the valiant ! that we 
 
 meet- 
 Have my eyes been lit by Heaven but to guide me to defeat ? 
 Have /no Chief, or you no clan, to give us both defence, 
 Or must I, too, be statued here with thy cold eloquence ? 
 Thy ghastly head grins scorn upon old Dublin's Castle Tower ; 
 Thy shaggy hair is wind-tossed, and thy brow seems rough with 
 
 power ; 
 
 Thy wrathful lips like sentinels, by foulest treachery stung, 
 Look rage upon the world of wrong, but chain thy fiery tongue. 
 
 That tongue, whose Ulster accent woke the ghost of Columbkill ; 
 Whose warrior- words fenced round with spears the oaks of Derry 
 
 Hill; 
 
 Whose reckless tones gave life and death to vassals and to knaves, 
 And hunted hordes of Saxons into holy Irish graves. 
 The Scotch marauders whitened when his war-cry met their ears, 
 And the death-bird, like a vengeance, poised above his stormy 
 
 cheers ; 
 
 Ay, Shane, across the thundering sea, out-chanting it, your tongue 
 Flung wild un- Saxon war-whoopings the Saxon Court among. 
 
 Just think, O Shane ! the same moon shines on Liffey as on 
 
 Foyle, 
 
 And lights the ruthless knaves on both, our kin c men to despoil ; 
 And you the hope, voice, battle-axe, the shield of us and ours, 
 A murdered, trunkless, blinding sight above these Dublin towers ! 
 
 Thy face is paler than the moon ; my heart is paler still 
 
 My heart ? I had no heart 'twas yours 'twas yours! to keep 
 
 or kill. 
 And you kept it safe for Ireland, Chief your life, your soul, your 
 
 pride ; 
 But they sought it in thy bosom, Shane with proud O'Neill it 
 
 died. 
 
JOHN SAVAGE 183 
 
 You were turbulent and haughty, proud and keen as Spanish 
 
 steel 
 
 But who had right of these, if not our Ulster's Chief, O'Neill, 
 Who reared aloft the ' Bloody Hand ' until it paled the sun, 
 And shed such glory on Tyrone as chief had never done ? 
 
 He was 'turbulent' with traitors; he was 'haughty' with the 
 foe; 
 
 He was * cruel,' say ye, Saxons ! Ay ! he dealt ye blow for blow ! 
 
 He was * rough ' and * wild ' and who's not wild to see his hearth- 
 stone razed? 
 
 He was 'merciless as fire' ah, ye kindled him he blazed ! 
 
 He was 'proud' yes, proud of birthright, and because he flung 
 away 
 
 Your Saxon stars of princedom, as the rock does mocking spray. 
 
 He was wild, insane for vengeance ay ! and preached it till 
 Tyrone 
 
 Was ruddy, ready, wild, too, with 'Red hands' to clutch their 
 own. 
 
 * The Scots are on the border, Shane ! ' Ye Saints, he makes no 
 
 breath ; 
 
 I remember when that cry would wake him up almost from death. 
 Art truly dead and cold ? O Chief ! art thou to Ulster lost ? 
 ' Dost hear dost hear ? By Randolph led, the troops the Foyle 
 
 have crossed ! ' 
 
 He's truly dead ! He must be dead ! nor is his ghost about 
 And yet no tomb could hold his spirit tame to such a shout : 
 The pale face droopeth northward ah ! his soul must loom up 
 
 there, 
 By old Armagh, or Antrim's glynns, Lough Foyle, or Bann the 
 
 Fair ! 
 I'll speed me Ulster-wards your ghost must wander there, proud 
 
 Shane, 
 In search of some O'Neill, through whom to throb its hate again. 
 
184 BOOK III 
 
 JOHN WALSH 
 
 THIS poet has been greatly neglected by his countrymen, and 
 he appears in very few Irish anthologies. Yet he wrote some 
 admirably simple and touching pieces. His poems, which 
 mostly appeared in The Nation and the Waterford papers, 
 have never been collected. He was a schoolmaster, like Edward 
 Walsh, and was born at Cappoquin, County Waterford, on 
 April i, 1835, and died at Cashel, County Tipperary, in 
 February 1881. 
 
 To MY PROMISED WIFE 
 
 DEAR maiden, when the sun is down, 
 And darkness creeps above the town, 
 The woodlands' green is changed to brown, 
 
 And the mild light 
 Melting beneath the tall hills' frown 
 
 Steals into night, 
 
 I don an honest coat of grey, 
 And, setting stupid care at bay, 
 Across the fields of scented hay 
 
 I stroll along, 
 Humming some quaint old Irish lay 
 
 Or simple song. 
 
 And when, dear maid, I come to you, 
 A laughing eye of brightest blue, 
 And flushing cheek of crimson hue, 
 
 Tell whom I greet, 
 And bounds a little heart as true 
 
 As ever beat. 
 
 The green grass on the river-side, 
 The full moon dancing on the tide, 
 The half-blown rose that tries to hide 
 
 Her blush in dew, 
 Are fair ; but none, my promised bride, 
 
 As fair as you. 
 
JOHN WALSH 185 
 
 And though, dear love, our gathered store 
 
 Of gold is small, the brighter ore 
 
 Of love's deep mine we'll seek the more, 
 
 And truth shall be 
 The guard beside our cottage-door, 
 
 As tor mo chroidhe I 
 
 DRIMIN DONN DiLis 1 
 
 OH 1 drimin donn dilis \ the landlord has come, 
 Like a foul blast of death has he swept o'er our home ; 
 He has withered our roof-tree beneath the cold sky, 
 Poor, houseless, and homeless, to-night must we lie. 
 
 My heart it is cold as the white winter's snow ; 
 My brain is on fire, and my blood's in a glow. 
 Oh ! drimin donn dilis, 'tis hard to forgive 
 When a robber denies us the right we should live. 
 
 With my health and my strength, with hard labour and toil, 
 I dried the wet marsh and I tilled the harsh soil ; 
 I moiled the long day through, from morn until even, 
 And I thought in my heart I'd a foretaste of heaven. 
 
 The summer shone round us above and below, 
 The beautiful summer that makes the flowers blow : 
 Oh ! 'tis hard to forget it, and think I must bear 
 That strangers shall reap the reward of my care. 
 
 Your limbs they were plump then your coat it was silk, 
 
 And never was wanted the mether of milk ; 
 
 For freely it came in the calm summer's noon. 
 
 While you munched to the time of the old milking croon. 
 
 How often you left the green side of the hill, 
 To stretch in the shade and to drink of the rill ! 
 And often I freed you before the grey dawn 
 From your snug little pen at the edge of the bawn. 
 
 1 ' Dear brown cow. ' 
 
1 86 BOOK III 
 
 But they racked and they ground me with tax and with rent, 
 Till my heart it was sore and my life-blood was spent : 
 To-day they have finished, and on the wide world 
 With the mocking of fiends from my home I was hurled. 
 
 I knelt down three times for to utter a prayer, 
 But my heart it was seared, and the words were not there ; 
 Oh ! wild were the thoughts through my dizzy head came, 
 Like the rushing of wind through a forest of flame. 
 
 I bid you, old comrade, a long last farewell ; 
 
 For the gaunt hand of famine has clutched us too well ; 
 
 It severed the master and you, my good cow, 
 
 With a blight on his life and a brand on his brow. 
 
 D. MAcALEESE 
 
 BORN in 1833 at Randalstown, County Antrim, Mr. MacAleese 
 worked for some time at his father's trade that of a shoe- 
 maker but his taste for letters led him into journalism, 
 where he began as printer's reader on a Belfast paper. He is 
 now editor and proprietor of The Peoples Advocate, Monaghan, 
 and was returned to Parliament for North Monaghan in 1895. 
 
 A MEMORY 
 
 ADOWN the leafy lane we two, 
 
 One brown October eve, together sped ; 
 
 The clustered nuts were hanging overhead, 
 And ever and anon, the deep woods through, 
 The grey owl piped his weird ' Tu-whut ! tu-whoo ! ' 
 
 Adown the leafty lane we two 
 
 Strolled on and on, till sank the setting sun 
 In sapphire beauty round Tyleden dun, 
 
 And shadows long and longer round us grew ; 
 
 Had earth a pair so happy as we two ? 
 
D. MAcALEESE 187 
 
 Adown the leafy lane we two 
 
 Loitered and laughed, and laughed and loitered more, 
 And talked of ' gentle folk ' and fairy lore. 
 Till, one by one, from out the vaulted blue, 
 The diamond stars came softly forth to view. 
 
 Adown the leafy lane we two 
 
 Saw figures flitting 'mong the quicken trees, 
 Tall Finian forms, holding high revelries, 
 And dogs, like Bran in sinew and in thew, 
 Chased shadowy deer the vista'd woodlands through. 
 
 Adown the leafy lane we two 
 
 Heard fairy pipes play fairy music sweet, 
 And now and then the tramp of fairy feet, 
 And screams of laughter 'mong the fairy crew 
 The elves and fays that haunt old Corradhu. 
 
 Adown the leafy lane no more 
 
 We two go loitering in the Autumn eves, 
 When merry reapers tie the golden sheaves, 
 
 And kine come lowing to the cottage door, 
 
 Where ready pails await the milky store. 
 
 Astoireen, no, far, far away, 
 
 Secluded lies that golden-memoried lane, 
 Where ceaseless flows the bright and sparkling Main 
 Through scenes of beauty to the storied Neagh 
 Here by the Hudson's banks we two grow grey. 
 
 JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 
 
 LE FANU was certainly one of the most remarkable of Irish 
 writers. In UNCLE SILAS, in his wonderful tales of the super- 
 natural, and in a short and less known but most masterly story, 
 THE ROOM IN THE DRAGON VOLANT, he touched the springs of 
 terror and suspense as perhaps no other writer of fiction in the 
 
1 88 BOOK III 
 
 language has been able to do. His fine scholarship, poetic 
 sense, and strong yet delicate handling of language and of 
 incident give these tales a place quite apart among works of 
 sensational fiction. But perhaps the most interesting of all his 
 novels is THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD a wonderful 
 mixture of sensationalism, humour, tragedy, and romance. In 
 poetry his 'Shemus O'Brien,' a capital piece written for 
 recitation, is a well-known favourite, and has been made the 
 basis of a fine Irish opera by C. Villiers Stanford. It is note- 
 worthy, by the way, that Le Fanu, the son of a Dean of the 
 Established Church, and proprietor and editor of a Tory news- 
 paper, became a rebel whenever he wrote verse. 
 
 The piece from ' The Legend of the Glaive ' here given 
 shows the weird and romantic touch which Le Fanu had at 
 command, and 'The Address to the Bottle' has much of 
 the almost savage energy which he showed more in certain 
 scenes of THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD than anywhere 
 else. 
 
 From Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves's introduction to Le 
 Fanu's poems we may take the following picture of his 
 habits and character in later years : 
 
 ' Those who possessed the rare privilege of Le Fanu's 
 friendship, and only they, can form any idea of the true 
 character of the man ; for after the death of his wife, to whom 
 he was most deeply devoted, he quite forsook general society, 
 in which his fine features, distinguished bearing, and charm of 
 conversation marked him out as the beau-ideal of an Irish wit 
 and scholar of the old school. 
 
 * From this society he vanished so entirely that Dublin, 
 always ready with a nickname, dubbed him 'The Invisible 
 Prince ' ; and, indeed, he was for long almost invisible, except 
 to his family and most familiar friends, unless at odd hours of 
 the evening, when he might occasionally be seen stealing, 
 like the ghost of his former self, between his newspaper 
 office and his home in Merrion Square. Sometimes too he 
 was to be encountered in an old, out-of-the-way bookshop, 
 poring over some rare black-letter Astrology or Demonology.' 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 189 
 
 Le Fanu was born in Dublin in 1814, and graduated at Trinity College, 
 Dublin, in 1837. About 1838 he purchased The Warder ; a Conservative 
 journal, and afterwards became editor and owner of The Dublin Evening 
 Mail and of The Dublin University Magazine. Most of his poetic and 
 prose work appeared first in the last-named periodical. His POEMS 
 appeared for the first time in a collected edition, edited by Mr. Alfred 
 Perceval Graves, in 1896. He died in 1873. 
 
 FlONULA 
 
 HffiU to this hour she is sometimes seen by night in Munster 
 From THE LEGEND OF THE GLAIVE 
 
 BY the foot of old Keeper, beside the bohreen, 
 
 In the deep blue of night the thatched cabin is seen ; 
 
 Neath the furze-covered ledge, by the wild mountain brook, 
 
 Where the birch and the ash dimly shelter the nook, 
 
 And many's the clear star that trembles on high 
 
 O'er the thatch and the wild ash that melt in the sky. 
 
 ' Shamus Oge ' and old Teig are come home from the fair, 
 
 And the car stands up black with its shafts in the air, 
 
 A warbling of laughter hums over the floor, 
 
 And fragrant's the flush of the turf through the door. 
 
 Round the glow the old folk and the colleens and boys 
 
 Wile the hour with their stories, jokes, laughter, and noise ; 
 
 Dogs stretched on the hearth with their chins on their feet lie, 
 
 To her own purring music the cat dozes sweetly ; 
 
 Pretty smiles answer, coyly, while soft spins the wheel, 
 
 The bold lover's glances or whispered appeal. 
 
 Stealing in, like the leather-wings under the thatch, 
 
 A hand through the dark softly leans on the latch, 
 
 An oval face peeps through the clear deep of night, 
 
 From her jewels faint tremble blue splinters of light. 
 
 There's a stranger among us, a chill in the air, 
 
 And an awful face silently framed over there ; 
 
 The green light of horror glares cold from each eye, 
 
 And laughter breaks shivering into a cry. 
 
 A flush from the fire hovers soft to the door, 
 
 In the dull void the pale lady glimmers no more. 
 
 The cowering dogs howl, slowly growls the white cat, 
 
 And the whisper outshivers, ' God bless us ! what's that ? ' 
 
190 BOOK III 
 
 The sweet summer moon o'er Aherlow dreams, 
 
 And the Galtees, gigantic, loom cold in her beams ; 
 
 From the wide flood of purple the pale peaks uprise, 
 
 Slowly gliding like sails 'gainst the stars of the skies ; 
 
 Soft moonlight is drifted on mountain and wood, 
 
 Airy voices sing faint to the drone of the flood, 
 
 As the traveller benighted flies onward in fear, 
 
 And the clink of his footsteps falls shrill on his ear. 
 
 There's a hush in the bushes, a chill in the air, 
 
 While a breath steals beside him and whispers, ' Beware ! ' 
 
 While aslant by the oak, down the hollow ravine, 
 
 Like a flying bird's shadow smooth-gliding, is seen 
 
 Fionula the Cruel, the brightest, the worst, 
 
 With a terrible beauty the vision accurst, 
 
 Gold-filleted, sandalled, of times dead and gone 
 
 Far-looking, and harking, pursuing, goes on : 
 
 Her white hand from her ear lifts her shadowy hair, 
 
 From the lamp of her eye floats the sheen of despair ; 
 
 Her cold lips are apart, and her teeth in her smile 
 
 Glimmer death on her face with a horrible wile. 
 
 Three throbs at his heart not a breath at his lip, 
 
 As the figure skims by like the swoop of a ship ; 
 
 The breeze dies and drops like a bird on the wing, 
 
 And the pulse of the rivulet ceases to sing ; 
 
 And the stars and the moon dilate o'er his head, 
 
 As they smile out an icy salute to the dead. 
 
 The traveller alone signs the cross on his breast, 
 Gasps a prayer to the saints for her weary soul's rest ; 
 His 'gospel' close pressed to the beat of his heart, 
 And fears still to linger, yet dreads to depart. 
 By the village fire crouched, his the story that night, 
 While his listeners around him draw pale with affright ; 
 Till it's over the country 'God bless us, again !' 
 How he met Fionula in Aherlow Glen. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 191 
 
 ABHRAIN AN BHUIDEIL 
 
 ADDRESS OF A DRUNKARD TO A BOTTLE OF WHISKY 
 
 FROM what dripping cell, through what fairy glen, 
 Where 'mid old rocks and ruins the fox makes his den, 
 Over what lonesome mountain, 
 
 Acuishle mo chroidhe ! 
 Where gauger never has trod, 
 Sweet as the flowery sod, 
 Wild as the breath 
 Of the breeze on the heath, 
 
 And sparkling all o'er like the moon-lighted fountain, 
 Are you come to me 
 Sorrowful me ? 
 
 Dancing inspiring 
 My wild blood firm' ; 
 Oh ! terrible glory 
 
 Oh ! beautiful siren 
 Come, tell the old story 
 
 Come, light up my fancy, and open my heart. 
 Oh, beautiful ruin 
 My life my undoin' 
 Soft and fierce as a pantheress, 
 
 Dream of my longing, and wreck of soul, 
 I never knew love till I loved you, enchanthress ! 
 
 At first, when I knew you, 'twas only flirtation, 
 The touch of a lip and the flash of an eye ; 
 But 'tis different now 'tis desperation ! 
 I worship before you, 
 I curse and adore you, 
 And without you I'd die. 
 Wirrasthrue! ' 
 I wish 'twas again 
 The happy time when 
 
 ir 1^*5 : ' O Mary, 'tis pity.' 
 
192 BOOK III 
 
 I cared little about you, 
 
 Could do well without you, 
 
 But would just laugh and view you ; 
 
 'Tis little I knew you ! 
 
 Oh ! terrible darling, 
 How have you sought me, 
 Enchanted, and caught me ? 
 See, now, where you've brought me 
 To sleep by the roadside, and dress out in rags. 
 Think how you found me ; 
 Dreams come around me 
 
 The dew of my childhood and life's morning beam ; 
 Now I sleep by the roadside, a wretch all in rags. 
 My heart that sang merrily when I was young 
 
 Swells up like a billow and bursts in despair ; 
 And the wreck of my hopes on sweet memory flung> 
 And cries on the air, 
 
 Are all that is left of the dream. 
 
 Wirrasthrue ! 
 
 My father and mother, 
 
 The priest, and my brother 
 
 Not a one has a good word for you. 
 But I can't part you, darling ; their preaching's all vain ; 
 
 You'll burn in my heart till these thin pulses stop ; 
 And the wild cup of life in your fragrance I'll drain 
 
 To the last brilliant drop. 
 
 Then oblivion will cover 
 
 The shame that is over, 
 The brain that was mad, and the heart that was sore ; 
 
 Then, beautiful witch, 
 
 I'll be found in a ditch, 
 With your kiss on my cold lips, and never rise more. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 193 
 
 SHEMUS O'BRIEN : 
 A TALE OF 'NINETY-EIGHT, AS RELATED BY AN IRISH PEASANT 
 
 PART I 
 
 JlST after the war, in the year 'Ninety-Eight, 
 As soon as the Boys wor all scattered and bate, 
 'Twas the custom, whenever a peasant was got, 
 To hang him by trial barrin' such as was shot. 
 
 There was trial by jury goin' on by dayfight, 
 And the martial law hangin' the laving s by night : 
 It's them was hard times for an honest gossoon ; 
 If he missed in the judges, he'd meet a Dragoon / 
 An' whether the sojers or judges gave sentence, 
 The devil a much time they allowed for repentance ; 
 An' the many a fine Boy was then on his keepin', 
 With small share of restin', or sittin', or sleepin' ! 
 An' because they loved Erinn, and scorned to sell it, 
 A prey for the bloodhound, a mark for the bullet 
 Unsheltered by night, and unrested by day, 
 With the heath for their barrack, revenge for their pay. 
 
 An' the bravest an' honestest Boy of thim all 
 
 Was Shemus O'Brien, from the town of Glingall ; 
 
 His limbs wor well set, an' his body was light, 
 
 An' the keen-fanged hound had not teeth half as white. 
 
 But his face was as pale as the face of the dead, 
 
 An' his cheek never warmed with the blush of the red ; 
 
 An', for all that, he wasn't an ugly young Boy 
 
 For the devil himself couldn't blaze with his eye 
 
 So droll an' so wicked, so dark an' so bright, 
 
 Like a fire-flash that crosses the depth of the night. 
 
 An' h? was the best mower that ever has been, 
 
 An' the elegantest hurler that ever was seen : 
 
 In fencin' he gave Patrick Mooney a cut, 
 
 An' in jumpin' he bate Tom Molony a foot ; 
 
 For lightness of foot there was not his peer, 
 
 For, by Heavens ! he'd almost outrun the red deer ; 
 
 O 
 
194 BOOK III 
 
 An' his dancin' was such that the men used to stare, 
 And the women turn crazy, he did it so quare ; 
 An' sure the whole world l gave in to him there ! 
 
 An' it's he was the Boy that was hard to be caught ; 
 An' it's often he ran, an' it's often he fought ; 
 An' it's many the one can remember quite well 
 The quare things he did ; and it's oft I heerd tell 
 How he frightened the magistrates in Cahirbally, 
 An' escaped through the sojers in Aherlow valley, 
 An' leathered the yeomen, himself agen four, 
 An' stretched the four strongest on ould Galteemore. 
 
 But the fox must sleep sometimes, the wild deer must rest, 
 
 And treachery prey on the blood of the best ; 
 
 An' many an action of power an' of pride, 
 
 An' many a night on the mountain's bleak side, 
 
 And a thousand great dangers an' toils overpast, 
 
 In darkness of night he was taken at last. 
 
 Now, Shemus, look back on the beautiful moon, 
 For the door of the prison must close on you soon ; 
 An' take your last look at her dim misty light, 
 That falls on the mountain an' valley to-night. 
 One look at the village, one look at the flood, 
 An' one at the sheltering far-distant wood ; 
 Farewell to the forest, farewell to the hill, 
 An' farewell to the friends that will think of you still. 
 Farewell to the patthern, the hurlin' an' wake, 
 An' farewell to the girl that would die for your sake ! 
 
 An' twelve sojers brought him to Maryborough jail, 
 
 An' with irons secured him, refusin' all bail. 
 
 The fleet limbs wor chained, and the sthrong hands wor 
 
 bound, 
 An' he lay down his length on the cold prison ground ; 
 
 1 In Gaelic the consonant r is given its full value before another con- 
 sonant, producing the effect of a dissyllable, e.g. tarbh pronounced 
 ' thorruv ' (a bull). This practice, like many other Gaelic locutions, has been 
 carried into Englis hence 'worruld' for 'world' ; 'firrum' for 'firm,' &c. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 195 
 
 And the dhrames of his childhood kem over him there, 
 
 As gentle and soft as the sweet summer air ; 
 
 An' happy remimbrances crowdin' in ever, 
 
 As fast the foam-flakes dhrift down on the river, 
 
 Bringin' fresh to his heart merry days long gone by, 
 
 Till the tears gathered heavy an' thick in his eye. 
 
 But the tears didn't fall ; for the pride iv his heart 
 Wouldn't suffer one dhrop down his pale cheek to start; 
 An' he sprang to his feet in the dark prison cave, 
 An' he swore with a fierceness that misery gave, 
 By the hopes iv the good an' the cause iv the brave, 
 That, when he was mouldering in the cowld grave, 
 His inimies never should have it to boast 
 His scorn iv their vengeance one moment was lost : 
 His bosom might bleed, but his cheek should be dhry ; 
 For undaunted he lived, and undaunted he'd die. 
 
 Well, as soon as a few weeks were over an' gone, 
 
 The terrible day of the trial came on ; 
 
 There was such a crowd, there was scarce room to stand, 
 
 An' sojers on guard, an' Dragoons sword in hand ; 
 
 An' the court-house so full that the people were bothered, 
 
 An' attornies and criers on the point o' bein' smothered ; 
 
 An' counsellors almost gev' over for dead, 
 
 An' the jury sittin' up in the box overhead ; 
 
 An' the judge settled out so determined an' big, 
 
 An' the gown on his back, an' an elegant wig ; 
 
 An' silence was call'd, an' the minute 'twas said, 
 
 The court was as still as the heart of the dead. 
 
 An' they heard but the opening of one prison-lock, 
 
 An' Shemus O'Brien kem into the dock ; 
 
 For one minute he turned his eyes round on the throng, 
 
 An' then looked on the bars, so firm and so strong. 
 
 An' he saw that he had not a hope nor a friend, 
 
 A chance to escape, nor a word to defend ; 
 
 An' he folded his arms, as he stood there alone, 
 
 As calm an' as cold as a statue of stone. 
 
 02 
 
196 BOOK TIT 
 
 An' they read a big writin', a yard long at laste, 
 
 An' Shemus didn't see it, nor mind it a taste ; 
 
 An', the judge took a big pinch of snuff, an' he says : 
 
 ' Are you guilty or not, Jim O'Brien, if you plaise ?' 
 
 An' all held their breath in silence of dread, 
 
 An' Shemus O'Brien made answer an' said : 
 
 4 My lord, if you ask me if in my lifetime 
 
 I thought any treason, or did any crime, 
 
 That should call to my cheek, as I stand alone here, 
 
 The hot blush of shame or the coldness of fear, 
 
 Though I stood by the grave to receive my death-blow, 
 
 Before God an' the world I would answer you No ! 
 
 But if you would ask me, as I think it like, 
 
 If in the Rebellion I carried a pike, 
 
 An' fought for Ould Ireland, from the first to the close, 
 
 An' shed the heart's blood of her bitterest foes 
 
 I answer you YES ; an' I tell you again, 
 
 Though I stand here to perish, it's my glory that then 
 
 In her cause I was willin' my veins should run dry, 
 
 An' that now for her sake I am ready to die.' 
 
 Then the silence was great, and the jury smiled bright ; 
 
 An' the judge wasn't sorry the job was made light ; 
 
 By my soul, it's himself was the crabbed ould chap ! 
 
 In a twinkling he pulled on his ugly black cap. 
 
 Then Shemus's mother, in the crowd standin' by, 
 
 Called out to the judge with a pitiful cry : 
 
 * Oh ! judge, darlin', don't oh ! don't say the word ! 
 
 The crathur is young have mercy, my lord ! 
 
 You don't know him, my lord ; oh ! don't give him to ruin ! 
 
 He was foolish he didn't know what he was doin' ; 
 
 He's the kindliest crathur, the tinderest-hearted 
 
 Don't part us for ever, we that's so long parted ! 
 
 Judge mavourneen, forgive him forgive him, my lord ! 
 
 An' God will forgive you oh ! don't say the word ! ' 
 
 That was the first minute O'Brien was shaken, 
 When he saw that he was not quite forgot or forsaken ! 
 An' down his pale cheek, at the word of his mother, 
 The big tears were running, one after the other ; 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 197 
 
 An' two or three times he endeavoured to spake, 
 
 But the strong manly voice used to falter and break. 
 
 But at last, by the strength of his high-mounting pride, 
 
 He conquered an' master'd his grief's swelling tide ; 
 
 An' says he, * Mother, don't don't break your poor heart ! 
 
 Sure, sooner or later, the dearest must part. 
 
 An' God knows it's better than wand'ring in fear 
 
 On the bleak trackless mountain among the wild deer, 
 
 To be in the grave, where the heart, head, an' breast, 
 
 From labour and sorrow for ever shall rest. 
 
 Then, mother, my darlin', don't cry any more 
 
 Don't make me seem broken in this my last hour ; 
 
 For I wish, when my heart's lyin' under the raven, 
 
 No true man can say that I died like a craven.' 
 
 Then towards the judge Shemus bent down his head, 
 An' that minute the solemn death-sentence was said. 
 
 PART III 
 
 The mornin' was bright, an' the mists rose on high, 
 
 An' the lark whistled merrily in the clear sky ; 
 
 But why are the men standing idle so late? 
 
 An' why do the crowd gather fast in the street ? 
 
 What come chey to talk of? What come they to see? 
 
 An' why does the long rope hang from the cross-tree ? 
 
 Oh ! Shemus O'Brien, pray fervent an' fast 
 
 May the saints take your soul, for this day is your last. 
 
 Pray fast, an' pray strong, for the moment is nigh, 
 
 When, strong, proud, an' great as you are, you must die ! 
 
 At last they drew open the big prison gate, 
 
 An' out came the Sheriffs an' sojers in state. 
 
 An' a cart in the middle, and Shemus was in it 
 
 Not paler, but prouder than ever, that minit ; 
 
 An' as soon as the people saw Shemus O'Brien, 
 
 Wid prayin' and blessin', an all the girls cryin', 
 
 A wild wailin' sound kem on all by degrees, 
 
 Like the sound of the lonesome wind bio win' through trees. 
 
198 BOOK III 
 
 On, on to the gallows the Sheriffs are gone, 
 
 An' the car an' the sojers go steadily on, 
 
 An' at every side swellin' around of the cart, 
 
 A wild sorrowful sound that would open your heart. 
 
 Now under the gallows the cart takes its stand, 
 
 An' the hangman gets up with a rope in his hand, 
 
 An' the priest, havin' blest him, gets down on the ground, 
 
 An' Shemus O'Brien throws one look around. 
 
 Then the hangman drew near, and the people grew still, 
 
 Young faces turn sickly, an' warm hearts turn chill ; 
 
 An' the rope bein' ready, his neck was made bare, 
 
 For the gripe of the life-strangling cords to prepare ; 
 
 An' the good priest has left him, havin' said his last prayer. 
 
 But the good priest did more for his hands he unbound ! 
 An' with one daring spring Jim has leaped on the ground ! 
 
 Bang ! bang ! go the carbines, an' clash go the sabres ; 
 He's not down ! he's alive ! Now attend to him, neighbours ! 
 
 By one shout from the people the heavens are shaken 
 
 One shout that the dead of the world might awaken. 
 
 Your swords they may glitter, your carbines go bang, 
 
 But if you want hanging, 'tis yourselves you must hang ! 
 
 To-night he'll be sleepin' in Aherlow Glen, 
 
 An' the divil's in the dice if you catch him agin. 
 
 The sojers run this way, the Sheriffs run that, 
 
 An' Father Malone lost his new Sunday hat ; 
 
 An' the Sheriffs were, both of them, punished sevarely, 
 
 An' fined like the divil, because Jim done them fairly ! 
 
CHARLES J. KICKHAM 199 
 
 CHARLES J. KICKHAM 
 
 KICKHAM was above all things * kindly Irish of the Irish, 
 neither Saxon nor Italian' a patriot first and a poet after. 
 Still, a true poet he was whether in verse or in prose, with a 
 note both simple and strong, if not deep or varied ; a keen 
 lover and observer of Nature, in deep and tender sympathy 
 with the men and women about him, and with a knowledge of 
 the manners, customs, feelings and moods of the Irish peasant 
 greater, I think, than was possessed by any other man I 
 ever met. If this sympathy and knowledge were shown in 
 larger measure in his novels than in his poems, it was that in 
 the former he had ampler room for their display, for, whether 
 by chance or by design, he wrote much in prose and but little 
 in verse. But in prose or in verse he showed clearly how well 
 he knew and loved his country. He may be reckoned as the 
 chief of the Fenian poets a smaller and weaker band of 
 litterateurs than the poets of The Nation, but one which 
 accomplished something of considerable note in the domain 
 of practical affairs. For some twenty years before we went 
 to prison in 1865, while in prison, and after we left it, I knew 
 Kickham as probably no other man did. The better I knew 
 him, the more highly I valued his character and his intellect. 
 Maimed and disfigured by an accident which would have 
 crushed all spirit out of most men, he worked to his last day 
 with an unselfish devotion that no man has ever surpassed. 
 And, uncompromising rebel though he was from the beginning 
 to the end, the spirit in which he worked was one of love, 
 not of hate. A man endowed with his gifts of observation, 
 humour, and romantic feeling -and with his humane, 
 sincere and lovable character, might in happier circumstances 
 have rivalled Carleton as a delineator of Irish peasant life. 
 But his steps were led in other and more perilous paths, and 
 the writings he has left are but evidence of what he might have 
 accomplished if his whole strength had been turned in the 
 direction of literature. He found other and what he deemed 
 
200 BOOK III 
 
 more pressing work to do for Ireland ; and it is certainly not 
 for me to quarrel with his choice. 
 
 JOHN O'LEARY 
 
 Charles Joseph Kickham was born at Mullinahone, County Tipperary, 
 in 1828. He began at about twenty years of age to write verse and prose 
 for various periodicals. His stories of Irish life SALLY KAVANAGH ; 
 FOR THE OLD LAND ; and KNOCKNAGOW all appeared first in serial form. 
 In 1863 he joined the staff of The Irish People, the organ of the Fenian 
 movement, edited by his friend and colleague Mr. John O'Leary, and was 
 arrested with him in that year, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servi- 
 tude O'Leary receiving twenty. His eyesight and hearing had been 
 seriously injured by a gunpowder accident in youth, and though during his 
 imprisonment he almost lost the use of both senses he remained after his 
 release, as he had been formerly, one of the guiding spirits of the Fenian 
 movement. He died at Blackrock, near Dublin, in 1882, and was buried at 
 Mullinahone. His poems have never been collected. A fine statue by 
 Mr. John Hughes has recently been erected to his memory in the town of 
 Tipperary. 
 
 RORY OF THE HlLLS 
 
 1 THAT rake up near the rafters, 
 
 Why leave it there so long ? 
 The handle, of the best of ash, 
 
 Is smooth and straight and strong; 
 And, mother, will you tell me, 
 
 Why did my father frown 
 When to make the hay, in summer-time, 
 
 I climbed to take it down ? J 
 She looked into her husband's eyes, 
 
 While her own with light did fill, 
 ' You'll shortly know the reason> boy ! ' 
 
 Said Rory of the Hill. 
 
 The midnight moon is lighting up 
 
 The slopes of Sliav-na-man, 
 Whose foot affrights the startled hares 
 
 So long before the dawn ? 
 He stopped just where the Anner's stream 
 
 Winds up the woods anear, 
 Then whistled low and looked around 
 
 To see the coast was clear. 
 
CHARLES J. KICKHAM 201 
 
 The sheeling door flew open 
 
 In he stepped with right good-will 
 
 1 God save all here and bless your WORK,' 
 SaidRoryofthe Hill. 
 
 Right hearty was the welcome 
 
 That greeted him, I ween, 
 For years gone by he fully proved 
 
 How well he loved the Green ; 
 And there was one amongst them 
 
 Who grasped him by the hand 
 One who through all that weary time 
 
 Roamed on a foreign strand ; 
 He brought them news from gallant friends 
 
 That made their heart-strings thrill 
 ' My sowl ' ! I never doubted them ! ' 
 
 Said Rory of the Hill. 
 
 They sat around the humble board 
 
 Till dawning of the day, 
 And yet not song nor shout I heard 
 
 No revellers were they : 
 Some brows flushed red with gladness, 
 
 While some were grimly pale ; 
 But pale or red, from out those eyes 
 
 Flashed souls that never quail ! 
 * And sing us now about the vow, 
 
 They swore for to fulfil 
 'You'll read it yet in history,' 
 
 Said Rory of the Hill. 
 
 Next day the ashen handle 
 
 He took down from where it hung, 
 The toothed rake, full scornfully, 
 
 Into the fire he flung ; 
 And in its stead a shining blade 
 
 Is gleaming once again 
 (Oh ! for a hundred thousand of 
 
 Such weapons and such men ! ) 
 
202 BOOK III 
 
 Right soldierly he wielded it, 
 
 And -going through his drill 
 ' Attention ' ' charge ' ' front, point ' * advance ! 
 
 Cried Rory of the Hill. 
 
 She looked at him with woman's pride, 
 
 With pride and woman's fears ; 
 She flew to him, she clung to him, 
 
 And dried away her tears ; 
 He feels her pulse beat truly, 
 
 While her arms around him twine 
 < Now God be praised for your stout heart, 
 
 Brave little wife of mine.' 
 He swung his first-born in the air, 
 
 While joy his heart did fill 
 * You'll be a FREEMAN yet, my boy,' 
 
 Said Rory of the Hill. 
 
 Ohl knowledge is a wondrous power, 
 
 And stronger than the wind ; 
 And thrones shall fall, and despots bow, 
 
 Before the might of mind ; 
 The poet and the orator 
 
 The heart of man can sway, 
 And would to the kind heavens 
 
 That Wolfe Tone were here to-day ! 
 Yet trust me, friends, dear Ireland's strength 
 
 Her truest strength is still 
 The rough-and-ready roving boys, 
 
 Like Rory of the Hill. 
 
 MVLES O'HEA 
 
 His locks are whitened with the snows of nigh a hundred years, 
 And now with cheery look and step the journey's end he nears ; 
 He feared his God, and bravely played the part he had to play, 
 For lack of courage never stained the soul of Myles O'Hea. 
 
 A young man 'lighted from his steed, and by that old man stood. 
 ' Good friend,' he asked, ' what see you in yon castle by the wood ? 
 
CHARLES J. KICK HAM 203 
 
 I've marked the proud glare of your eye and of your cheek the 
 
 glow.' 
 ' My heart,' the old man said, * went back to eighty years ago ! 
 
 ' I was a beardless stripling then, but proud as any lord : 
 And well I might in my right hand I grasped a freeman's sword ; 
 And, though an humble peasant's son, proud squires and even peers 
 Would greet me as a comrade we were the Volunteers ! 
 
 ' That castle was our colonel's. On yonder grassy glade 
 
 At beat of drum our regiment oft mustered for parade, 
 
 And from that castle's parapets scarfs waved and bright eyes 
 
 shone 
 When our bugles woke the echoes with the march of " Garryowen." 
 
 * Oh ! then 'twas never thought a shame or crime to love the land, 
 For freedom was the watchword, nerving every heart and hand ; 
 And Grattan, Flood, and Charlemont were blessed by high and 
 
 low 
 When our army won the Parliament of eighty years ago.' 
 
 * And what of him, your colonel ?' ' He, good old colonel, died 
 While the nation's heart was pulsing with the full and flowing tide 
 Of liberty and plenteousness that coursed through every vein. 
 How soon it ebbed, that surging tide ! Will it ever flow again ? 
 
 * Who owned the castle after him ? ' 'His son my friend and foe. 
 You see yon rocks among the gorse in the valley down below. 
 We leaped among them from the rocks, and through their ranks 
 
 we bore ; 
 I headed the United men, he led my yeoman corps. 
 
 ' They reeled before our reddened pikes ; his blood had dyed my 
 
 blade, 
 
 But I spared him for his father's sake ; and well the debt he paid ! 
 For how, when right was trampled down, 'scaped I the tyrant's 
 
 ban? 
 The yeoman captain's castle, sir, contained an outlawed man ! 
 
 * Yes, England was his glory the mistress of the sea, 
 
 " William," " Wellington," and " Wooden Walls," his toasts would 
 ever be. 
 
204 BOOK III 
 
 I'd pledge " Green Erin and her Cause," and then he'd laugh and 
 
 say 
 That he knew one honest traitor the "rebel" Myles O'Hea. 
 
 ' In after-years he threatened hard to pull our roof-trees down 
 
 If we failed to vote at his command. Some quailed before his 
 
 frown. 
 
 Then I seized the old green banner and I shouted " Altars free ! " 
 The gallant Forties, 1 to a man, left him to follow me ! 
 
 * Well, God be with him. He was forced from home and lands to 
 
 part, 
 But to think 'twas England robbed him it was that that broke his 
 
 heart. 
 " Old friend," he said, and grasped my hand, " I'm loyal to my 
 
 Queen, 
 But would such a law, at such a time, be made in College 
 
 Green?" 
 
 ' And while the tears rolled down his cheeks, his grandson, a brave 
 
 youth, 
 
 Clung to that tree beside the brook (good sir, I tell you truth), 
 And, sobbing, kissed it like a child ; nor tears could I restrain.' 
 The young man turned and hid his face in his hunter's flowing 
 
 mane. 
 
 ' And Myles O'Hea,' he spake at length, ' have tropic suns and time 
 So changed the boy who weeping clung to yon old spreading lime ? 
 I was that boy. My father's home and lands are mine again : 
 But for every pound he paid for them I paid the Scotchman ten.' 
 
 High wassail in the castle halls. The wealthy bride is there, 
 And gentlemen and tenantry, proud dames and maidens fair, 
 And there like Irish bard of old beside the bridegroom gay 
 A white-haired peasant calmly sits ; 'tis poor old Myles O'Hea. 
 
 1 The forty-shilling freeholders, whose votes won Catholic Emanci- 
 pation, and who were themselves disfranchised in consequence. 
 
CHARLES J. KICK HAM 205 
 
 With swimming eyes the bridegroom grasps that noble rustic's 
 
 hand, 
 While round the board, with brimming cups, the wassailers all 
 
 stand, 
 
 And louder swelled the harper's strains and wilder rose the cheers 
 When he pledged ' Your comrades long ago the Irish Volunteers.' 
 
 * Now, God be praised,' quoth Myles O'Hea, 'they foully lie who 
 
 say 
 
 That poor Old Ireland's glory's gone, for ever passed away. 
 But, gentlemen, what say you ? Were not this a braver show 
 If sword-hilts clanked against the board like eighty years ago?' 
 
 THE IRISH PEASANT GIRL 
 
 SHE lived beside the Anner, 
 
 At the foot of Slievenamon, 
 A gentle peasant girl, 
 
 With mild eyes like the dawn 
 Her lips were dewy rose-buds ; 
 
 Her teeth of pearls rare ; 
 And a snow-drift 'neath a beechen bough, 
 
 Her neck and nut-brown hair. 
 
 How pleasant 'twas to meet her 
 
 On Sunday, when the bell 
 Was filling, with its mellow tones, 
 
 Lone wood and grassy dell ! 
 And when at eve young maidens 
 
 Stray'd the river bank along, 
 The widow's brown-haired daughter 
 
 Was loveliest of the throng. 
 
 Oh, brave, brave Irish girls 
 
 We well may call you brave ! 
 Sure the least of all your perils 
 
 Is the stormy ocean wave, 
 When you leave your quiet valleys 
 
 And cross the Atlantic foam, 
 To hoard your hard-won earnings 
 
 For the helpless ones at home. 
 
2o6 BOOK III 
 
 'Write word to my own dear mother, 
 
 Say we'll meet with God above ; 
 And tell my little brothers 
 
 I send them all my love. 
 May the angels ever guard them 
 
 Is their dying sister's prayer' 
 And folded in the letter 
 
 Was a braid of nut-brown hair. 
 
 Ah, cold and well-nigh callous 
 
 This weary heart has grown 
 For thy helpless fate, dear Ireland, 
 
 And for sorrows of my own ; 
 Yet a tear my eye will moisten, 
 
 As by Anner's side I stray, 
 For the lily of the mountain foot 
 
 That withered far away. 
 
 ST. JOHN'S EVE 
 
 ' Do you remember that St. John's Eve, three years ago, when \ve walked 
 round by Bally cullen to see the bonfires 1' Letter to Kickham in Woking 
 Convict Prison. 
 
 YES, Gertrude, I remember well 
 
 That St. John's Eve, three years ago, 
 When, as the slanting sunbeams fell 
 
 Across the mountains all aglow, 
 Upon the lonely bridge we turned 
 
 To watch the roseate, russet hue, 
 Till faint and fainter still it burned 
 
 As if 'twere quenched by falling dew. 
 
 Then up the sloping hill we clomb, 
 
 And backward looked with pensive eyes, 
 Along the vale, our own sweet home, 
 
 The dearest spot beneath the skies ; 
 Dear for the golden hours that were 
 
 When life's glad morn all radiant shone, 
 Fondly dear for loved ones there, 
 
 And dearer still for loved ones gone. 
 
CHARLES J. KICKHAM 207 
 
 The sun glides down behind the hill ; 
 
 The shadows deepen while we gaze ; 
 The chapel, the Old Home, the mill, 
 
 Are hidden in the twilight haze. 
 The wayside shepherd on the height 
 
 Waits our approach, nor seems to heed 
 His vagrant flock throng out of sight 
 
 Adown the winding road they speed. 
 
 Deep learn'd was he in Gaelic lore, 
 
 And loved to talk of days gone by; 
 (A saddening theme, those days of yore !) 
 
 And still he turned with sparkling eye 
 From Druid rites and Christian fane, 
 
 From champion bold and monarch grand, 
 To tell of fray and foray when 
 
 His sires were princes in the land. 
 
 When to the Well-mile bridge we came, 
 
 You pointed where the moonbeams white 
 Silvered the stream ; when, lo ! a flame, 
 
 A wavy flame of ruddy light, 
 Leaped up, the farmyard fence above, 
 
 And, while his children's shout rang high, 
 His cow? the farmer slowly drove 
 
 Across the blaze, he knew not why. 1 
 
 Soon round the vale above, below, 
 
 And high upon the blue hills' brows 
 The bonfires shine with steady glow, 
 
 Or blink through screening orchard boughs. 
 And now, in my lone dismal cell, 
 
 While I that starry scene recall 
 The fields, the hills, the sheltered dell 
 
 I close my eyes and see them all. 
 
 My dear-loved land must it be mine 
 No more, except in dreams, to see ? 
 
 1 A relic of ancient fire-worship practised on St. John's Eve, and still 
 lingering in some parts of Ireland. 
 
208 BOOK III 
 
 Yet think not, friends, that I repine 
 
 At my sad fate if sad it be. 
 Think not the captive weakly pines, 
 
 That from his soul all joy hath flown. 
 Oh, no ! the ' solemn starlight ' shines 
 
 As brightly as it ever shone. 
 
 And though I've had my share of pain, 
 
 And sunken is my cheek and pale, 
 Yet, Gertrude, were it ours again 
 
 On St. John's Eve, in Compsey vale, 
 While loitering by the Anner stream 
 
 To view the mountain's purpled dome 
 Waiting to see the bonfires gleam 
 
 All round our quiet hill-clasped home 
 
 We'd talk of bygone blissful hours 
 
 And oh ! what blissful hours I've known ! 
 It was a world of smiles and flowers, 
 
 That little home-world of our own. 
 And happy thoughts each heart would fill 
 
 What else but happy could we be, 
 While Hope stood smiling on the hill 
 
 And in the valley, Memory ? 
 
 ROBERT DWYER JOYCE 
 
 A VIGOROUS ballad-poet, who was born at Glenosheen, County 
 Limerick, in 1830, and died in Dublin on October 24, 1883. He 
 practised as a physician with much success in Boston, U.S.A. 
 His poems are very numerous, and he published four volumes 
 of verse, as well as a couple of volumes of stories. Some of 
 his songs and ballads have much power. He was a frequent 
 contributor to The Irish People, and may be reckoned as one 
 of the poets of the Fenian movement. His most ambitious 
 work is a version of the tale of ' Deirdre,' which had an immense 
 success in the U.S.A. He was brother of Dr. P. W. Joyce, 
 the well-known educationalist and collector of Irish music. 
 
ROBER T DW YER JO YCE 209 
 
 FlNEEN THE ROVER 
 
 AN old castle towers o'er the billow 
 
 That thunders by Cleena's green land, 
 And there dwelt as gallant a rover 
 
 As ever grasped hilt by the hand. 
 Eight stately towers of the waters 
 Lie anchored m Baltimore Bay, 
 And over their twenty score sailors, 
 Oh ! who but the Rover holds sway ? 
 Then, ho ! for Fineen the Rover I 
 
 Fineen O'Driscoll the free ! 
 Straight as the mast of his galley, 
 And wild as the wave of the sea ! 
 
 The Saxons of Cork and Moyallo, 
 
 They harried his lands with their powers ; 
 He gave them a taste of his cannon, 
 
 And drove them like wolves from his towers. 
 The men of Clan London brought over 
 
 Their strong fleet to make him a slave ; 
 They met him by Mizen's wild highland, 
 
 And the sharks crunched their bones 'neath the wave 
 Then, ho ! for Fineen the Rover, 
 
 Fineen O'Driscoll the free ; 
 With step like the red stag of Beara, 
 And voice like the bold sounding sea. 
 
 Long time in that old battered castle, 
 Or out on the waves with his clan, 
 He feasted and ventured and conquered, 
 
 But ne'er struck his colours to man. 
 In a fight 'gainst the foes of his country 
 He died as a brave man should die ; 
 And he sleeps 'neath the waters of Cleena, 
 Where the waves sing his caoine to the sky. 
 Then, ho ! for Fineen the Rover, 
 
 Fineen O'Driscoll the free ; 
 With eye like the ospre/s at morning, 
 And smile like the sun on the sea. 
 
210 BOOK III 
 
 THE BLACKSMITH OF LIMERICK 
 
 HE grasped his ponderous hammer ; he could not stand it more, 
 To hear the bombshells bursting and the thundering battle's roar. 
 He said : ' The breach they're mounting, the Dutchman's murder- 
 ing crew 
 I'll try my hammer on their heads and see what that can do ! 
 
 4 Now, swarthy Ned and Moran, make up that iron well ; 
 
 'Tis Sarsfield's horse that wants the shoes, so mind not shot or 
 
 shell.' 
 ' Ah, sure,' cried both, ' the horse can wait for Sarsfield's on the 
 
 wall, 
 And where you go we'll follow, with you to stand or fall !' 
 
 The blacksmith raised his hammer, and rushed into the street, 
 His 'prentice boys behind him, the ruthless foe to meet 
 High on the breach of Limerick, with dauntless hearts they stood 
 Where the bombshells burst and shot fell thick, and redly ran the 
 blood. 
 
 4 Now look you, brown-haired Moran, and mark you, swarthy Ned; 
 This day we'll prove the thickness of many a Dutchman's head ! 
 Hurrah ! upon their bloody path they're mounting gallantly ; 
 And now the first that tops the breach, leave him to this and me ! 
 
 The first that gained the rampart, he was a captain brave ! 
 
 A captain of the Grenadiers, with blood-stained dirk and glaive ; 
 
 He pointed and he parried, but it was all in vain, 
 
 For fast through skull and helmet the hammer found his brain ! 
 
 The next that topp'd the rampart, he was a colonel bold, 
 Bright thro' the murk of battle his helmet flashed with gold. 
 * Gold is no match for iron ! ' the doughty blacksmith said, 
 As with that ponderous hammer he cracked his foeman's head ! 
 
 ' Hurrah for gallant Limerick ! ' black Ned and Moran cried, 
 
 As on the Dutchmen's leaden heads their hammers well they 
 
 plied ; 
 
 A bombshell burst between them one fell without a groan, 
 One leaped into the lurid air, and down the breach was thrown ! 
 
ROBERT DWYER JOYCE 211 
 
 ' Brave smith ! brave smith ! ' cried Sarsfield, ' beware the 
 
 treacherous mine 
 Brave smith ! brave smith ! fall backward, or surely death is 
 
 thine ! ' 
 
 The smith sprang up the rampart and leaped the blood-stained wall, 
 As high into the shuddering air went foemen, breach and all ! 
 
 Up like a red volcano they thundered wild and high, 
 
 Spear, gun, and shattered standard, and foemen thro' the sky ; 
 
 And dark and bloody was the shower that round the blacksmith 
 
 fell- 
 He thought upon his 'prentice boys, they were avenged well I 
 
 On foemen and defenders a silence gathered down, 
 
 'Twas broken by a triumph-shout that shook the ancient town ; 
 
 As out its heroes sallied, and bravely charged and slew, 
 
 And taught King William and his men what Irish hearts can do ! 
 
 Down rushed the swarthy blacksmith unto the river side, 
 He hammered on the foes' pontoon, to sink it in the tide ; 
 The timber it was tough and strong, it took no crack or strain 
 Mavrone, 'twon't break,' the blacksmith roared; Til try their 
 heads again ! ' 
 
 The blacksmith sought his smithy, and blew his bellows strong ; 
 He shod the steed of Sarsfield, but o'er it sang no song : 
 Ochon ! my boys are dead,' he cried ; ' their loss I'll long deplore, 
 But comfort's in my heart their graves are red with foreign 
 gore !' 
 
 JOHN KEEGAN CASEY 
 
 SON of a peasant farmer, born near Mullingar, County 
 Westmeath. He was imprisoned as a Fenian in 1867, and in 
 consequence of his sufferings died in 1870, aged twenty-three. 
 His funeral at Glasnevin is said to have been attended by 
 fifty thousand people. He was one of the few poets produced 
 
 p 2 
 
212 BOOK III 
 
 by the Fenian movement. That his poetry had fire and sweet- 
 ness the following verses show, and these, with his youth and 
 his fate, have greatly endeared him to his countrymen. 
 
 His POEMS have been published by Cameron Ferguson & Co., Glasgow. 
 
 THE RISING OF THE MOON 
 
 A.D. 1798 
 
 * OH, then, tell me, Shawn O'Ferrall, 
 
 Tell me why you hurry so ? ' 
 ' Hush ! ma bouchal, hush, and listen ; ' 
 
 And his cheeks were all a-glow : 
 4 I bear ordhers from the Captain 
 
 Get you ready quick and soon ; 
 For the pikes must be together 
 
 At the risin' of the moon.' 
 
 'Oh, then, tell me, Shawn O'Ferrall, 
 Where the gath'rin' is to be ? ' 
 
 * In the ould spot by the river, 
 
 Right well known to you and me ; 
 One word more for signal token 
 
 Whistle up the marchin' tune, 
 With your pike upon your shoulder, 
 
 By the risin' of the moon.' 
 
 Out from many a mud- wall cabin 
 
 Eyes were watching thro' that night ; 
 Many a manly chest was throbbing 
 
 For the blessed warning light. 
 Murmurs passed along the valleys, 
 
 Like the banshee's lonely croon, 
 And a thousand blades were flashing 
 
 At the risin' of the moon. 
 
 There, beside the singing river, 
 
 That dark mass of men were seen 
 
 Far above the shining weapons 
 Hung their own beloved ' Green.' 
 
JOHN KEEGAN CASEY 213 
 
 ' Death to ev'ry foe and traitor ! 
 
 Forward ! strike the marchin' tune, 
 And hurrah, my boys, for freedom ! 
 
 'Tis the risin' of the moon.' 
 
 Well they fought for poor Old Ireland, 
 
 And full bitter was their fate ; 
 (Oh ! what glorious pride and sorrow 
 
 Fill the name of 'Ninety-Eight !) 
 Yet, thank God, e'en still are beating 
 
 Hearts in manhood's burning noon, 
 Who would follow in their footsteps 
 
 At the risin' of the moon ! 
 
 MAIRE MY GIRL 
 
 Air ' Mairgread ni Chealleadh ' 
 
 OVER the dim blue hills 
 
 Strays a wild river, 
 Over the dim blue hills 
 
 Rests my heart ever. 
 Dearer and brighter than 
 
 Jewels and pearl, 
 Dwells she in beauty there, 
 
 Maire ' my girl. 
 
 Down upon Claris heath 
 
 Shines the soft berry, 
 On the brown harvest tree 
 
 Droops the red cherry. 
 Sweeter thy honey lips, 
 
 Softer the curl 
 Straying adown thy cheeks, 
 
 Maire my girl. 
 
 'Twas on an April eve 
 
 That I first met her ; 
 Many an eve shall pass 
 
 Ere I forget her. 
 
 1 Pronounced, Maurya. 
 
214 BOOK III 
 
 Since my young heart has been 
 
 Wrapped in a whirl, 
 Thinking and dreaming of 
 
 Maire my girl. 
 
 She is too kind and fond 
 
 Ever to grieve me, 
 She has too pure a heart 
 
 E'er to deceive me. 
 Were I Tyrconnell's chief 
 
 Or Desmond's earl, 
 Life would be dark, wanting 
 
 Maire my girl. 
 
 Over the dim blue hills 
 
 Strays a wild river, 
 Over the dim blue hills 
 
 Rests my heart ever ; 
 Dearer and brighter than 
 
 Jewels or pearl, 
 Dwells she in beauty there, 
 
 Maire my girl. 
 
 ELLEN O'LEARY 
 
 THE Fenian movement differed from that of 1848 in being 
 singularly unproductive of poetry a fact which is all the more 
 remarkable because one of the leaders of the movement and 
 editor of its journal, The Irish People, was a born lover of 
 letters. This was Mr. John O'Leary, brother of Ellen O'Leary, 
 from whose small volume LAYS OF COUNTRY, HOME AND 
 FRIENDS (1891) two pieces are here given. Miss O'Leary 
 was born in Tipperary, 1831, and from about her twentieth year 
 was a contributor to various periodicals, including of course 
 her brother's journal. She took an active part in the Fenian 
 conspiracy after the arrest of Stephens, whose escape she 
 materially assisted. Her brother was sentenced to twenty years' 
 
ELLEN O'LEARY 215 
 
 penal servitude in 1865, and returned to Ireland after five 
 years of imprisonment and fourteen of exile. She then joined 
 him in Dublin. She died in 1889, after a painful illness borne 
 with her wonted gentleness and fortitude. Her poems have 
 been described by the editor of her volume as ' simple field- 
 flowers which blossomed above the subterranean workings of a 
 grim conspiracy.' 
 
 To GOD AND IRELAND TRUE 
 
 I SIT beside my darling's grave, 
 
 Who in the prison died, 
 And tho' my tears fall thick and fast, 
 
 I think of him with pride : 
 Ay, softly fall my tears like dew, 
 For one to God and Ireland true. 
 
 * I love my God o'er all,' he said, 
 
 ' And then I love my land, 
 And next I love my Lily sweet, 
 
 Who pledged me her white hand : 
 To each to all I'm ever true ; 
 To God to Ireland and to you.' 
 
 No tender nurse his hard bed smoothed 
 
 Or softly raised his head ; 
 He fell asleep and woke in heaven 
 
 Ere I knew he was dead ; 
 Yet why should I my darling rue ? 
 He was to God and Ireland true. 
 
 Oh ! 'tis a glorious memory ; 
 
 I'm prouder than a queen 
 To sit beside my hero's grave, 
 
 And think on what has been : 
 And, oh, my darling, I am true 
 To God to Ireland and to you. 
 
216 BOOK III 
 
 MY OLD HOME 
 
 LADY LODGE 
 
 A POOR old cottage tottering to its fall ; 
 
 Some faded rose-trees scattered o'er the wall ; 
 
 Four wooden pillars all aslant one way ; 
 
 A plot in front, bright green, amid decay, 
 
 Where my wee pets, whene'er they came to tea, 
 
 Laughed, danced, and played, and shouted in high glee 
 
 A rusty paling and a broken gate 
 
 Shut out the world and bounded my estate. 
 
 Dusty and damp within, and rather bare ; 
 Chokeful of books, here, there and everywhere ; 
 Old-fashioned windows, and old doors that creaked, 
 Old ceilings cracked and grey, old walls that leaked ; 
 Old chairs and tables, and an ancient lady 
 Worked out in tapestry, all rather shady ; 
 Bright pictures, in gilt frames, the only colour, 
 Making the grimy wallpaper look duller. 
 
 What was the charm, the glamour that o'erspread 
 That dingy house and made it dear ? The dead 
 The dead the gentle, loving, kind and sweet, 
 The truest, tenderest heart that ever beat. 
 While she was with me 'twas indeed a home, 
 Where every friend was welcome when they'd come. 
 Her soft eyes shone with gladness, and her grace 
 Refined and beautified the poor old place. 
 
 But she is gone who made home for me there, 
 Whose child-like laugh, whose light step on the stair 
 Filled me with joy and gladness, hope and cheer. 
 To heaven she soared, and left me lonely here. 
 The old house now has got a brand-new face ; 
 The roses are uprooted ; there's no trace 
 Of broken bough or blossom no decay 
 The past is dead the world wags on alway. 
 
JOHN FRANCIS O> DON NELL 217 
 
 JOHN FRANCIS O'DONNELL 
 
 BORN in Limerick, 1837, J. F. O'Donnell plunged very early 
 into journalism, writing for innumerable papers in Ireland, 
 England, and the United States of America. He was one of 
 the prominent contributors to Mr. O'Leary's Irish People, and 
 was a warm sympathiser with the Fenian movement. In 1873 he 
 obtained an appointment in the office of the Agent-General for 
 New Zealand, but died in the following year, aged thirty-seven. 
 His POEMS were published by the Southwark Irish Literary Club, 
 with an introduction by Richard Bowling, in 1891. He wrote 
 apparently with great energy and at lightning speed, throwing 
 his idea into the first words that came. The general level of 
 his work is therefore not so high as one might expect from the 
 following song, in which the impetuosity and spirit of the 
 impromptu are happily united with a beautiful technique. 
 
 A SPINNING SONG 
 
 MY love to fight the Saxon goes, 
 
 And bravely shines his sword of steel ; 
 A heron's feather decks his brows, 
 
 And a spur on either heel ; 
 His steed is blacker than the sloe, 
 
 And fleeter than the falling star ; 
 Amid the surging ranks he'll go 
 
 And shout for joy of war. 
 
 Tinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle ; let the white wool drift and 
 
 dwindle. 
 
 Oh ! we weave a damask doublet for my love's coat of steel. 
 Hark ! the timid, turning treadle crooning soft, old-fashioned 
 
 ditties 
 To the low, slow murmur of the brown round wheel. 
 
 My love is pledged to Ireland's fight ; 
 
 My love would die for Ireland's weal, 
 To win her back her ancient right, 
 
 And make her foemen reel. 
 
218 BOOK IH 
 
 Oh ! close I'll clasp him to my breast 
 
 When homeward from the war he comes ; 
 The fires shall light the mountain's crest, 
 
 The valley peal with drums. 
 Tinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle ; let the white wool drift and 
 
 dwindle. 
 
 Oh ! we weave a damask doublet for my love's coat of steel. 
 Hark ! the timid, turning treadle crooning soft, old-fashioned 
 
 ditties 
 To the low, slow murmur of the brown round wheel. 
 
 THOMAS CAULF1ELD IRWIN 
 
 IRWIN possessed many of the essential qualities of a poet ; he 
 had imagination and music, and he had gained wide culture by 
 education and travel. But for a strain of mental derangement 
 he might have left behind him a very distinguished name. In 
 his later days, as he used to be seen in the Dublin streets, he 
 presented a weird and uncouth but venerable figure. The 
 gentle mania which had then descended upon him had, how- 
 ever, occasionally made its appearance much earlier. The 
 great Irish antiquary, O'Donovan, has left a picture of him and 
 his ways in a note to Sir Samuel Ferguson : 
 
 I understand that the mad poet who is my next-door neighbour 
 claims acquaintance with you. He says I am his enemy, and watch him 
 through the thickness of the wall which divides our houses. He threatens 
 in consequence to shoot me. One of us must leave. I have a houseful 
 of books and children ; he has an umbrella and a revolver. If, under the 
 circumstances, you could use your influence and persuade him to remove 
 to other quarters, you would confer a great favour on, yours sincerely, 
 JOHN O'DONOVAN. 
 
 Irwin's besetting sin was diffuseness. He published six 
 volumes, and much of them is a waste of words. But perhaps 
 there is scarcely one of his poems in which one may not find 
 
THOMAS CAULFIELD IRW1N 219 
 
 lines that ring with the unmistakable note of true poetry. The 
 'mad poet' was a keen observer both of men and Nature, 
 delighting in life wherever he found it, and capable of render- 
 ing what he saw and felt in verse now charged with tragic 
 solemnity, and now coloured with a delicate fancy. He must 
 be reckoned as a great but unrealised possibility in modern Irish 
 literature. 
 
 Thomas Caulfield Irwin was born in the County Down, 1823. He wrote 
 much in various periodicals, and was on the staff of The Irish People, the 
 organ of the Fenian movement, edited by John O'Leary. In an essay on 
 his writings in Tinsley^s Magazine he is described as the ' Irish Keats. ' He 
 published his VERSICLES in 1856, and followed it with IRISH POEMS AND 
 LEGENDS, 1869; SONGS AND ROMANCES, 1878; WINTER AND SUMMER 
 STORIES (prose), 1879 ; PICTURES AND SONGS, 1880 ; SONNETS ON THE 
 POETRY AND PROBLEM OF LIFE, 1881 ; POEMS, SKETCHES AND SONGS, 
 1889. He had been intended for the medical profession, but lost all his 
 private means in 1848, and from this time lived a desultory and, at least 
 in outward circumstances, rather unhappy life. He died in Dublin 
 in 1892. 
 
 A WINDOW SONG 
 
 WITHIN the window of this white, 
 
 Low, ivy-roofed, retired abode, 
 We look through sunset's sinking light 
 
 Along the lone and dusty road 
 That leads unto the river's bridge, 
 
 Where stand two sycamores broad and green, 
 Whence from their rising grassy ridge 
 
 The low rays lengthen shade and sheen. 
 The village panes reflect the glow, 
 
 And all about the scene is still, 
 Save, by the foamy dam below, 
 
 The drumming wheel of the whitewashed mill : 
 
 A radiant quiet fills the air, 
 
 And gleam the dews along the turf : 
 
 While the great wheel, bound 
 
 On its drowsy round, 
 Goes snoring through the gusts of surf. 
 
220 BOOK III 
 
 A-south, beyond the hamlet lie 
 
 The low, blue hills in mingling mist, 
 With furl of cloud along the sky, 
 
 And ravines rich as amethyst, 
 And mellow edges golden-ored 
 
 As sinks the round sun in the flood, 
 And high up wings the crow line toward 
 
 Old turrets in the distant wood ; 
 Awhile from some twilighted roof 
 
 The blue smoke rises o'er the thatch ; 
 By cots along the green aloof 
 
 Some home-come labourer lifts the latch ; 
 
 Or housewife sings her child to sleep, 
 Or calls her fowl-flock from the turf, 
 
 While the mill-wheel, bound 
 
 On its drowsy round, 
 Goes snoring through the gusts of surf 
 
 Still at our open window, where 
 
 Gleams on the leaves the lamp new lit, 
 For hours we read old books, and share 
 
 Their thoughts and pictures, love and wit : 
 As midnight nears, its quiet ray 
 
 Thrown on the garden's hedges faint, 
 Pales, as the moon, from clouds of grey, 
 
 Looks down serenely as a saint. 
 We hear a few drops of a shower, 
 
 Laying the dust for morning feet, 
 Patter upon the corner bower, 
 
 Then, ceasing, send an air as sweet. 
 
 And as we close the window down, 
 And close the volumes read so long, 
 
 Even the wheel's snore 
 
 Is heard no more, 
 And scarce the runnel's swirling song. 
 
THOMAS CAULF1ELD IRWIN 221 
 
 A CHARACTER 
 
 As from the sultry town, oppressed, 
 
 At eve we pace the suburb green, 
 
 There, at his window looking west, 
 
 Our good old friend will sure be seen : 
 Upon the table, full in light, 
 
 Backgammon box and Bible lie : 
 Behind the curtain, hid from sight, 
 A wine-glass no less certainly ; 
 A finger beckons nothing loath 
 
 We enter ah ! his heart is low, 
 His flask is brimming high, but both 
 Shall change their level ere we go. 
 
 We sit, and hour on hour prolong, 
 
 For memory loves on wine to float ; 
 He tells old tales, chirps scraps of song, 
 
 And cracks the nut of anecdote ; 
 Tells his best story with a smile 
 
 'Tis his by fifty years of right ; 
 And slowly rounds his joke, the while, 
 With eye half closed, he trims the light : 
 The clock hand marks the midnight's date, 
 
 But blithe is he as matin wren ; 
 His grasp is firm, his form dilate 
 With wine, and wit of vanished men. 
 
 He reads each morn the news that shook 
 
 The days of Pitt and Nelson, too, 
 But little cares for speech or book, 
 
 Or battle after Waterloo ; 
 The present time is lost in haze, 
 
 The past alone delights his eye ; 
 He deems the men of these poor days 
 As worthless all of history ; 
 
 Who dares to scorn that love of thine, 
 
 Old friend, for vanished men and years ? 
 Tis youth that charms thee pass the wine 
 The wine alone is good as theirs. 
 
222 BOOK III 
 
 Each morn he basks away the hours 
 
 In garden nooks, and quaffs the air ; 
 Chats with his plants, and holds with flowers 
 
 A tender-toned communion there ; 
 Each year the pleasant prospect shrinks, 
 
 And houses close the olden view ; 
 The world is changing fast ; he thinks 
 The sun himself is failing too. 
 Ah ! well-a-day, the mists of age 
 
 May make these summer seasons dim ; 
 No matter still in Chaucer's page 
 The olden summers shine for him. 
 
 From CAESAR 
 
 WITHIN the dim museum room, 
 
 'Mid dusty marbles, drowsed in light, 
 Black Indian idols, deep-sea bones, 
 Gods, nymphs, and uncouth skeletons, 
 One statua of stately height 
 Shines from an old nook's shifting gloom. 
 
 Mark well : as from a turret tall 
 
 Droops some victorious flag, the wreath 
 Of conquest tops him ; keenly nigh 
 Gleam the worn cheek and falcon eye, 
 Whose fixed spirit flames beneath 
 That bony crown pyramidal. 
 
 Ill 
 
 'Tis he whose name around the earth 
 Has rolled in History's echoing dreams ; 
 An antique shape of Destiny, 
 A soul daemonic, born to be 
 A king or nothing moulded forth 
 From giant Nature's fierce extremes. 
 
THOMAS CAULFIELD IRWIN 223 
 
 IV 
 
 His was a policy like fate 
 That shapes to-day for future hours ; 
 The sov'reign foresight his to draw 
 From crude events their settled law, 
 To learn the soul, and turn the weight 
 Of human passions into powers. 
 
 His was the mathematic might 
 That moulds results from men and things- 
 The eye that pierces at a glance, 
 The will that wields all circumstance, 
 The star-like soul of force and light, 
 That moves etern on tireless wings. 
 
 VI 
 
 Keen as some star's magnetic rays, 
 His judgment subtle and sublime 
 Unlocked the wards of every brain, 
 Till, clothed in gathered might amain, 
 Scorning the inferior Destinies, 
 He burst the palace gates of Time. 
 
 VII 
 
 Bright, swift, resistless as the sun, 
 
 He scorned the track of traversed sky ; 
 Though throned in empery supreme, 
 Still held the mighty past a dream, 
 Self-emulative, storming on 
 To vaster fields of Victory. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Thus upward ever, storm and shade 
 Flew past, but till he reached the goal 
 He paused not ; on one height intent, 
 But from the clouds of blind event, 
 That severed to his gaze, re-made 
 The wings of his triumphant soul. 
 
224 BOOK III 
 
 To A SKULL 
 
 SILENT as thou, whose inner life is gone, 
 
 Let me essay thy meaning if I can, 
 Thou ghostly, ghastly moral carved in bone, 
 
 Old Nature's quiet mockery of man. 
 
 I place thee in the light ; the orient gold 
 
 Falls on thy crown, and strikes each uncouth line ; 
 
 Strange shape ! the earth has ruins manifold, 
 But none with meaning terrible as thine. 
 
 For here beneath this bleak and sterile dome 
 Did hatred rage, and silent sorrow mourn 
 
 A little world, an infinite spirit's home, 
 A heaven or hell abandoned and forlorn. 
 
 Here thought on thought arose, like star on star, 
 And love, deemed deathless, habited ; and now 
 
 An empty mausoleum, vainer far 
 
 Than Cheops' mountain pyramid, art thou. 
 
 Once on that forehead, radiant as the day, 
 Imagination flamed in tranced mood : 
 
 Once on thy fleshy mask, now fallen away, 
 Rippled the pulses of a bridegroom's blood ; 
 
 And laughter wrinkled up those orbs with fun, 
 And sorrow furrowed channels as you prayed 
 
 Well, now no mark is left on thee but one, 
 
 The careless stroke of some old sexton's spade. 
 
 Lost are thy footprints ; changeful as the air 
 Is the brown disc of earth whereon we move ; 
 
 The bright sun looks for them in vain. Ah, where 
 Is now thy life of action, thought, and love? 
 
 Where are thy hopes, affections, toil, and gain ? 
 
 Lost in the void of all- surrounding death. 
 And does this pound of lime alone remain 
 
 To tell of all thy passion, pride, and faith ? 
 
THOMAS CAULF1ELD 1RWIN 225 
 
 ' Where is the soul ? ' we cry and swift the sound 
 Dies in the morning depth of voiceless light ; 
 
 'The structure where ?' Oh, bend unto the ground, 
 And ask the worm that crawls the mould at night. 
 
 The brown leaf rots upon the Autumn breeze, 
 The empty shell is washed upon the shore, 
 
 The bubble glitters on the morning seas, 
 And bursting in the vast is seen no more. 
 
 Like mist thy life has melted on the air, 
 And what thy nature, history, or name, 
 
 No sorcery now of science or of prayer 
 Can make the voiceless infinite proclaim. 
 
 Dumb are the heavens ; sphere controlling sphere 
 Chariot the void through their allotted span ; 
 
 And man acts out his little drama here 
 As though the only Deity were man. 
 
 Cold Fate, who sways creation's boundless tides, 
 Instinct with masterdom's eternal breath, 
 
 Sits in the void invisible, and guides 
 The huge machinery of life and death, 
 
 Now strewing seeds of fresh immortal bands 
 Through drifts of universes deepening down ; 
 
 Now moulding forth with giant spectral hands 
 The fire of suns colossal for his crown ; 
 
 Too prescient for feeling, still enfolds 
 
 The stars in death and life, in night and day, 
 
 And, clothed in equanimity, beholds 
 A blossom wither or a world decay ; 
 
 Sleepless, eternal, labouring without pause, 
 
 Still girds with life his infinite abode, 
 And moulds from matter by developed laws 
 
 With eoual ease the insect or the God 1 
 
226 BOOK III 
 
 Poor human skull, perchance some mighty race, 
 The giant birth of never-ceasing change, 
 
 Winging the world, may pause awhile to trace 
 Thy shell in some re-orient Alpine range ; 
 
 Perchance the fire of some angelic brow 
 May glow above thy ruin in the sun, 
 
 And higher shapes reflect, as we do now 
 Upon the structure of the Mastodon. 
 
 LADY DUFFERIN 
 
 DAUGHTER of Thomas Sheridan and granddaughter o/ 
 R. B. Sheridan the dramatist. She was born in 1807, and 
 married first the Hon. Prjce Black wood, who became Earl of 
 Dufferin ; but just before her death, which occurred on June 13, 
 1867, married her second husband, the Earl of Gifford. The 
 present Marquis of Dufferin is her son. She has written some 
 of the most beautiful and touching of Irish songs and ballads. 
 
 LAMENT OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT 
 
 I'M sittin' on the stile, Mary, 
 
 Where we sat side by side, 
 On a bright May mornin', long ago, 
 
 When first you were my bride : 
 The corn was springin' fresh and green, 
 
 And the lark sang loud and high 
 And the red was on your lip, Mary, 
 
 And the lovelight in your eye. 
 
 1^ place is little changed, Mary ; 
 
 The day is bright as then ; 
 The lark's loud song is in my ear, 
 
 And the corn is green again ; 
 
LADY DUFFERIN 227 
 
 But I miss the soft clasp of your hand, 
 And your breath, warm on my cheek, 
 
 And I still keep list'nin' for the words 
 You never more will speak. 
 
 'Tis but a step down yonder lane, 
 
 And the little church stands near 
 The church where we were wed, Mary ; 
 
 I see the spire from here. 
 But the graveyard lies between, Mary, 
 
 And my step might break your rest 
 For I've laid you, darling ! down to sleep 
 
 With your baby on your breast. 
 
 I'm very lonely now, Mary, 
 
 For the poor make no new friends : 
 But, oh ! they love the better still, 
 
 The few our Father sends ! 
 And you were all / had, Mary 
 
 My blessin' and my pride ! 
 There's nothin' left to care for now, 
 
 Since my poor Mary died. 
 
 Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary 
 
 That still kept hoping on 
 When the trust in God had left my soul 
 
 And my arm's young strength was go. 
 There was comfort even on your lip, 
 
 And the kind look on your brow 
 I bless you, Mary, for that same, 
 
 Though you cannot hear me now. 
 
 I thank you for the patient smile 
 
 When your heart was fit to break, 
 When the hunger-pain was gnawin' there 
 
 And you hid it for my sake ; 
 I bless you for the pleasant word 
 
 When your heart was sad and sore 
 Oh ! I'm thankful you are gone, Mary, 
 
 Where grief can't reach you more ! 
 
 Q2 
 
228 BOOK III 
 
 I'm biddin' you a long farewell, 
 
 My Mary kind and true ! 
 But I'll not forget you, darling, 
 
 In the land I'm goin' to : 
 They say there's bread and work for all, 
 
 And the sun shines always there 
 But I'll not forget Old Ireland, 
 
 Were it fifty times as fair ! 
 
 And often in those grand old woods 
 
 I'll sit and shut my eyes, 
 And my heart will travel back again 
 
 To the place where Mary lies ; 
 And I'll think I see the little stile 
 
 Where we sat side by side, 
 And the springin' corn, and the bright May morn, 
 
 When first you were my bride. 
 
 TERENCE'S FAREWELL 
 
 So, my Kathleen, you're going to leave me 
 
 All alone by myself in this place, 
 But I'm sure you will never deceive me 
 
 Oh no, if there's truth in that face. 
 Though England's a beautiful city, 
 
 Full of illigant boys oh, what then ? 
 You would not forget your poor Terence ; 
 
 You'll come back to Ould Ireland again. 
 
 Och, those English, deceivers by nature, 
 
 Though maybe you'd think them sincere, 
 They'll say you're a sweet charming creature, 
 
 But don't you believe them, my dear. 
 No, Kathleen, agra \ don't be minding 
 
 The flattering speeches they'll make ; 
 Just tell them a poor boy in Ireland 
 
 Is breaking his heart for your sake. 
 
LADY DUFFERIN 229 
 
 It's folly to keep you from going, 
 
 Though, faith, it's a mighty hard case 
 For, Kathleen, you know, there's no knowing 
 
 When next I shall see your sweet face. 
 And when you come back to me, Kathleen 
 
 None the better will I be off then 
 You'll be spaking such beautiful English, 
 
 Sure, I won't know my Kathleen again. 
 
 Eh, now, where's the need of this hurry ? 
 
 Don't flutter me so in this way ! 
 I've forgot, 'twixt the grief and the flurry, 
 
 Every word I was maning to say. 
 Now just wait a minute, I bid ye 
 
 Can I talk if you bother me so ? 
 Oh, Kathleen, my blessing go wid ye 
 
 Ev'ry inch of the way that you go. 
 
 ANONYMOUS 
 Music IN THE STREET 
 
 This striking poem appeared in an Irish-American paper about 1864, and 
 was suggested by hearing the 6gth Irish regiment play Irish airs through the 
 New York streets. 
 
 IT rose upon the sordid street, 
 
 A cadence sweet and lone ; 
 Through all the vulgar din it pierced, 
 
 That low melodious tone. 
 It thrilled on my awakened ear 
 
 Amid the noisy mart, 
 Its music over every sound 
 
 Vibrated in my heart. 
 
 I've heard full oft a grander strain 
 
 Through lofty arches roll, 
 That bore on the triumphant tide 
 
 The rapt and captive soul. 
 
230 BOOK III 
 
 In this the breath of my own hills , I 
 
 Blew o'er me soft and warm, 
 And shook my spirit, as the leaves 
 
 Are shaken by the storm. 
 
 As sounds the distant ocean wave 
 
 Within a hollow shell, 
 I heard within this far-off strain 
 
 The gentle waters swell 
 Around my distant island shore, 
 
 And glancing through the rocks, 
 While o'er their full and gliding wave 
 
 The sea-birds wheeled in flocks. 
 
 There, through the long delicious eves 
 
 Of that old haunted land 
 The Naiads, in their floating hair, 
 
 Yet dance upon the strand ; 
 Till near and nearer came the sound, 
 
 And swelled upon the air, 
 And still strange echoes trembled through 
 
 The magic music there. 
 
 It rose above the ceaseless din, 
 
 It filled the dusty street, 
 As some cool breeze of freshness blows 
 
 Across the desert's heat. 
 It shook their squalid attic homes 
 
 Pale exiles of our race 
 And drew to dingy window-panes 
 
 Full many a faded face, 
 
 And eyes whose deep and lustrous light 
 
 Flashed strangely, lonely there, 
 And many a young and wistful brow 
 
 Beneath its soft brown hair ; 
 And other eyes of fiercer fire, 
 
 And faces rough and dark 
 Brave souls ! that bore thro' all their lives 
 
 The tempests on their bark. 
 
ANONYMOUS 231 
 
 In through the narrow rooms it poured, 
 
 That music sweeping on, 
 And perfumed all their heavy air 
 
 With flowers of summers gone, 
 With waters sparkling to the lips, 
 
 With many a summer breeze, 
 That woke into one rippling song 
 
 The shaken summer trees. 
 
 In it, along the sloping hills 
 
 The blue flax-blossoms bent ; 
 In it, above the shining streams 
 
 The ' Fairy Fingers ' leant ; 
 In it, upon the soft green Rath, 
 
 There bloomed the Fairy Thorn ; 
 In their tired feet they felt the dew 
 
 Of many a harvest morn. 
 
 In it, the ripe and golden corn 
 
 Bent down its heavy head ; 
 In it, the grass waved long and sweet 
 
 Above their kindred dead ; 
 In it, the voices of the loved 
 
 They might no more behold 
 Came back and spoke the tender words 
 
 And sang the songs of old. 
 
 Sometimes there trembled through the strain 
 
 A song like falling tears, 
 And then it rose and burst again 
 
 Like sudden clashing spears ; 
 And still the faces in the street 
 
 And at the window-panes 
 Would cloud or lighten, gloom or flash 
 
 With all its changing strains. 
 
 But, ah ! too soon it swept away, 
 
 That pageantry of sound 
 Again the parted tide of life 
 
 Closed darkly all around, 
 
232 BOOK III 
 
 As in the wake of some white bark, 
 In sunshine speeding on, 
 
 Close in the dark and sullen waves, 
 The darker where it shone. 
 
 The faces faded from my view, 
 
 Like faces in a dream ; 
 To its dull channel back again 
 
 Crept the subsiding stream. 
 And I, too, starting like the rest, 
 
 Cast all the spell aside, 
 And let the fading music go 
 
 A blossom down the tide. 
 
 DION BOUCICAULT 
 
 THIS noted actor and dramatist was born in Dublin, of French 
 parentage, on December 26, 1822. His Irish plays are extremely 
 popular, but he wrote an enormous .number of other dramas, 
 comedies, and farces. He lived in America during the latter 
 part of his life, and died there in September 1890. The follow- 
 ing is supposed to be sung by a young woman, an exile, 
 whose baby had died in her old home. 
 
 I'M very happy where I am, 
 
 Far across the say 
 I'm very happy far from home, 
 
 In North Amerikay. 
 
 It's lonely in the night when Pat 
 
 Is sleeping by my side. 
 I lie awake, and no one knows 
 
 The big tears that I've cried. 
 
 For a little voice still calls me back 
 
 To my far, far counthrie, 
 And nobody can hear it spake- 
 
 Oh ! nobody but me. 
 
DION BO UCICA UL T 233 
 
 There is a little spot of ground 
 
 Behind the chapel wall ; 
 It's nothing but a tiny mound, 
 
 Without a stone at all ; 
 
 It rises like my heart just now, 
 
 It makes a dawny hill ; 
 It's from below the voice comes out, 
 
 I cannot kape it still. 
 
 Oh ! little Voice, ye call me back 
 
 To my far, far counthrie, 
 And nobody can hear ye spake 
 
 Oh ! nobody but me. 
 
 TIMOTHY DANIEL SULLIVAN 
 
 MR. T. D. SULLIVAN, born 1827 at Bantry, County Cork, has 
 distinguished himself as journalist, politician, and poet. His 
 verse has consisted in a great measure of racy political 
 pasquinades, whose satire and humour, tuned to catching 
 rhythms, have won them much popularity. He has also 
 written patriotic poems of a higher and more serious class, 
 and has tried his hand, like most other modern Irish poets, on 
 themes taken from the legendary romances of Ireland. His 
 ' God save Ireland,' which may be said to dispute the position 
 of Irish national anthem with 'The Wearing of the Green,' 
 has the misfortune to be written to a commonplace and quite 
 un-Irish air. Mr. Sullivan's best work is to be found in 
 simple ballads of fatherland and home. His style when dealing 
 with congenial themes is clear, direct, and sincere. 
 
 Mr. Sullivan published in 1868 DUNBOY AND OTHER POEMS. This 
 was followed in 1879 by GREEN LEAVES, and in 1887 by LAYS OF THE 
 LAND LEAGUE. POEMS was published in 1888 ; PRISON POEMS AND 
 LAYS OF TULLAMORE in the same year; BLANAID AND OTHER POEMS in 
 1892 ; and a volume of selections in 1899. Mr. Sullivan has been a member 
 
234 BOOK ITT 
 
 of Parliament since 1880, and has sat successively for County Westmeath, 
 for Dublin (College Green Division), and County Donegal. He became a 
 contributor to The Nation in 1854, and ultimately owned and edited that 
 journal on the death of his brother, Mr. A. M. Sullivan, lie was Lord 
 Mayor of Dublin in 1886 and 1887. 
 
 STEERING HOME 
 
 FAR out beyond our sheltered bay, 
 
 Against the golden evening sky, 
 A brown speck rises ; then away 
 
 It sinks it dwindles from my eye. 
 
 Again it rises ; drawing nigh, 
 Its well-known shape grows sharp and clear - 
 It is his bark, my Donal dear. 
 
 And oh ! though small a speck it be, 
 Kind Heaven, that knows my hope and fear, 
 
 Can tell the world it holds for me. 
 
 My boat of boats is steering home 
 
 She bends and sways before the wind ; 
 I cannot see the milky foam 
 
 Beneath her bows and far behind. 
 
 But oh ! I know my love will find 
 Howe'er the evening current flows, 
 Howe'er the rising night wind blows 
 
 The shortest course his keel can dart 
 From where he is to where he knows 
 
 I wait to clasp him to my heart. 
 
 Come, Donal, home ! See by my side 
 
 Your little sons, impatient too. 
 All day they loitered by the tide, 
 
 And prattled of your boat and you ; 
 
 Into the glancing waves they threw 
 Some little chips the surges bore 
 Their tiny vessels back to shore ; 
 
 Then would they clap their hands, and say 
 The first was yours ; then, o'er and o'er, 
 
 Would ask me why you stayed away. 
 
TIMOTHY DANIEL SULLIVAN 235 
 
 Come, Donal, home ! The red sun sets ; 
 
 Come to your children dear, and me ; 
 And, bring us full or empty nets, 
 
 A scene of joy our hearth shall be. 
 
 You'll tell me stories of the sea ; 
 And I will sing the songs you said 
 Were sweet as wild sea-music made 
 
 By mermaids on the weedy rocks 
 When in some sheltered quiet shade, 
 
 They sit and comb their dripping locks. 
 
 He comes ! he comes ! My boat is near ; 
 
 I know her mainsail's narrow peak. 
 They haul her flowing sheets I hear 
 
 The dry sheaves on their pivots creak. 
 
 He waves his hand I hear him speak 
 Come to the beach, my sons, with me ; 
 He'll greet us from her side, and we 
 
 Shall meet him when he leaps to shore ; 
 Then take him home, and bid him see 
 
 Our brighter deck our cottage floor. 
 
 You AND I 
 
 I KNOW what will happen, sweet, 
 
 When you and I are one ; 
 Calm and bright and very fleet, 
 
 All our days will run. 
 Fond and kind our words will be, 
 
 Mixed no more with sighs ; 
 Thoughts too fine for words we'll see 
 
 Within each other's eyes. 
 
 Sweet, when you and I are one, 
 
 Earth will bloom anew 
 Brighter then the stars and sun, 
 
 Softer then the dew. 
 Sweeter scents will then arise 
 
 From the fields and flowers ; 
 Holier calm will fill the skies 
 
 In the midnight hours. 
 
236 BOOK III 
 
 Music now unheard, unknown, 
 
 Then will reach our ears ; 
 Not a plaint in any tone, 
 
 Not a hint of tears. 
 In a round of bliss complete 
 
 All our days will run 
 That is what will happen, sweet, 
 
 When you and I are one. 
 
 DEAR OLD IRELAND 
 
 IRISH AIR 
 I 
 
 DEEP in Canadian woods we've met, 
 
 From one bright island flown ; 
 Great is the land we tread, but yet 
 
 Our hearts are with our own. 
 An-d ere we leave this shanty small, 
 While fades the Autumn day, 
 We'll toast Old Ireland ! 
 Dear Old Ireland ! 
 Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 
 
 II 
 We've heard her faults a hundred times, 
 
 The new ones and the old, 
 In songs and sermons, rants and rhymes, 
 
 Enlarged some fifty-fold. 
 But take them all, the great and small, 
 And this we've got to say : 
 Here's dear Old Ireland ! 
 Good Old Ireland ! 
 Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 
 
 in 
 We know that brave and good men tried 
 
 To snap her rusty chain 
 That patriots suffered martyrs died 
 
 And all, 'tis said, in vain. 
 
TIMOTHY DANIEL SULLIVAN 237 
 
 But no, boys, no ! a glance will show 
 How far they've won their way- 
 Here's good Old Ireland ! 
 Brave Old Ireland ! 
 Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 
 
 IV 
 
 We've seen the wedding and the wake, 
 
 The patron and the fair ; 
 And lithe young frames at the dear old games 
 
 In the kindly Irish air ; 
 
 And the loud ' hurroo,' we have heard it too, 
 And the thundering ' Clear the way ! ' 
 Here's gay Old Ireland ! 
 Dear Old Ireland ! 
 Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 
 
 And well we know in the cool grey eves, 
 
 When the hard day's work is o'er, 
 How soft and sweet are the words that greet 
 
 The friends who meet once more ; 
 With < Mary machree ! " My Pat ! 'tis he ! ' 
 And ' My own heart night and day ! ' 
 Ah, fond Old Ireland ! 
 Dear Old Ireland ! 
 Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 
 
 VI 
 
 And happy and bright are the groups that pass 
 
 From their peaceful homes, for miles 
 O'er fields and roads and hills, to Mass, 
 
 When Sunday morning smiles ; 
 And deep the zeal their true hearts feel 
 When low they kneel and pray. 
 Oh, dear Old Ireland ! 
 Blest Old Ireland ! 
 Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 
 
238 BOOK 111 
 
 VII 
 
 But deep in Canadian woods we've met, 
 
 And we never may see again 
 The dear old isle where our hearts are set 
 
 And our first fond hopes remain ! 
 But come, fill up another cup, 
 And with every sup we'll say, 
 ' Here's dear Old Ireland ! 
 Loved Old Ireland ! 
 Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 
 
 FANNY PARNELL 
 
 SISTER of the late C. S. Parnell, M.P. She was born in 
 County Wicklow in 1854, and wrote poems for The Irish 
 People (1864-5) before she reached her teens. She was 
 afterwards closely connected with her brother's political work, 
 ;ind died in America in 1882. She was a fervent speaker and 
 organiser, and had much poetical ability. 
 
 POST-MORTEM 
 
 SHALL mine eyes behold thy glory, O my country ? 
 
 Shall mine eyes behold thy glory ? 
 Or shall the darkness close around them, ere the sun-blaze 
 
 Break at last upon thy story ? 
 
 When the nations ope for thee their queenly circle, 
 
 As a sweet new sister hail thee, 
 Shall these lips be sealed in callous death and silence 
 
 That have known but to bewail thee ? 
 
 Shall the ear be deaf that only loved thy praises 
 
 When all men their tribute bring thee ? 
 Shall the mouth be clay that sang thee in thy squalor 
 
 When all poets' mouths shall sing thee ? 
 
FANNY PARNELL 239 
 
 Ah ! the harpings and the salvos and the shoutings 
 
 Of thy exiled sons returning 
 
 I should hear, though dead and mouldered, and the grave 
 damps 
 
 Should not chill my bosom's burning. 
 
 Ah ! the tramp of feet victorious ! I should hear them 
 
 'Mid the shamrocks and the mosses, 
 And my heart should toss within the shroud and quiver, 
 
 As a captive dreamer tosses. 
 
 I should turn and rend the cere clothes round me, 
 
 Giant-sinews I should borrow, 
 Crying, ' O my brothers, I have also loved her, 
 
 In her lowliness and sorrow. 
 
 ' Let me join with you the jubilant procession, 
 
 Let me chant with you her story ; 
 Then contented I .'hall go back to the shamrocks, 
 
 Now mine eyes have seen her glory. 3 
 
BOOK IV 
 
 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 
 
 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN fills the most tragic place in the Irish 
 literature of this century ; and even if he be not its greatest 
 poet, at least he has only equals, no superiors. His fame has 
 been obscured and injured in part by his own fault, in part 
 by the indiscretion of friends and admirers, in part by the 
 pressure of inevitable circumstance. Born to unhappiness, 
 dowered with a melancholy temperament and a drifting will, 
 he never found natural joy save, like Thomas a Kempis, * in a 
 nook with a book ' and in the exercise of his art. Like sundry 
 other unhappy poets, he found joys less natural and sane in 
 opium and alcohol. It is not essential for our present purpose 
 to examine the kind, the extent, the gravity of his indulgence 
 in these methods of obliviousness or exaltation : the evidence 
 of his contemporaries is conflicting : enough, to say that in 
 whatever degree Mangan must share the reproach of Coleridge, 
 De Quincey, Poe, of the Scottish Ferguson and Burns, he yet 
 claims our compassion rather than our contempt. His weakness 
 never marred the purity, in all senses, of his poetry : he made 
 no Byron ic parade or boast of his own worst side. From 
 cradle to coffin * Melancholy marked him for her own,' and 
 his heart always knew its own bitterness. Infinitely sensitive, 
 of a fragile and tremulous spirit, the harshness of the world 
 was his master, and from the first he succumbed to whatever 
 miseries, real or imagined, came his way. The story of his 
 life is a story of persistent gloom and grayness, peopled by 
 
 R 
 
242 BOOK IV 
 
 phantoms and phantasies of sorrow : he was a born dreamer of 
 dreams, and passed his days in a kind of penumbra. He was 
 gentle and grotesque, eccentric and lovable : but much of a 
 mystery to all and to himself. Fit for nothing but literature, 
 and passionately enamoured of it, he was a desultory, un- 
 certain, capricious writer : always a student with a true love 
 of learning, his knowledge was casual, imperfect, hardly a 
 scholar's. Further, it was a part of his strange nature to 
 be innocently insincere, or inventive, or imaginative, about 
 himself and his : there was ' a deal of Ariel, just a streak of 
 Puck ' in his composition, and he throws dust in the eyes of 
 his readers, who vainly try to ascertain the precise measure 
 of truth and actuality in his personal or literary statements. 
 With all his devotion to letters and learning, he was incapable 
 of exercising a prolonged and constant energy : it was not in 
 him to concentrate and control his powers. When he wrote 
 without inspiration, but in obedience to some external call or 
 need, he wrote either with a strong and arid rhetoric or with 
 a somewhat ghastly air of mocking merriment and jesting 
 cynicism : and so little could he command his imagination 
 that almost the whole of his greatest and most perfect work 
 owes its inception to the work often the inferior work of 
 others. The poet of the ' Dark Rosaleen ' is a great original 
 poet : such splendour of verse is not translation, but a new 
 creation. And yet, but for the Gaelic poet, Costello of 
 Bally haunis, Mangan would not have written his masterpiece. 
 
 The poetry of this unique man falls under four chief heads : 
 paraphrases or translations from the Gaelic; those from the 
 German, and sometimes from other modern languages ; poems 
 which profess to spring from Turkish and Oriental originals ; 
 poems avowedly and indisputably original. His collected poems, 
 of every description, would compose a considerable volume in 
 point of size : and it would contain 'little that is of no value 
 little without some touch, if not of genius, yet assuredly of a 
 singular talent. But were we to exclude from such a collection 
 some twenty or thirty famous pieces, the residue would not be 
 of such a rare and distinguished quality as entitles a cunning 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 243 
 
 versifier to claim the higher rank of poet. Mangan's great 
 work has never been overpraised : not so his less great. Hx 
 was an Irishman writing English verse during the first half of 
 the century: his wide and genuine if straggling culture, his 
 range of literary interest, his technical mastery of verse, filled 
 his audience with a feeling of novelty. It was a portent, a 
 presage, of an outburst of Irish poetry in English verse such 
 as had not before been heard : and it is not unnatural that 
 Mangan's poetry was received, is often still received, with 
 too lavish an applause, too indiscriminate a welcome. Again : 
 Mangan, though nothing of a politician, was much of a 
 patriot ; and national pride tended to exalt the merits of 
 whatever came from Mangan the accomplished, the specially 
 inspired. It is largely a question of date and period : Mangan 
 was a pioneer, and became a source of inspiration. Others 
 have entered into his labours, and Ireland has borne poets of 
 far deeper and more patient culture, and of a technical skill 
 sometimes not far beneath his own at its finest. The mass of 
 Mangan's poetry seems less miraculous and immaculate now 
 than it seemed half a century ago : then, he had scarce a 
 rival ; since then, he has had many and worthy rivals, though 
 none has surpassed him. Only his master-work need be 
 considered here, and our brief selections illustrate every 
 aspect of it. 
 
 There are few who question the supremacy, among his 
 poems, of those derived from Gaelic sources. Doubtless to 
 the struggling, starving Irish poet, who never dreamed of 
 winning English praise and writing for an English public, 
 Ireland and her history and her hope were natural themes : 
 but patriotism and love of country are insufficient to explain 
 the poetical excellence of these poems. Passionate patriotism 
 can make execrable poetry. Something else there must be 
 to account for this superiority : and it can surely be 
 found in the truth that to Mangan, essentially the poet of 
 dreams and sorrows and longings, of an ideal rapture and a 
 perfect beauty, the history of Ireland appealed with a personal 
 force. In that beautiful and tragic history he found what 
 
 R2 
 
244 BOOK IV 
 
 profoundly moved him, not only as an Irishman who loved 
 Ireland, but as the sad and stricken man who fed on dreams, 
 was haunted by memories, lived in an infinite desire. The 
 laments, the prophecies, the dauntless defiances, the radiant 
 hopes, in a word the various passions which he found in the 
 history and literature of the Gael came home to him : he felt 
 them as he could not feel the emotions of German poets. He 
 therefore brought to his Irish versions such a wealth of 
 unfeigned emotion, such a profusion of artistic cunning, as to 
 make them verily the fresh expression of his own soul and the 
 fine flower of his genius. With but four or five exceptions, he 
 leaves aside the Gaelic poetry of love or laughter, and fills his 
 page with the cry of battle, the wail for the dead, the dirge of 
 departed glory. The note of sorrow noble and proud sorrow 
 appears in almost all his Irish poems : nothing so appealed to 
 his sad heart as tears As he broods over the lamentations 
 of ancient bards, raising the keen over Ireland desolate and 
 derelict, over Irish princes exiled or dead, over Irish hopes 
 frustrated and Irish chivalry in defeat, his own immense 
 melancholy kindles into a melancholy of majestic music. He 
 transmutes the mourning Irish music of Owen Ward into 
 English verse of monumental magnificence and monotony in 
 woe as he chants the lament for the lords of Tyrone and 
 Tyrconnell, The O'Neill and The O'Donnell, dead exiles 
 sleeping together in holy Rome : each of the eighteen stanzas, 
 with its elaborate structure, is like a funeral march, full of deep 
 repeated chords, and a wailing cry that pierces up through the 
 heavier tones of sorrow. These poems are starred with the 
 lovely and great names of the princes, the provinces, the 
 pleasant places of Ireland, vanquished, dead, fugitive, ruined, 
 vanished. Where is Brian's fair palace of Kinkora ? Whither 
 are flown the Wild Geese ? Where is ' the Young Deliverer of 
 Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan ' ? And, 'alas, for the once proud 
 people of Banba ! ' Weep, Ireland, for Owen Roe ! and hear 
 the Banshee crying for the Knight of Kerry ! Take your farewell 
 of Patrick Sarsfield ! Mourn for glory gone from the Castle of 
 Donegal ! Be sad for the soul of O'Sullivan Beara, the betrayed 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 245 
 
 and murdered ! ' Through the long drear night I lie awake for 
 the sorrows of Inisfail,' the ' Mother of light and song ! ' Thus 
 run the greater part of these poems : and the two master- 
 pieces, which transcend* the rest, are 'Dark Rosaleen ' and 
 'O'Hussey's Ode to The Maguire.' The 'Dark Rosaleen' 
 ranks with the great lyrics of the world ; it is one of the fairest 
 and fiercest in its perfection of imagery and rhythm : here is 
 the chivalry of a nation's faith, struck of a sudden into the 
 immortality of music. The ' Ode to The Maguire ' burns with 
 a noble ferocity in lines of the highest Homeric simplicity 
 and grandeur. Here is the true Mangan of greatness and of 
 genius. His quieter Irish poems are less successful, for all their 
 charm : both ' Ellen Bawn ' and ' The Fair Hills of Eire ' have 
 found better renderings than his. In the ' Woman of Three 
 Cows ' Mangan is more at home with the racy sarcasm of his 
 original. But the Irish portion of his poems, viewed as a 
 whole, is that to which he brought most of the sincere passion, 
 the artistic instinct and capacity, the high poetic seriousness 
 that he possessed ; more than all his other poems, they bear a 
 severe and critical scrutiny : for which reason, and not merely 
 because they are Irish, we place them in the forefront of his 
 work. 
 
 Next to these in importance stand Mangan's poems of the 
 East, which are practically his own, though he studied Eastern 
 poetry in translations, and was in part drawn Eastward by his 
 favourite Germans, with whom, as with Byron, Moore, Hugo, 
 Heine, there was a fashion of Orientalism ; and he followed 
 them in the imitation of Eastern rhythms. In many of his 
 Oriental poems Mangan has poured, out of his darkness of the 
 shadow, all a captive's wistful longing for the sunlight, for the 
 fragrance of roses, for the burning blue : and also his half-sad $ 
 half-smiling sense of life's fleetness and illusion. He loved 
 the thought of the East, and to indulge in the dreams of such 
 Irish scholars as Vallancey about the Oriental origin of the 
 Gael : he loved, as FitzGerald loved, an Orient largely of his own 
 creation. What Davis has called Mangan's * perfect mastery of 
 versification : his flexibility of passion, from loneliest grief to 
 
246 BOOK IV 
 
 the maddest humour,' appear profusely in these glowing poems 
 attributed to fictitious Turks and impossible .Persians. Mangan, 
 who loved to dream of colour and light and golden visions, is 
 brilliantly felicitous in some of these pieces : but he is more 
 nobly inspired, and not less glowingly, when he sings of the 
 ' Little Black Rose ' (the Roisin DubK) than when he moralises 
 upon the roses of Shiraz, Yet, certainly, these ardent poems 
 of the East, with their voluptuous music and imagination, 
 their wise and trite and venerable philosophy, their vigour of 
 dramatic movement, constitute Mangan's second glory : they 
 are of greater value than all but the very finest things ih his 
 vast ANTHOLOGIA GERMANICA. There is power of a rare kind in 
 the ' Karamanian Exile,' the * Wail and Warning of the Three 
 Khalandeers,' the ' Time of the Roses,' the Howling Song 
 of Al Mohara,' the ' Time of the Barmecides.' Even some 
 of Mangan's least unfortunate fooling is done in Oriental 
 disguise. 
 
 The ANTHOLOGIA GERMANICA, with which are grouped 
 Mangan's renderings or adaptations from sundry other modern 
 tongues, constitutes the larger part of his work. He was born 
 at a time when German poetry and philosophy were receiving 
 due attention at the hands of English writers, and his receptive 
 literary temperament was influenced by that circumstance : 
 further, much German sentiment of romanticism, of reverie, of 
 personal passion, appealed to him with singular force. Yet, 
 with a few exceptions, his work in this kind is of little more 
 than a fine and interesting mediocrity : and for the most part 
 it is at its best when he frankly deserts his originals to 
 embroider or embellish them with beauties of his own devising. 
 He is happiest when concerned with poets not of the first 
 order: with Schiller, Riickert, Korner, Freiligrath, Uhland, 
 Burger, rather than with Goethe and Heine. Riickert, in 
 especial, called forth his great gifts of rhythmical beauty : but 
 in the main we must lament the hard necessities, material and 
 spiritual, which led him to this task of echoing or improving a 
 mass of poetry often poor in quality and ephemeral. The 
 chief value of this collection lies in its copious illustration 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 247 
 
 of Mangan's technical excellence in his art, of his lyrical 
 dexterity : but twice or thrice does it reveal him flushed and 
 enraptured with the poetic passion of his work inspired from 
 Irish sources. Mangan's wholly original poems, like those 
 taken from or suggested by German or Oriental literatue, 
 would hardly have entitled him to a high rank among poets : 
 a small portion of them is admirable, a larger portion has 
 a certain effectiveness and power, the greatest portion is 
 stiff or stilted with a forced rhetoric the rhetoric of the 
 poet writing upon political occasion, who has declamation at 
 his command, but scant beauty of imagination. Of the 
 original poems, the most famous and most moving is the 
 terrible 'Nameless One': a burst of Byronism more pro- 
 foundly sincere than all but a very few of Byron's most 
 embittered dirges over his own wretched soul. Most drearily 
 imaginative also is ' Siberia,' a lyric of despair and dereliction : 
 and in some other pieces there is a strain of felicitous 
 melancholy, a true pathetic touch. It is, however, not to be 
 denied that in Mangan we have a poet hampered, let and 
 hindered, by inborn physical and spiritual sensitiveness ; a 
 visionary seldom capable of arresting his fairest visions ; a 
 self-tormentor void of that interior peace whence comes the 
 assured impulse of poetry. His perturbed and vagrant mind 
 wandered in dry places and in the dark, longing vainly for 
 consolation and light : he could always write mockingly, 
 spasmodically, forcibly, fiercely, but only at rare seasons 
 beautifully. Shrinking from the world, cursed with real and 
 imagined curses, he was never ' master of his fate ' nor ' captain 
 of his soul ' : and poetry, so great a solace to many poets of 
 unhappiness, visited him from regions not of gladness but of 
 gloom. Ireland alone, with her mingling of misery and heroic 
 pride, woke in hiin the joy of poetry and the passion of art 
 triumphant. 
 
 Few poets more imperatively demand to have their lives con- 
 sidered in any estimate of their poems. Over Mangan's life 
 is writ large the inscription of hopelessness and incapacity to 
 be strong : he let go the helm, to drift through life and through 
 
248 BOOK IV 
 
 the worlds of poetry, metaphysics, curious lore of many kinds, 
 finding no anchorage in any harbour. He squandered his 
 power and mastery over verse upon matter mediocre or worse ; 
 and even that in a desultory, capricious fashion, as the humour 
 of the hour took him. An alien in the world, he had desires, 
 but no ambitions ; he cared nothing for literary fame, and 
 everything for some indefinable ideal with which his daily life 
 was in fearful contrast. Before his latter years he knew no 
 positive definite suffering but such as a firm will could have 
 overcome ; but, without incurring Dante's curse upon those 
 who 'wilfully live in sadness,' he would seem from the first 
 to have persuaded himself that the valley of the shadow was 
 to be his way through life. Hence the imperfection, the con- 
 scious carelessness, that mark so much of his, work ; hence 
 his content to earn his bread by work comparatively unworthy 
 of his genius, though he might have earned it by worthier 
 labours. It was not worth while what did it matter ? That 
 was his attitude ; and so, dreaming his unattainable and inex- 
 pressible dreams, he resigned into the hands of Fate and Chance 
 both his self-control and the control of his art. Words, rhymes, 
 rhythms, were always ready at his call, and he fashioned of 
 them things ingenious, things betraying infinite resource ; the 
 ability to create by their means things of the highest beauty, 
 unspoiled by freak or whim, undulled by conventional rhetoric, 
 things poetically pure, was his but once and again. It would 
 be cruel to judge such a man by anything but his supreme 
 achievements ; to exalt unduly his lesser achievements is to 
 endanger the just glory of the poet at his loftiest and loveliest 
 height. Mangan wrote much that must always delight lovers 
 of poetry and of Mangan, which is yet but a small part of his 
 title to greatness ; he wrote a little which is a possession for 
 evermore of all who ' love the highest when they see it.' It 
 was as cruel as uncritical to forget that Mangan was a weak- 
 ling, lovable and to be compassionated, whose piteous necessities 
 found expression in writings often unvalued by himself and 
 not meant for remembrance. Excellent dexterities of rhyme, 
 audacities of phrase, masteries of metre, though testifying to 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 249 
 
 great accomplishment, do not testify to anything more ; and 
 those who confound Mangan's best with his second-best verse 
 do him a grave disservice. Non tali auxilio nee defensoribus 
 istis will Mangan maintain his station and his title to great- 
 ness. Happily, in this case, criticism and patriotism can go 
 hand-in-hand : Mangan's flight is highest, his music is noblest, 
 when ancient Ireland speaks to him of her glories, her sorrows, 
 her hopes. He is the poet of much else that is imperishable ; 
 but above all he is the poet of a poem foremost among, the 
 world's poems of inspired patriotism. It were enough for 
 Mangan's fame that he is the poet of the ' Dark Rosaleen.' 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON. 
 
 James Mangan, who for literary purposes assumed the name of Clarence, 
 was born in Dublin upon May I, 1803. His father was a tradesman, 
 of irascible temper, and of improvident ways which impoverished the 
 family. Before the age of fifteen Mangan was educated in various 
 schools, at one of which, thanks to a learned priest, he laid the 
 foundations of his multifarious linguistic scholarship. At the age of fifteen 
 he was put to a scrivener's office, where he remained for seven years : he 
 then served in an attorney's office for three more. These ten years, 
 though his accounts of them may be in some measure exaggerated, w^re a 
 time of uncongenial drudgery. Upon finally quitting this kind of employ- 
 ment he entered upon an erratic and uncertain literary life : the only posts 
 that he ever held, and that for no longtime, being successively a post in the 
 Ordnance Survey Office, through the kindness of Dr. Petrie, and in the 
 Library of Trinity College, through the kindness of Dr. Todd. Eventually, 
 thanks to the growth upon him of incorrigible irregularities of life, about 
 which the evidence of his contemporaries and surviving friends is conflict- 
 ing, he was cast upon the world to live by his pen. From first to last all 
 his published works appeared in Dublin magazines and journals : we need 
 only mentitn The Dublin University Magazine, The Nation, and The 
 Dublin Penny Journal, The one collection of his work that appeared in 
 his lifetime is the ANTHOLOGIA GERMANICA, published in 1845. His 
 latter life was miserable and precarious ; and in 1849 ne died in the Meath 
 Hospital, of cholera as seems probable ; of starvation and exhaustion, as 
 some say aged forty-six. He was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. His life 
 jn its details is hard to follow and ascertain ; his own statements are clearly 
 coloured by his imaginative habit of mind, which itself was affected by the 
 use of stimulants or narcotics, or both : the evidence of those who knew 
 him is discordant. But that life, whatever be the precise truth concerning 
 
250 BOOK IV 
 
 it, was wholly lived in Dublin, and, sad though it were, was not marked by 
 incidents or adventures of a notable kind. Its uniform sadness is perhaps 
 its one sure and clear fact. After his death there appeared POETS AND 
 POETRY OF MUNSTER, translations edited by John O'Daly, in 1850 ; in 
 1859 the celebrated John Mitchel published an edition of the POEMS, 
 with a fine and generous introduction ; in 1884 the Rev. C. P. Meehan, 
 Mangan's friend and benefactor, issued ESSAYS IN P.ROSE AND VERSE ; 
 in 1897 Miss Guiney published her SELECTIONS from the poems, and in 
 the same year Mr. D. J. O'Donoghue published a probably final LIFE AND 
 WRITINGS. There is no complete edition of Mangan's works, nor is such 
 a thing desirable ; the volumes here mentioned contain all, perhaps more 
 than all, that is required for an appreciation of his genius and a knowledge 
 of his life. L. J. 
 
 DARK ROSALEEN 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 OH ! my dark Rosaleen, 
 
 Do not sigh, do not weep ! 
 The priests are on the ocean green, 
 
 They march along the deep. 
 There's wine from the royal Pope 
 
 Upon the ocean green, 
 And Spanish ale shall give you hope, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 
 Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, 
 Shall give you health, and help, and hope, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 Over hills and through dales 
 
 Have I roamed for your sake ; 
 All yesterday I sailed with sails 
 
 On river and on lake. 
 The Erne, at its highest flood, 
 
 I dashed across unseen, 
 For there was lightning in my blood, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 Oh ! there was lightning in my blood, 
 Red lightning lightened through my blood, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 251 
 
 All day long, in unrest, 
 
 To and fro do I move. 
 The very soul within my breast 
 
 Is wasted for you, love ! 
 The heart in my bosom faints 
 
 To think of you, my Queen, 
 My life of life, my saint of saints, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 
 To hear your sweet and sad complaints, 
 My life, my love, my saint of saints, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 Woe and pain, pain and woe, 
 
 Are my lot, night and noon*, 
 To see your bright face clouded so, 
 
 Like to the mournful moon. 
 But yet will I rear your throne 
 
 Again in golden sheen ; 
 'Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 'Tis you shall have the golden throne, 
 'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 Over dews, over sands, 
 
 Will I fly for your weal : 
 Your holy delicate white hands 
 
 Shall girdle me with steel. 
 At home in your emerald bowers, 
 
 From morning's dawn till e'en, 
 You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 
 You'll think of me through daylight's hours, 
 My virgin flower, my flower of flowers, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
252 BOOK JV 
 
 I could scale the blue air, 
 
 I could plough the high hills, 
 Oh 1 I could kneel all night in prayer, 
 
 To heal your many ills ! 
 And one beamy smile from you 
 
 Would float like light between 
 My toils and me, my own, my true, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 Would give me life and soul anew, 
 A second life, a soul anew, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 Oh ! the Erne shall run red 
 
 With redundance of blood, 
 The earth shall rock beneath our tread, 
 
 And flames wrap hill and wood, 
 And gun- peal and slogan-cry 
 
 Wake many a glen serene, 
 Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 My own Rosaleen ! 
 
 The Judgment Hour must first be nigh, 
 Ere you can fade, ere you can die, 
 
 My dark Rosaleen ! 
 
 A VISION OF CONNAUGHT IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Et moi, j'ai 6te" aussi en Arcadie.' 
 
 I WALKED entranced 
 
 Through a land of morn ; 
 The Sun, with wond'rous excess of light 
 Shone down and glanced 
 
 Over seas of corn, 
 
 And lustrous gardens a-left and right. 
 Even in the clime 
 Of resplendent Spain 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 253 
 
 Beams no such sun upon such a land ; 
 But it was the time, 
 
 'Twas in the reign, 
 Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand. 
 
 Anon stood nigh 
 
 By my side a man 
 Of princely aspect and port sublime. 
 Him queried I, 
 
 * Oh, my Lord and Khan, 
 What clime is this, and what golden time? 1 
 When he' The clime 
 Is a clime to praise ; 
 
 The clime is Erin's, the green and bland ; 
 And it is the time, 
 
 These be the days, 
 Of Cdhal Mor of the Wine-red Hand ! ' 
 
 Then I saw thrones, 
 And circling fires, 
 
 And a dome rose near me, as by a spell, 
 Whence flowed the tones 
 
 Of silver lyres, 
 
 And many voices in wreathed swell ; 
 And their thrilling chime 
 
 Fell on mine ears 
 
 As the heavenly hymn of an angel-band 
 ' It is now the time, 
 
 These be the years, 
 Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand ! ' 
 
 I sought the hall, 
 
 And, behold ! a change 
 From light to darkness, from joy to woe ! 
 Kings, nobles, all, 
 
 Looked aghast and strange ; 
 The minstrel-group sate in dumbest show ! 
 Had some great crime 
 Wrought this dread amaze, 
 
254 BOOK IV 
 
 This terror ? None seemed to understand ! 
 'Twas then the time, 
 
 We were in the days, 
 Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand. 
 
 I again walked forth ! 
 
 But lo ! the sky 
 
 Showed fleckt with blood, and an alien sun 
 Glared from the north, 
 
 And there stood on high, 
 Amid his shorn beams, A SKELETON ! 
 
 It was by the stream 
 
 Of the castled Maine, 
 One autumn eve, in the Teuton's land, 
 That I dreamed this dream 
 
 Of the time and reign 
 Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand ! 
 
 LAMENT FOR THE PRINCES OF TIR-OWEN AND TIRCONNELL 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 O WOMAN of the Piercing Wail, 
 
 Who mournest o'er yon mound of clay 
 
 With sigh and groan, 
 Would God thou wert among the Gael ! 
 Thou wouldst not then from day to day 
 
 Weep thus alone. 
 
 'Twere long before, around a grave 
 In green Tirconnell, one could find 
 
 This loneliness ; 
 
 Near where Beann-Boirche's banners wave, 
 Such grief as thine could ne'er have pined 
 Companionless. 
 
 Beside the wave, in Donegal, 
 
 In Antrim's glen, or fair Dromore, 
 
 Or Killillee, 
 
 Or where the sunny waters fall 
 At Assaroe, near Erna's shore, 
 This could not be. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 255 
 
 On Berry's plains in rich Drumcliff 
 Throughout Armagh the Great, renowned 
 
 In olden years, 
 
 No day could pass but woman's grief 
 Would rain upon the burial-ground 
 Fresh floods of tears ! 
 
 Oh no ! from Shannon, Boyne, and Suir, 
 From high Dunluce's castle-walls, 
 
 From Lissadill, 
 Would flock alike both rich and poor. 
 
 One wail would rise from Cruachan's halls 
 
 To Tara's hill ; 
 
 And some would come from Barrow-side, 
 And many a maid would leave her home 
 
 On Leitrim's plains, 
 And by melodious Banna's tide, 
 And by the Mourne and Erne, to come 
 And swell thy strains ! 
 
 Oh ! horse's hoofs would trample down 
 The mount whereon the martyr-saint 
 
 Was crucified. 
 
 From glen and hill, from plain and town, 
 One loud lament, one thrilling plaint, 
 
 Would echo wide. 
 
 There would not soon be found, I ween, 
 One foot of ground among those bands 
 
 For museful thought, 
 So many shriekers of the keen 
 
 Would cry aloud, and clap their hands, 
 All woe-distraught ! 
 
 Two princes of the line of Conn 
 Sleep in their cells of clay beside 
 
 O'Donnell Roe. 
 
 Three royal youths, alas ! are gone, 
 Who lived for Erin's weal, but died 
 For Erin's woe ! 
 
256 BOOK 7K 
 
 Ah ! could the men of Ireland read 
 
 The names these noteless burial stones 
 
 Display to view, 
 
 Their wounded hearts afresh would bleed, 
 Their tears gush forth again, their groans 
 Resound anew ! 
 
 The youths whose relics moulder here 
 
 Were sprung from Hugh, high Prince and Lord 
 
 Of Aileach's lands ; 
 Thy noble brothers, justly dear, 
 Thy nephew, long to be deplored 
 
 By Ulster's bands. 
 
 Theirs were not souls wherein dull Time . 
 Could domicile Decay or house 
 
 Decrepitude ! 
 
 They passed from Earth ere Manhood's prime, 
 Ere years had power to dim their brows 
 Or chill their blood. 
 
 And who can marvel o'er thy grief, 
 Or who can blame thy flowing tears, 
 
 That knows their source ? 
 O'Donnell, Dunnasana's chief, 
 Cut off amid his vernal years, 
 
 Lies here a corse 
 
 Beside his brother Cathbar, whom 
 Tirconnell of the Helmets mourns 
 
 In deep despair 
 
 For valour, truth, and comely bloom, 
 
 For all that greatens and adorns, 
 
 A peerless pair. 
 
 Oh ! had these twain, and he, the third, 
 The Lord of Mourn e, O'Niall's son, 
 
 Their mate in death 
 A prince in look, in deed and word 
 Had these three heroes yielded on 
 The field their breath ; 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 257 
 
 Oh ! had they fallen on Criffan's plain, 
 There would not be a town or clan 
 
 From shore to sea 
 
 But would with shrieks bewail the slain, 
 Or chant aloud the exulting rann 
 Of jubilee. 
 
 When high the shout of battle rose 
 
 On fields where Freedom's torch still burned 
 
 Through Erin's gloom, 
 If one, if barely one of those 
 Were slain, all Ulster would have mourned 
 
 The hero's doom ! 
 If at Athboy, where hosts of brave 
 Ulidian horsemen sank beneath 
 
 The shock of spears, 
 Young Hugh O'Neill had found a grave, 
 Long must the north have wept his death 
 With heart-wrung tears ! 
 
 If on the day of Ballachmyre, 
 The Lord of Mourne had met, thus young, 
 
 A warrior's fate, 
 
 In vain would such as those desire 
 To mourn, alone, the champion sprung 
 
 From Niall the Great ! 
 No marvel this for all the dead, 
 Heaped on the field, pile over pile, 
 
 At Mullach-brack, 
 Were scarce an eric for his head, 
 
 If Death had stayed his footsteps while 
 On victory's track ! 
 
 If on the Day of Hostages 
 
 The fruit had from the parent bough 
 
 Been rudely torn 
 
 In sight of Munster's bands Mac- Nee's 
 
 Such blow the blood of Conn, I trow, 
 
 Could ill have borne. 
 
258 BOOK 
 
 If on the day of Balloch-boy, 
 Some arm had laid, by foul surprise, 
 
 The chieftain low, 
 Even our victorious shout of joy 
 
 Would soon give place to rueful cries 
 And groans of woe ! 
 
 If on the day the Saxon host 
 
 Were forced to fly a day so great 
 
 For Ashanee 
 The Chief had been untimely lost, 
 
 Our conquering troops should moderate 
 
 Their mirthful glee. 
 There would not lack on Lifford's day, 
 From Galway, from the glens of Boyle, 
 
 From Limerick's towers, 
 A marshalled file, a long array, 
 Of mourners to bedew the soil 
 With tears in showers ! 
 
 If on the day a sterner fate 
 Compelled his flight from Athenree, 
 
 His blood had flowed, 
 What numbers all disconsolate 
 
 Would come unasked, and share with thee 
 
 Affliction's load ! 
 If Derry's crimson field had seen 
 
 His life-blood offered up, though 'twere 
 
 On Victory's shrine, 
 A thousand cries would swell the keen^ 
 A thousand voices of despair 
 Would echo thine ! 
 
 Oh 1 had the fierce Dalcassian swarm, 
 That bloody night on Fergus' banks, 
 
 But slain our Chief ; 
 When rose his camp in wild alarm, 
 How would the triumph of his ranks 
 Be dashed with grief ! 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 259 
 
 How would the troops of Murbach mourn, 
 If on the Curlew Mountains' day 
 
 Which England rued 
 Some Saxon hand had left them lorn : 
 By shedding there, amid the fray, 
 Their prince's blood ! 
 
 Red would have been our warriors' eyes, 
 Had Roderick found on Sligo's field 
 
 A gory grave. 
 
 No Northern Chief would soon arise, 
 So sage to guide, so strong to shield, 
 
 So swift to save. 
 
 Long would Leith-Cuinn have wept if Hugh 
 Had met the death he oft had dealt 
 
 Among the foe ; 
 
 But, had our Roderick fallen too, 
 All Erin must, alas ! have felt 
 The deadly blow. 
 
 What do I say? Ah, woe is me 
 Already we bewail in vain 
 
 Their fatal fall ! 
 And Erin, once the Great and Free, 
 
 Now vainly mourns her breakless chain, 
 
 And iron thrall ! 
 
 Then, daughter of O'Donnell, dry 
 Thine overflowing eyes, and turn 
 
 Thy heart aside ; 
 For Adam's race is born to die, 
 And sternly the sepulchral urn 
 Mocks human pride. 
 
 Look not, nor sigh, for earthly throne, 
 Nor place thy trust in arm of clay : 
 
 But on thy knees 
 Uplift thy soul to God alone, 
 
 For all things go their destined way, 
 As He decrees. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 BOOK IV 
 
 Embrace the faithful Crucifix, 
 
 And seek the path of pain and prayer 
 
 Thy Saviour trod ; 
 Nor let thy spirit intermix 
 
 With earthly hope and worldly care 
 Its groans to God. 
 
 And Thou, O mighty Lord ! whose ways 
 Are far above our feeble minds 
 
 To understand ; 
 
 Sustain us in these doleful days, 
 And render light the chain that binds 
 
 Our fallen land ! 
 
 Look down upon our dreary state 
 And through the ages that may still 
 
 Roll sadly on, 
 
 Watch thou o'er hapless Erin's fate, 
 And shield at least from darker ill 
 The blood of Conn ! 
 
 THE DAWNING OF THE DAY 
 
 'TWAS a balmy summer morning, 
 
 Warm and early, 
 Such as only June bestows ; 
 Everywhere the earth adorning, 
 
 Dews lay pearly 
 In the lily-bell and rose. 
 Up from each green leafy bosk and hollow 
 
 Rose the blackbird's pleasant lay, 
 And the soft cuckoo was sure to follow 
 'Twas the Dawning of the Day. 
 
 Through the perfumed air the golden 
 
 Bees flew round me, 
 Bright fish dazzled from the sea ; 
 Till medreamt some fairy olden 
 World spell-bound me 
 In a trance of witcherie. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 261 
 
 Steeds pranced round anon with stateliest housings, 
 
 Bearing riders prankt in rich array, 
 Like flushed revellers after wine carousings 
 
 Twas the Dawning of the Day. 
 
 Then a strain of song was chanted, 
 
 And the lightly 
 
 Floating sea-nymphs drew anear. 
 , Then again the shore seemed haunted 
 
 By hosts brightly 
 
 Clad, and wielding shield and spear ! 
 Then came battle shouts, an onward rushing 
 
 Swords, and chariots, and a phantom fray : 
 Then all vanished. The warm skies were blushing 
 In the Dawning of the Day. 
 
 Cities girt with glorious gardens, 
 
 Whose immortal 
 Habitants in robes of light 
 Stood, methpught, as angel-wardens 
 
 Nigh each portal, 
 Now arose to daze my sight. 
 Eden spread around, revived and blooming, 
 
 When lo ! as I gazed, all passed away 
 I saw but black rocks and billows looming 
 In the dim chill Dawn of Day. 
 
 KATHALEEN NY-HOULAHAN l 
 
 A JACOBITE RELIC FROM THE IRISH 
 
 LONG they pine in weary woe the nobles of our land 
 Long they wander to and fro, proscribed, alas ! and banned ; 
 Feastless, houseless, altarless, they bear the exile's brand, 
 
 But their hope is in the coming-to of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 
 
 Think not her a ghastly hag, too hideous to be seen ; 
 Call her not unseemly names, our matchless Kathaleen ; 
 Young she is, and fair she is, and would be crowned a queen, 
 Were the king's son at home here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 
 
 1 One of the numerous poetic names for Ireland. 
 
262 BOOK IV 
 
 Sweet and mild would look her face Oh ! none so sweet and mild 
 Could she crush the foes by whom her beauty is reviled ; 
 Woollen plaids would grace herself and robes of silk her child, 
 If the king's son were living here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 
 
 Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones 
 Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones ! 
 Bitter anguish wrings our souls with heavy sighs and groans 
 We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 
 
 Let us pray to Him who holds life's issues in His hands, 
 Him who formed the mighty globe, with all its thousand lands : 
 Girding them with sea and mountains, rivers deep, and strands, 
 To cast a look of pity upon Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan. 
 
 He who over sands and waves led Israel along 
 He who fed, with heavenly bread, that chosen tribe and throng ; 
 He who stood by Moses when his foes were fierce and strong, 
 May He show forth His might in saving Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan ! 
 
 THE WOMAN OF THREE Cows 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 WOMAN of Three Cows, agra \ don't let your tongue thus 
 
 rattle ! 
 Oh, don't be saucy, don't be stiff, because you may have cattle. 
 
 1 have seen and, here's my hand to you, I only say what's true 
 A many a one with twice your stock not half so proud as you. 
 
 Good luck to you, don't scorn the poor, and don't be their despiser ; 
 For worldly wealth soon melts away, and cheats the very miser ; 
 And death soon strips the proudest wreath from haughty human 
 
 brows 
 Then don't be stiff, and don't be proud, good Woman of Three 
 
 Cows. 
 
 See where Momonia's heroes lie, proud Owen Mor's descendants. 
 Tis they that won the glorious name, and had the grand atten- 
 dants ; 
 
 If they were forced to bow to Fate, as every mortal bows, * 
 Can you be proud, can you be stiff, my Woman of Three Cows ? 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 263 
 
 The brave sons of the Lord of Clare, they left the land to mourning ; 
 Mavrone \ for they were banished, with no hope of their returning. 
 Who knows in what abodes of want those youths were driven to 
 
 house ? 
 Yet you can give yourself these airs, O Woman of Three Cows. 
 
 Oh, think of Donnel of the Ships, the Chief whom nothing daunted, 
 See how he fell in distant Spain unchronicled, unchanted ; 
 He sleeps, the great O'Sullivan, where thunder cannot rouse 
 Then ask yourself, should you be proud, good Woman of Three 
 Cows? 
 
 O'Ruark, Maguire, those souls of fire, whose names are shrined in 
 
 story : 
 Think how their high achievements once made Erin's greatest 
 
 glory. 
 Yet now their bones lie mouldering under weeds and cypress 
 
 boughs 
 And so, for all your pride, will yours, O Woman of Three Cows. 
 
 Th' O'Carrols, also, famed when .fame was only for the boldest, 
 Rest in forgotten sepulchres with Erin's best and oldest ; 
 Yet who so great as they of yore in battle or carouse ? 
 Just think of that, and hide your head, good Woman of Three 
 Cows. 
 
 Your neighbour's poor ; and you, it seems, are big with vain ideas, 
 Because, inagh \ you've got three cows one more, I see, than she 
 
 has; 
 
 That tongue of yours wags more at times than charity allows ; 
 But if you're strong, be merciful great Woman of Three Cows. 
 
 AVRAN 
 
 Now, there you go ; you still, of course, keep up your scornful 
 
 bearing, 
 
 And I'm too poor to hinder you ; but, by the cloak I'm wearing, 
 If I had but four cows myself, even though you were my spouse, 
 I'd thwack you well, to cure your pride, my Woman of Three Cows. 
 
264 BOOK IV 
 
 THE KARAMANIAN EXILE 
 
 I SEE thee ever in my dreams, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Thy hundred hills, thy thousand streams, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 As when thy gold-bright morning gleams, 
 As when the deepening sunset seams 
 With lines of light thy hills and streams, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 So thou loomest on my dreams, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 
 The hot bright plains, the sun, the skies, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Seem death-black marble to mine eyes, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 I turn from summer's blooms and dyes ; 
 Yet in my dreams thou dost arise 
 In welcome glory to my eyes, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 In thee my life of life yet lies, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 Thou still art holy in mine eyes, 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 
 Ere my fighting years were come, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Troops were few in Erzerome, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 Their fiercest came from Erzerome, 
 They came from Ukhbar's palace dome, 
 They dragged me forth from thee, my home, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Thee, my own, my mountain home, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 In life and death, my spirit's home, 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 265 
 
 Oh, none of all my sisters ten, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Loved like me my fellow-men, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 I was mild as milk till then, 
 I was soft as silk till then ; 
 Now my breast is as a den, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Foul with blood and bones of men, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 With blood and bones of slaughtered men, 
 Karaman ! O Karaman \ 
 
 My boyhood's feelings newly born, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Withered like young flowers uptorn, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 And in their stead sprang weed and thorn ; 
 What once I loved now moves my scorn ; 
 My burning eyes are dried to horn, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 I hate the blessed light of morn, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 It maddens me, the face of morn, 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 
 The Spahi wears a tyrant's chain, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 But bondage worse than this remains, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 His heart is black with million stains : 
 Thereon, as on Kaf s blasted plains, 
 Shall never more fall dews and rains, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Save poison-dews and bloody rains, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 Hell's poison-dews and bloody rains, 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 
266 BOOK IV 
 
 But life at worst must end ere long, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Azreel avengeth every wrong, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 Of late my thoughts rove more among 
 Thy fields ; o'ershadowing fancies throng 
 My mind, and texts of bodeful song, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 Azreel is terrible and strong, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 His lightning sword smites all ere long, 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 
 There's care to-night in Ukhbar's halls, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 There's hope, too, for his trodden thralls, 
 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 What lights flash red along your walls ? 
 Hark ! hark ! the muster-trumpet calls ! 
 I see the sheen of spears and shawls, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 The foe ! the foe ! they scale the walls, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 To-night Murad or Ukhbar falls, 
 Karaman ! O Karaman ! 
 
 THE TIME OF THE BARMECIDES 
 
 MY eyes are filmed, my beard is grey, 
 
 I am bowed with the weight of years ; 
 I would I were stretched in my bed of clay 
 
 With my long-lost Youth's compeers ! 
 For back to the past, though the thought brings woe, 
 
 My memory ever glides 
 To the old, old time, long, long ago, 
 
 The time of the Barmecides ! 
 To the old, old time, long, long ago, 
 
 The time of the Barmecides ! 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGA N 267 
 
 Then youth was mine, and a fierce wild will 
 
 And an iron arm in war, 
 And a fleet foot high upon I shikar's hill, 
 
 When the watch-lights glimmered afar, 
 And a barb as fiery as any I know 
 
 That Khoord or Beddaween rides, 
 Ere my friends lay low long, long ago, 
 
 In the time of the Barmecides ; 
 Ere my friends lay low long, long ago, 
 
 In the time of the Barmecides. 
 
 One golden goblet illumed my board, 
 
 One silver dish was there ; 
 At hand my tried Karamanian sword 
 
 Lay always bright and bare. 
 For those were the days when the angry blow 
 
 Supplanted the word that chides 
 When hearts could glow long, long ago, 
 
 In the time of the Barmecides ; 
 When hearts could glow long, long ago, 
 
 In the time of the Barmecides. 
 
 Through city and desert my mates and I 
 
 Were free to rove and roam, 
 Our diapered canopy the deep of the sky 
 
 Or the roof of the palace dome 
 Oh ! ours was that vivid life to and fro 
 
 Which only sloth derides 
 Men spent Life so, long, long ago, 
 
 In the time of the Barmecides ; 
 Men spent Life so, long, long ago, 
 
 In the time of the Barmecides. 
 
 I see rich Bagdad once again, 
 With its turrets of Moorish mould, 
 
 And the Kailif s twice five hundred men, 
 Whose binishes flamed with gold ; 
 
 I call up many a gorgeous show 
 Which the Pall of Oblivion hides 
 
268 BOOK IV 
 
 All passed like snow, long, long ago, 
 With the time of the Barmecides ; 
 
 All passed like snow, long, long ago, 
 With the time of the Barmecides. 
 
 But mine eye is dim, and my beard is grey, 
 
 And I bend with the weight of years 
 May I soon go down to the House of Clay, 
 
 Where slumber my Youth's compeers ! 
 For with them and the Past, though the thought 
 wakes woe, 
 
 My memory ever abides ; 
 And I mourn for the times gone long ago 
 
 For the times of the Barmecides ! 
 I mourn for the times gone long ago, 
 
 For the times of the Barmecides. 
 
 SIBERIA 
 
 IN Siberia's wastes 
 
 The ice-wind's breath 
 Woundeth like the toothed steel. 
 Lost Siberia doth reveal 
 
 Only blight and death. 
 
 Blight and death alone. 
 
 No Summer shines. 
 Night is interblent with Day. 
 In Siberia's wastes alway 
 
 The blood blackens, the heart pines. 
 
 In Siberia's wastes 
 
 No tears are shed, 
 For they freeze within the brain. 
 Nought is felt but dullest pain, 
 
 Pain acute, yet dead ; 
 
 Pain as in a dream, 
 
 When years go by 
 Funeral-paced, yet fugitive 
 When man lives and doth not live 
 
 Doth not live nor die. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 269 
 
 In Siberia's wastes 
 
 Are sands and rocks. 
 Nothing blooms of green or soft, 
 But the snowpeaks rise aloft 
 
 And the gaunt ice-blocks. 
 
 And the exile there 
 
 Is one with those ; 
 They are part, and he is part, 
 For the sands are in his heart, 
 
 And the killing snows. 
 
 Therefore in those wastes 
 
 None curse the Czar ; 
 Each man's tongue is cloven by 
 The North Blast, who heweth nigh 
 
 With sharp scimitar. 
 
 And such doom each drees, 
 
 Till, hunger-gnawn 
 
 And cold slain, he at length sinks there, 
 Yet scarce more a corpse than ere 
 
 His last breath was drawn. 
 
 O'HussEY's ODE TO THE MAGUIRE 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 WHERE is my Chief, my Master, this bleak night, mavrone ! 
 
 Oh, cold, cold, miserably cold, is this bleak night for Hugh ; 
 
 Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one through and 
 
 through 
 Pierceth one to the very bone ! 
 
 Rolls real thunder? Or was that red, livid light 
 
 Only a meteor? I scarce know ; but through the midnight dim 
 The pitiless ice-wind streams. Except the hate that persecutes 
 
 Nothing hath crueller venomy might. 
 
270 BOOK IV 
 
 An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems ! 
 
 The flood-gates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst 
 
 wide 
 Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's 
 
 tide, 
 Descends grey rain in roaring streams. 
 
 Though he were even a wolf raging the round green woods, 
 
 Though he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea, 
 Though he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he, 
 
 This sharp, sore sleet, these howling floods.. 
 * 
 
 Oh ! mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire ! 
 Darkly, as in a dream he strays ! Before him and behind 
 Triumphs the tyrannous anger of the wounding wind, 
 
 The wounding wind that burns as fire ! 
 
 It is my bitter grief it cuts me to the heart 
 That in the country of Clan Darry this should be his fate ! 
 Oh, woe is me, where is he ? Wandering, houseless, desolate, 
 
 Alone, without or guide or chart ! 
 
 Medreams I see just now his face, the strawberry-bright, 
 
 Uplifted to the blackened heavens, while the tempestuous winds 
 Blow fiercely over and round him, and the smiting sleet-shower 
 blinds 
 
 The hero of Galang to-night ! 
 
 Large, large affliction unto me and mine it is, 
 That one of his majestic bearing, his fair, stately form, 
 Should thus be tortured and o'erborne that this unsparing 
 storm 
 
 Should wreak its wrath on head like his ! 
 
 That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the oppressed, 
 
 Should this chill, churlish night, perchance, be paralysed by 
 
 frost 
 While through some icicle-hung thicket as one lorn and lost 
 
 He walks and wanders without rest. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 271 
 
 The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead ; 
 
 It overflows the low banks of the rivulets and ponds 
 The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds, 
 
 So that the cattle cannot feed. 
 
 The pale bright margins of the streams are seen by none ; 
 Rushes and sweeps along the untamable flood on every side 
 It penetrates and fills the cottagers' dwellings far and wide 
 
 Water and land are blent in one. 
 
 Through some dark wood, 'mid bones of monsters, Hugh now 
 
 strays, 
 As he confronts the storm with anguished heart, but manly 
 
 . brow 
 
 Oh ! what a sword-wound to that tender heart of his were now 
 A backward glance at peaceful days ! 
 
 But other thoughts are his thoughts that can still inspire 
 
 With joy and an onward-bounding hope the bosom of MacNee 
 Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright billows of the sea, 
 
 Borne on the wind's wings, flashing fire ! 
 
 And though frost glaze to-night the clear dew of his eyes, 
 And white gauntlets glove his noble fine fair fingers o'er, 
 A warm dress is to him that lightning-garb he ever wore, 
 
 The lightning of the soul, not skies. 
 
 AVRAN 
 
 Hugh marched forth to the fight I grieved to see him so depart ; 
 And lo ! to-night he wanders frozen, rain-drenched, sad, 
 
 betrayed 
 But the memory of the lime-white mansions his right hand hath 
 
 laid 
 In ashes warms the hero's heart. 
 
 THE NAMELESS ONE 
 
 ROLL forth, my song, like the rushing river 
 That sweeps along to the mighty sea ; 
 God will inspire me while I deliver 
 My soul to thee ! 
 
272 BOOK IV 
 
 Tell them the world, when my bones lie whitening 
 
 Amid the last homes of youth and eld, 
 That there once was one whose veins ran lightning 
 No eye beheld. 
 
 Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour, 
 
 How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom, 
 No star of all heaven sends to light our 
 Path to the tomb. 
 
 Roll on, my song, and to after-ages 
 
 Tell how, disdaining all earth can give, 
 He would have taught men from wisdom's pages 
 The way to live. 
 
 And tell how trampled, derided, hated, 
 
 And worn by weakness, disease and wrong, 
 He fled for shelter to God, who mated 
 His soul with song 
 
 With song which alway, sublime or vapid, 
 Flowed like a rill in the morning beam, 
 Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid 
 A mountain stream. 
 
 Tell how the Nameless, condemned for years long 
 
 To herd with demons from hell beneath, 
 Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long 
 For even death. 
 
 Go on to tell how, with genius wasted, 
 
 Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love, 
 With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted 
 He still, still strove. 
 
 Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others, 
 
 And some whose hands should have wrought for him 
 (If children live not for sires and mothers), 
 His mind grew dim. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 273 
 
 And he fell far through that pit abysmal, 
 
 The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns, 
 And pawned his soul for the Devil's dismal 
 Stock of returns. 
 
 But yet redeemed it in days of darkness, 
 
 And shapes and signs of the final wrath, 1 
 When death, in hideous and ghastly starkness, 
 Stood in his path. 
 
 And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow, 
 
 And want, and sickness, and houseless nights, 
 He bides in calmness the silent morrow 
 That no ray lights. 
 
 And lives he still, then ? Yes ! Old and hoary 
 
 At thirty-nine, from despair and woe, 
 He lives, enduring what future story 
 Will never know. 
 
 Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble, 
 
 Deep in your bosoms ! There let him dwell ! 
 He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble, 
 Here and in hell. 
 
 SHAPES! AND SIGNS 
 
 I SEE black dragons mount the sky, 
 I see earth yawn beneath my feet 
 
 I feel within the asp, the worm 
 That will not sleep and cannot die, 
 
 Fair though may show the winding-sheet ! 
 I hear all night as through a storm 
 Hoarse voices calling, calling 
 My name upon the wind 
 All omens monstrous and appalling 
 Affright my guilty mind. 
 
 1 The ' shapes and signs of the final wrath ' are described in two terrible 
 stanzas printed below from a hitherto unknown poem given in O'Donoghue's 
 LIFE OF MANGAN. 
 
 T 
 
274 BOOK IV 
 
 I exult alone in one wild hour 
 That hour in which the red cup drowns 
 
 The memories it anon renews 
 In ghastlier guise, in fiercer power 
 Then Fancy brings me golden crowns, 
 And visions of all brilliant hues 
 Lap my lost soul in gladness, 
 
 Until I wake again, 
 And the dark lava-fires of madness 
 Once more sweep through my brain. 
 
 GONE IN THE WIND l 
 
 i 
 
 SOLOMON ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. 
 Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
 Like the swift shadows of Noon, like the dreams of the Blind, 
 Vanish the glories and pomps of the earth in the wind. 
 
 Man ! canst thou build upon aught in the pride of thy mind ? 
 Wisdom will teach thee that nothing can tarry behind ; 
 Though there be thousand bright actions embalmed and enshrined, 
 Myriads and millions of brighter are snow in the wind. 
 
 in 
 
 Solomon ! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind. 
 Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
 All that the genius of man hath achieved or designed 
 Waits but its hour to be dealt with as dust by the wind. 
 
 1 With one of Mangan's usual mystifications this magnificent threnody 
 was described by him as a translation from the German of Riickert, and 
 has hitherto always been printed as such. It has, however, no German 
 original the phrase ' gone in the wind ' being practically all that it possesses 
 in common with a certain poem of Rlickert's, and there the phrase is used 
 differently. We therefore restore the poem to its true author. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 275 
 
 IV 
 
 Say, what is Pleasure t A phantom, a mask undefined. 
 Science ? An almond, whereof we can pierce but the rind. 
 Honour and Affluence? Firmans that Fortune hath signed, 
 Only to glitter and pass on the wings of the wind. 
 
 Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. 
 Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
 Who is the Fortunate ? He who in anguish hath pined ! 
 He shall rejoice when his relics are dust in the wind ! 
 
 v\ 
 
 Mortal ! be careful with what thy best hopes are entwined ; 
 Woe to the miners for Truth where the Lampless have mined ! 
 Woe to the seekers on earth for what none ever find ! 
 They and their trust shall be scattered like leaves on the wind. 
 
 VII 
 
 Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. 
 Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
 Happy in death are they only whose hearts have consigned 
 All Earth's affections and longings and cares to the wind. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Pity, thou, reader ! the madness of poor humankind, 
 Raving of knowledge and Satan so busy to blind ! 
 Raving of glory, like me, for the garlands I bind 
 (Garlands of Song) are but gathered, and strewn in the wind 
 
 IX 
 
 Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind. 
 Babylon ! where is thy might ? It is gone in the wind. 
 I, Abul-Namez, must rest ; for my fire hath declined, 
 And I hear voices from Hades like bells on the wind. 
 
 T3 
 
276 BOOK IV 
 
 WRITTEN IN A NUNNERY CHAPEL 1 
 
 ME hither from moonlight 
 A voice ever calls, 
 
 Where pale pillars cluster 
 And organ tones roll 
 Nor sunlight nor moonlight 
 E'er silver these walls ; 
 Lives here other lustre, 
 The Light of the Soul. 
 
 Here budded and blossomed, 
 Here faded and died, 
 
 Like brief-blooming roses, 
 Earth's purest of pure ! 
 Now ever embosomed 
 In bliss they abide 
 
 Oh, may, when life closes, 
 My meed be as sure ! 
 
 SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 
 
 OMITTING living writers, of whom it is too early to speak with 
 confidence, Ferguson was unquestionably the Irish poet of the 
 past century who has most powerfully influenced the literary 
 history of his country. It was in his writings that the great 
 work of restoring to Ireland the spiritual treasure it had lost in 
 parting with the Gaelic tongue was decisively begun. He was, 
 however, no mere antiquarian. He was also a man of affairs, 
 and a patriot in the highest sense of the word. He had friends 
 in all parties, and yet was in no respect a political trimmer. 
 Indeed, though with strong National proclivities of which he 
 gave evidence in some of his earlier ballads, and which came 
 to the front in his successful defence of Richard Dalton 
 Williams, the Young Ireland poet, when tried for treason- 
 
 1 From O'Donoghue's LIFE OF MANGAN. 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 277 
 
 felony he felt that the highest duty he owed his country was 
 that of a poet and prose writer above party. As Mr. Yeats 
 points out, ' he was wiser than Young Ireland in the choice of 
 his models ; for while drawing not less than they from purely 
 Irish sources, he turned to the great poets of the world for his 
 style,' and notably to Homer : and the result is that, as Roden 
 Noel puts it, * CONGAL and his shorter Irish heroic poems 
 combine in a striking manner the vague, undefined shadowy 
 grandeur, the supernatural glamour of northern romance, with 
 the self-restraint, distinct symmetrical outline, ordered pro- 
 portion and organic construction of the Greek classic.' More 
 than this, as Mr. Aubrey De Vere observes, ' its qualities are 
 those characteristic of the noble, not the ignoble poetry viz. 
 passion, imagination, vigour, an epic largeness of conception, 
 wide human sympathies, vivid and truthful description while 
 with them it unites none of the vulgar stimulants for exhausted 
 or morbid poetic appetite, whether the epicurean seasoning, 
 the sceptical, or the revolutionary.' Again, Ferguson differs 
 from those who regard the poetical life as another world de- 
 tachable from this a life mystical, non-human, non-moral 
 the life, if you will, of faery, demon, or demi-god. These men 
 do not seem able to grasp the fact that the noblest poetic work 
 of all, that of Shakespeare and Dante and the great Greek 
 tragedians, possesses all the elusive glamour of genius and 
 that something besides which makes it human or, rather, 
 divine because it catches and inflames the divine spark in the 
 human heart, and thereby satisfies and saves. 
 
 No doubt the attitude of the poetic school who would thus 
 pen off poetry from practice is the not unnatural revolt of 
 young Celtic idealists against the Anglo-Saxon materialism 'of 
 a great deal of modern British life. But are they not thereby 
 promoting an intellectual error as dangerous as the mediaeval 
 one which isolated learning and piety in the monastery and the 
 desert ? Will not its limitation by a literary coterie lead them 
 into a worse isolation ? 
 
 Ferguson was in no danger of falling into this illusion. 
 He was absolutely human and practical, broad and 
 
278 BOOK IV 
 
 sympathetic-minded both. Yet for entire success as a poet in 
 his particular day he had to struggle against difficulties con- 
 stitutional, accidental, and of his own seeking. His very 
 versatility rendered difficult that entire devotion of his energies 
 to his art of which Tennyson is the great modern example. 
 He could not spare the time, even had he the taste, for that 
 fastidious word-for-word finish in verse to which the late 
 Laureate accustomed the critics, and through them the educated 
 public. Then Ferguson was deliberately facing the fact that 
 the Irish themes he had set his heart upon had no public 
 to greet them. A generation before, they would have had the 
 support of a cultured and unprovincialised Irish upper class ; 
 a generation later they would have claimed attention, in 
 Ferguson's hands, as the noblest outcome of the Irish literary 
 revival. He was therefore both before and after his time, 
 and realised his position to the full. Indeed, when the writer 
 once spoke to him with regret of the neglect of all but Irish 
 literature other than political, he acknowledged it, but with the 
 quiet expression of his confidence that ' his time would come.' 
 
 Professor Dowden has called Ferguson an eighteenth- 
 century poet. It would be interesting to see him develop this 
 theme. Perhaps his point of view may be surmised from the 
 following passage in a letter addressed by him to Ferguson : 
 * You say CONGAL has not been a success. I think, whether 
 on " broad rumour " or not, a success it has been, estimated by 
 the "perfect witness of all-judging Jove." 
 
 ' A poem with epic breadth and thews is not likely to be 
 popular now. A diseased and over-sensitive nerve is a quali- 
 fication for the writing of poetry at present, much more than a 
 thoughtful brain or strength of muscle. Some little bit of 
 novel sensibility, a delight in such colours as French milliners 
 send over for ladies' bonnets, or the nosing of certain curious 
 odours, is enough to make the fortune of a small poet. 
 What seems to me most noteworthy in your poems is the 
 union of culture with simplicity and strength. Their refine- 
 ment is large and strong, not curious and diseased ; and they 
 have spaces and movements which give one a feeling like the 
 
SSR SAMUEL FERGUSON 279 
 
 sea or the air on a headland. I had not meant to say anything 
 of CONGAL, but somehow this came and said itself.' 
 
 Nothing could be more largely appreciative of Ferguson's 
 work than this. That fine saying, ' Your poems have spaces 
 and movements which give one a feeling like the sea or the 
 air on a headland,' may be here illustrated by one of the 
 greatest passages in CONGAL ; indeed, it in all probability 
 suggested the criticism to Dr. Dowden. It may be quoted, 
 moreover, as a telling example of how Ferguson's careless 
 or rough treatment of detail is carried off by the largeness of 
 his conception and movement : 
 
 He looking landward from the brow o some great sea-cape's head, 
 
 Bray or Ben-Edar sees beneath, in silent pageant grand, 
 
 Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing land ; 
 
 Red glebe and meadow margin green commingling to the view 
 
 With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of blue ; 
 
 Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns, seaward, to the verge 
 
 Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the far-down surge, 
 
 Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that, low beneath, 
 
 Poised off the rock, ply underfoot ; and, 'mid the blossoming heath, 
 
 And mint-sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-air'd, at ease reclined, 
 
 Surveys the wide pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling wind ; 
 
 With all its shifting, shadowy belts, and chasing scopes of green, 
 
 Sun-strown, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening squalls between, 
 
 And slant, cerulean-skirted showers that with a drowsy sound, 
 
 Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round ; 
 
 And haply, being a citizen just 'scaped from some disease 
 
 That long has held him sick indoors, now, in the brine-fresh breeze, 
 
 Health-salted, bathes ; and says, the while he breathes reviving bliss, 
 
 ' I am not good enough, O God, nor pure enough for this ! ' 
 
 The ear educated to Tennyson's or Swinburne's verse would 
 be jarred by the heavy aggregation of consonants in ' Red 
 glebe,' ' Poised off the rock, ply,' ' loves the ledge rare-aired, 
 'just 'scaped from some disease' ; by the rough metrical effect 
 of ' made by ' in the seventh line ; and by the necessity for 
 pausing after ' birds ' in the next, if it is to be made to scan at 
 all. But as a presentment of country, cliff, and ocean, it is 
 alike so broad and delicate in colour and movement that it 
 
280 BOOK IV 
 
 rises visibly before us, till the sough of the sea is in our ears, 
 and we breathe and smell its keen savours. Then the human 
 note with which it closes is inexpressibly touching. 
 
 It is not, however, implied that Ferguson is wanting in the 
 musical ear or the appreciation of fine poetical craftsmanship, 
 but rather suggested that, unlike Tennyson and other writers, 
 he is not sectus ad unguem in everything he attempts, because 
 he is not careful to be so. Moreover, like Wordsworth, he did 
 not always write when his best mood was upon him. 
 
 'The Forging of the Anchor' is a remarkably finished 
 achievement for a young man of one-and-twenty, and 'The 
 Fairy Thorn,' another early poem, is exquisite wizardry itself. 
 True, it appears to have been conceived and executed with a 
 rapidity which was inspiration, and is indeed one of Ferguson's 
 gems without flaw. But the fact remains that very little of 
 Ferguson's has this absolute verbal felicity. 
 
 His translations from the Irish are among the best of the 
 kind. They differ from Miss Brooke's and Miss Balfour's 
 versions, and those of other translators preceding him, by their 
 assimilation of Irish idioms and Irish measures into Englis.i 
 verse without violence indeed, with a happy judgment which 
 lends a delightful effect to these lyrics. Edward Walsh has 
 scarcely excelled Ferguson in this field ; and Dr. Sigerson and 
 Dr. Hyde, though they come closer to the original metres, 
 rarely go past him in poetical passion. 
 
 But the very character of the originals calls for simple treat- 
 ment, and high polish would have spoilt Ferguson's verse- 
 translations from the Irish. 
 
 Ferguson was casting round for nobler themes to work 
 upon, whilst keeping his hand in at these translations. 
 Patriotic to the core, he was above all things eager to achieve 
 something lofty in literature for Ireland's sake something 
 that might help to lift her from the intellectual flats upon 
 which she had fallen. 
 
 In his own delightful epistle to his friend Dr. Gordon, 
 written in Burns's measure, as from one descendant of the Scot 
 to another, he thus puts it : 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 281 
 
 And, aiblins though at times mislasted 
 
 Wi' grievous thochts o' moments wasted, 
 
 Auld frien's estranged, and green hopes blasted, 
 
 As birkies will 
 When the 'mid line o' life they've crossed it, 
 
 I'm happy still. 
 
 For ilka day I'm growin' stronger 
 To speak my mind in love or anger ; 
 And, hech ! ere it be muckle longer, 
 
 You'll see appearin 
 Some offerin's o' nae cauld haranguer 
 
 Put out for Erin. 
 
 Lord, for ae day o' service done her ! 
 
 Lord, for ane hour's sunlight upon her ! 
 
 Here, Fortune, tak' warld's wealth and honour, 
 
 You're no my debtor, 
 Let me but rive ae link asunder 
 
 O' Erin's fetter ! 
 
 Let me but help to shape the sentence 
 Will put the pith o' independence, 
 O' self-respect in self- acquaintance, 
 
 And manly pride 
 Intil auld Eber-Scot's descendants 
 
 Take a' beside ! 
 
 Let me but help to get the truth 
 Set fast in ilka brother's mouth, 
 Whatever accents, north or south, 
 
 His tongue may use, 
 And there's ambition, riches, youth, 
 
 Take which you choose. 
 
 But dinna, dinna take my frien's ; 
 And spare me still my dreams at e'ens, 
 And sense o' Nature's bonny scenes, 
 
 And a' above ; 
 Leave me, at least, if no' the means 
 
 The thocht o' love ! 
 
 But before he had ripened for the full outcome of his genius 
 Ferguson anticipated it by one of the noblest laments in our 
 language 'Thomas Davis: an Elegy, 1845' a poignant 
 
282 BOOK IV 
 
 expression of his grief at the death of his friend, the famous 
 young National leader. 
 
 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy tells us that ' Ferguson, who lay on 
 a bed of sickness when Davis died impatient that for the 
 moment he could take no part in public asked me to come 
 to him, that he might ease his heart by expressing his sense of 
 what he had lost. He read me fragments of a poem written 
 under these circumstances, the most Celtic in structure and 
 spirit of all the elegies laid on the tomb of Davis. The last 
 verse sounded like a prophecy it was, at any rate, a powerful 
 incentive to take up our task anew.' 
 
 The Irish potato famine now intervened, and drove Fer- 
 guson into the sava indignatio of Juvenal at the Government 
 mismanagement, which had multiplied its horrors a hundredfold. 
 
 No one knew this better than himself, for he was secretary 
 to the Irish Council whose wise advice, tendered to the English 
 Parliament, was rejected in favour of futile experimental legis- 
 lation. Convinced that a Parliament after Grattan's model 
 would have saved the country, he became a Repealer and one 
 of the poets of Repeal. 
 
 Deem not, O generous English hearts, who gave 
 Your noble aid our sinking Isle to save, 
 This breast, though heated in its Country's feud, 
 Owns aught towards you but perfect gratitude. 
 
 But, frankly while we thank you all who sent 
 
 Your alms, so thank we not your Parliament, 
 
 Who, what they gave, from treasures of our own 
 
 Gave, if you call it giving, this half loan, 
 
 Half gift from the recipients to themselves 
 
 Of their own millions, be they tens or twelves ; 
 
 Our own as well as yours : our Irish brows 
 
 Had sweated for them ; though your Commons' House, 
 
 Forgetting your four hundred millions debt, 
 
 When first in partnership our nations met, 
 
 Against our twenty-four (you then twofold 
 
 The poorer people), call them British Gold. 
 
 No ; for these drafts on our United Banks 
 
 We owe no gratitude and give no thanks ! 
 
SAMUEL FERGUSON 283 
 
 More than you'd give to us, if Dorsetshire 
 Or York a like assistance should require ; 
 Or than you gave us when, to compensate 
 Your slave-owners, you charged our common state 
 Twice the amount : no, but we rather give 
 Our curses, and will give them while we live, 
 To that pernicious blind conceit, and pride, 
 Wherewith the aids we asked you misapplied. 
 
 Sure, for our wretched Country's various ills 
 We've got, a man would think, enough of bills, 
 Bills to make paupers, bills to feed them made ; 
 Bills to make sure that paupers' bills are paid ; 
 Bills in each phrase of economic slang ; 
 Bills to transport the men they dare not hang 
 (I mean no want of courage physical, 
 ' 'Tis Conscience doth make cowards of us all'). 
 
 Ferguson, however, lived to turn this fine power of literary 
 invective against the successors of the Young Ireland poets 
 and patriots with whom he had sympathised, when he found 
 them descending from the high aspirations of Davis and 
 Duffy to what he believed to be 'a sordid social war of 
 classes carried on by the vilest methods.' 
 
 In his satiric poems * The Curse of the Joyces ' and ' At 
 the Polo Ground ' an analysis in Browning's manner of Carey's 
 frame of mind before giving the fatal signal to the assassins of 
 Mr. Burke and Lord Frederic Cavendish and in his Dublin 
 eclogue * In Carey's Footsteps,' he attacks the cruelties of 
 the then existing system of political agitation with unsparing 
 severity. 
 
 Ferguson's LAYS OF THE WESTERN GAEL, which appeared 
 in 1864, was a gratifying surprise even to many of his friends, 
 owing to the inclusion in it of fresh and finer work than he had 
 yet achieved. Their point of departure is thus well described 
 by Mr. A. M. Williams, tke American critic : 
 
 ' The LAYS OF THE WESTERN GAEL are a series of ballads 
 founded on events in Celtic history, and derived from the 
 Early Chronicles and poems. They are original in form and 
 substance, the ballad form and measure being unknown to 
 
284 BOOK IV 
 
 the early Celtic poets of Ireland ; but they preserve in a 
 wonderful degree the ancient spirit, and give a picture of 
 the ancient times with all the art of verity. They have a 
 solemnity of measure like the voice of one of the ancient bards 
 chanting of 
 
 Old forgotten far-off things 
 
 And battles long ago, 
 
 and they are clothed with the mists of a melancholy age. 
 They include such subjects as " The Tain Quest," the search 
 of the bard for the lost lay of the great cattle-raid of Queen 
 Maeve of Connaught, and its recovery, by invocation, from the 
 voice of its dead author, who rises in misty form above his 
 grave ; "The Healing of Conall Carnach," a story of violated 
 sanctuary and its punishment ; " The Welshmen of Tirawley," 
 one of the most spirited and original, and which has been 
 pronounced by Mr. Swinburne as amongst the finest of modern 
 ballads, telling of a cruel mulct inflicted upon the members of 
 a. Welsh Colony and its vengeance ; and other incidents in 
 early Irish history. In his poems, rather than in Macpherson's 
 " Ossian " or in the literal translations, will the modern reader 
 find the voice of the ancient Celtic bards speaking to the 
 intelligence of to-day in their own tones, without false change 
 and dilution, or the confusion and dimness of an ancient 
 language.' 
 
 Of the longer lays thus far published, ' The Tain Quest ' 
 found the greatest acceptance with his poetic compeers, and 
 the most notable criticism of it was that of Thomas Aird. ' In 
 all respects "The Tain Quest" is one of the most striking 
 poems of our day. Specially do I admire the artistic skill 
 with which you have doubled the interest of the Quest itself 
 by introducing in the most natural and unencumbering way 
 so many of the best points of the "Great Cattle Foray," the 
 subject-matter of the " Tain." The shield has long been grand 
 in poetry ; you have made it grander. The refusal of Fergus to 
 stir to the force of private sympathy, but his instantaneous 
 recognition of the patriotic necessity of song, is a just and 
 noble conception. 
 
5Y/? SAMUEL FERGUSON 285 
 
 4 The power of the Bard over the rude men of Gort ; the 
 filial piety of the sons of Sanchan, and their brotherly love ; 
 that mysterious Vapour, and that terrible blast of entrance, and 
 the closing malediction by the Maiden, are all very notable 
 towards the consummation of effect. As for the kissing of the 
 champions in the pauses of the fight, I know of nothing in the 
 reaches of our human blood so marvellously striking and 
 sweet; you have now made it immortal in song. However 
 admirably expressed, the last stanza is an error in art. Surely 
 you spoil the grand close, and the whole piece, by appending 
 your own personality of interference as a commentator on the 
 malediction. Might 1 not further say (with a peculiar smile) 
 you make the preordained fulfilment of Malison a sublime 
 apology for Irish Grub Street ? ' The sting in the tail of this 
 fine judgment is deserved, and it is curious to observe that 
 Ferguson has been similarly unlucky in 'The Welshmen of 
 Tirawley ' in this attempt to tag a comment on to the end of 
 a tale which he has so nobly adorned. That magnificently 
 savage lay should end with the ante-penultimate stanza. 
 
 This tendency to act at times as a commentator on his own 
 work and to present it at others in a too ponderously Latinised 
 form are, with the careless, not to say bluff, disregard for 
 verbal delicacies into which he now and again lapses, the only 
 proclivities to which exception can be taken in Ferguson's 
 technique. But his method is uniformly manly, and his 
 occasional periods of majestic inspiration sweep our minor 
 critical objections before them, as the blast from his Mananan's 
 mantle swept the chieftain and his hound into the valley 
 like leaves before the wind. We have taken Ferguson to 
 our hearts as we take our best brother, cherishing his very pon- 
 derosities and carelessnesses as part and parcel of his greatness, 
 as we cherish the kindred qualities in Samuel Johnson for the 
 love of the man and the gentleman behind the bluff exterior. 
 
 In 1872 appeared CONGAL, which Ferguson describes in 
 a letter to Father Russell as an epic poem of greater length 
 and higher literary pretension than his LAYS OF THE WESTERN 
 GAEL. 
 
286 BOOK IV 
 
 An epic requires a great subject, and he who writes it 
 must have vision and manliness closely allied in his nature, 
 else how can he realise the heroic ideal ? These are Ferguson's 
 pre-eminent qualities. He is manly. His heroes proclaim it in 
 their every action, their every utterance ; and his tender portrait 
 of Lafinda could only have been drawn by a gallant gentleman. 
 He has vision. The terrible shapes and Celtic superstitions 
 the Giant Walker, the Washer of the Ford - loom monstrously 
 before us as he sings ; and he marshals the contending hosts 
 at Moyra with a magnificent realism to which we know no 
 modern parallel. 
 
 His subject is a great old-world tale of love and hate, and 
 ambition and jealousy, and craft and courage a splendid 
 story of the last heroic stand made by Celtic Paganism against 
 the Irish Champions of the Cross. An epitome of it with 
 illustrative passages is annexed. 
 
 But great though much of CONGAL undoubtedly is, Fer- 
 guson's genius was to break into finest flower at the last. 
 
 The volume of 1880 contains some striking verse of a 
 religious, philosophical, and personal kind, including the search- 
 ing ' Two Voices,' the trenchant and yet more touching 'Three 
 Thoughts,' the noble lines entitled 'The Morning's Hinges,' 
 and the lofty ' Hymn of the Fishermen ' a poem written after 
 a surmounted danger of shipwreck. But in ' Deirdre ' and 
 ' Conary ' he reaches his fullest height as a poet, and the best 
 that has been said or could well be said about them comes 
 from William Allingham and Aubrey De Vere the two men 
 of his time whose opinion should interest, if not influence, us 
 most. 
 
 Allingham wrote on receipt of the volume : ' Many 
 thoughts of my own swarmed about the pages as I turned 
 them, like bees in a lime-tree. In your style high culture is 
 reconciled with simplicity, directness, and originality ; and 
 nothing can be happier than you enrichment of English 
 speech with Irish forms without the least violence. All the 
 Irish poems are very remarkable, but " Deirdre " I count the 
 chief triumph. Its peculiar form of unity is perfectly managed, 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 287 
 
 while in general effect it recalls nothing so much as a Greek 
 play.' 
 
 Mr. Aubrey De Vere and Mr. Yeats, and perhaps the larger 
 proportion of the other leading Irish critics, prefer * Conary ' 
 to ' DeirdreV 
 
 ' It would be difficult,' writes De Vere, c to find, amid our 
 recent literature, a poem which at once aims as high as " Conary " 
 and as adequately fulfils its aim. . . . Novel to English readers 
 as is such a poetic theme, and embarrassing as are a few of the 
 Gaelic names, the work belongs to the " great " style of poetry 
 that style which is characterised by simplicity, breadth of 
 effect, a careless strength full of movement, but with nothing 
 of the merely " sensational " about it, and an entire absence of 
 those unclassic tricks that belong to meaner verse. It has 
 caught thoroughly that epic character so remarkable in those 
 Bardic Legends which were transmitted orally through ages 
 when Homer must have been a name unknown in Ireland.' 
 
 To sum up : though at times over- scholarly and nodding 
 now and again as all the great unconscious poets, from Homer 
 down, will occasionally nod, as opposed to the little self-con- 
 scious ones who are never caught napping Ferguson is always 
 human, always simple, always strong. Sense ever goes before 
 sound with him. He is no mere reed for blowing music 
 through. He takes you into no gorgeous jungle of colour and 
 scent, and stealing serpent and ravening beast, where per- 
 spective is lost and will paralysed, and passion riots unrestrained. 
 
 No ! what Mr. W. B. Yeats finely wrote in 1886 is still 
 true to-day : 
 
 ' The author of these poems is the greatest poet Ireland 
 has produced, because the most central and most Celtic. 
 Whatever the future may bring forth in the way of a truly 
 great and national literature and now that the race is so 
 large, so widely spread, and so conscious of its unity, the years 
 are ripe- will find its morning in these three volumes of one 
 who was made by the purifying flame of national sentiment 
 the one man of his time who wrote heroic poety one who, 
 among the somewhat sybaritic singers of his day, was like some 
 
288 BOOK IV 
 
 aged sea-king sitting among the inland wheat and poppies 
 the savour of the sea about him and its strength.' 
 
 A. P. GRAVES. 
 
 Sir Samuel Ferguson, sixth and youngest child of John Ferguson and 
 his wife Agnes Knox, was born in Belfast, in the house of his maternal 
 grandfather, on March 10, 1810. 
 
 The Ferguson family had migrated to the North of Ireland from 
 Scotland about the year 1640, and we find Samuel Ferguson, Sir Samuel's 
 grandfather, resident at Standing Stone, in the County of Antrim. The 
 younger Samuel was educated in Belfast and at Trinity College, Dublin. 
 He was called to the Irish Bar in 1838, and to the Inner Bar in 1859. 
 
 In 1867 he retired from the practice of his profession to become the 
 first Deputy Keeper of the Records of Ireland. But while only in his 
 twenty-first year he wrote ' The Forging of the Anchor ' and ' Willy 
 Gilliland,' and contributed prose such as ' The Wet Wooing' and 'The 
 Return of Claneboy ' to Blackivood. A little later, in the early thirties, he 
 published ' The Fairy Thorn,' ' The Forester's Complaint, 'and a series of 
 papers on Hardiman's IRISH MINSTRELSY, containing verse-translations 
 from the Gaelic. A long series of historic tales the Hibernian Nights 
 Entertainments followed in The Dublin University Magazine. Over- 
 wrought at the Bar, he recruited his health by spending the year 1845-46 
 on the Continent, employing much of his time in a diligent examination of 
 the museums, libraries, and architectural remains of the principal places in 
 Europe where traces of the early Irish scholars and missionaries might be 
 looked for. His notebooks are in consequence enriched with exquisite 
 sketches of scenery and antiquities and pen-and-ink etchings of foreign, 
 cathedrals. 
 
 Thus his travels adde.d largely to his knowledge of art, archaeology, and 
 history. 
 
 He married in 1848 Mary Catherine, eldest daughter of Mr. Robert R. 
 Guinness, and soon settled permanently at 20 North Great George's Street, 
 Dublin. In the same year he founded the Protestant Repeal Association 
 to aid the Young Ireland movement, but subsequently withdrew altogether 
 from active politics. In 1865, after the publication of his LAYS OF THE 
 WESTERN GAEL, he received the degree of LL.D. honoris causd from 
 Dublin University, and in 1874 was made an honorary member of the 
 Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. His knighthood was conferred on him 
 in 1878, he was made president of the Royal Irish Academy in 1881, and 
 at the tercentenary of the University of Edinburgh in 1884 he received 
 the honorary degree of LL. D. 
 
 During these years he was a busy writer on literary and archaeological 
 questions, and as an evidence of the variety of his work at this time may 
 be mentioned his famous jeu d" 1 esprit ' Father Tom and the Pope,' afterwards 
 
SAMUEL FERGUSON 289 
 
 reprinted in ' Tales from Black-wood,' 1 and his letter to Hallam the historian, 
 which appeared in The Dublin University Magazine and led to the erection 
 of a statue in the new Houses of Parliament to Henri de Londres, Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin in the thirteenth century, whose just claim to that distinc- 
 tion would otherwise have been overlooked. 
 
 Many of Ferguson's articles in magazines and reviews at the time deal 
 with such general subjects as the poetry of Burns and Mrs. Browning, 
 Ruskin's STONES OF VENICE and SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE, 
 Layard's NINEVEH, and Chesney's volume on Artillery. 
 
 But the work which was distinctly his, and to which his best faculties 
 were given, was concerned with Ireland, and covered a wide field. For we 
 find him dealing now with Irish music, now with Irish architecture ; or 
 again with Irish annals, Irish law, and Irish antiquities Pagan and Christian 
 and yet attending to such subjects of modern importance as the attractions 
 and capabilities of his country. And here it may be said that he was an 
 ardent explorer of Irish scenery as well as of the remains of the old Irish 
 ecclesiastical establishments, as his two charming papers the results of a 
 tour made by him to Clonmacnois, Clare, and Aran convincingly prove. 
 To these prose works he was meantime adding his ' Lament for Thomas 
 Davis,' his ' Inheritor and Economist,' ' Dublin : a Satire after Juvenal,' 
 ' Westminster Abbey,' and his ' Cromlech on Howth,' exquisitely illustrated 
 and illuminated with initial letters from the Book of Kells by his friend 
 Miss Margaret Stokes. Ferguson published his epic CONGAL (founded 
 on the ancient bardic tale of the Battle of Moy- Rath) which he himself 
 considered his magnum opus-'m 1872, though a subsequent volume of 
 poems containing ' Conary ' and ' Deirdre ' and ' The Naming of Cu- 
 chullin,' and published in 1880, has met with more popular acceptance. 
 A small book, SHAKESPEREAN BREVIATES condensations of some of 
 Shakespere's plays for the use of Shakespere Reading Societies, the broken 
 plots being skilfully woven together, with explanatory verses was also 
 brought out during Ferguson's lifetime. Two posthumously published 
 volumes are OGHAM INSCRIPTIONS IN IRELAND, WALES, AND SCOTLAND, 
 and THE REMAINS OF ST. PATRICK, a verse rendition of the writings of 
 our national saint. LAYS OF THE RED BRANCH, published after his death 
 by Lady Ferguson, is a collection from different volumes of all the poems 
 dealing with the Conorian cycle of Irish heroic literature, arranged in 
 historical order and furnished with an historical introduction. 
 
 Sir Samuel Ferguson after an illness of some months' duration a failure 
 of the heart's action passed away on August 9, 1886, at Shand Lodge, 
 Howth. His personal popularity, attested to by many friendships formed 
 through life amongst old and young of every persuasion and party, was 
 confirmed at his death by the commingling of all classes and creeds a 1 . 
 his funeral as it passed to St. Patrick's Cathedral. For thither, besides 
 
 U 
 
290 BOOK IV 
 
 many private friends, followed the officers and members of the Royal Irish 
 Academy, with their mace draped in crape for their dead President ; whilst 
 the staff of the Record Office, down to the humblest workman connected 
 with it, joined the procession. 
 
 The Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Plunket, delivered a touching address 
 after the service, which contained these words : ' Do we not all feel that 
 by the death of our dear brother departed in the Lord we have all of us as 
 Irishmen suffered an irreparable loss ? In whatever light we may regard 
 the character of him who has been taken from us whether as a scholar, a 
 poet, or a patriot, or a God-fearing servant of his Master we must all 
 feel that Ireland has suffered a loss which it will be impossible to repair, and 
 which cannot be confined merely to those who belong to any one class or 
 any one creed amongst us. ' 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM ' CONGAL,' WITH AN ARGUMENT 
 
 The Pagan Prince. Congal (7th century A.D. ), son of the famous Scallan 
 Broadshield, by his prowess sets Domnal on the throne of Erin under 
 promise to restore him his ancestral realm of Ulster, which had been in 
 great part torn from his forefathers by other sub- Kings. Domnal tem- 
 porises, and only restores Congal part of this territory. Congal is bound to 
 Domnal by fosterage, and desires peace for a tender reason, being betrothed 
 to Lafinda, Princess of Donn, who has been brought up a Christian by the 
 nuns of St. Brigid. But Congal, who is of an imperious nature, takes 
 umbrage at what he believes to be an insult offered to him by King Domnal 
 at a royal banquet at Dunangay. He breaks from the feast, followed by his 
 Ulster champions, and seeks his uncle Kellach in the mountains of Mourne. 
 Here lived that implacable old Pagan, surrounded by all that were left of the 
 great company of the lords of Erin, who as heathens had been condemned 
 and banished at the synod of Drumkeat under King Aed, Domnal's father. 
 Kellach hails his insulted nephew with delight, and successfully urges him 
 to seek assistance from the Kings of Scotland and Wales. But before 
 starting Congal visits Lafinda : 
 
 The Princess with her women-train without the fort he found, 
 
 Beside a limpid running stream, upon the primrose ground ; 
 
 In two ranks seated opposite, with soft alternate stroke 
 
 Of bare, white, counter-thrusting feet, fulling a splendid cloak 
 
 Fresh from the loom : incessant rolled athwart the fluted board 
 
 The thick web fretted, while two maids, with arms uplifted, poured 
 
 Pure water on it diligently, and to their moving feet 
 
 In answering verse they sang a chaunt of cadence clear and sweet. 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 291 
 
 Princess Lafinda stood beside her feet in dainty shoes 
 
 Laced softly, and her graceful limbs in robes of radiant hues 
 
 Clad delicately, keeping time : on boss of rushes made, 
 
 Old muse Levarcam near them sat, beneath the hawthorn shade. 
 
 A grave experienced woman she, of reverend years, to whom 
 
 Well known were both the ends of life the cradle and the tomb 
 
 Whose withered hands had often smoothed the wounded warrior's 
 
 bed, 
 Bathed many new-born babes, and closed the eyes of many dead. 
 
 The merry maidens, when they spied the warlike King in 
 
 view, 
 
 Beneath their robes in modest haste their gleaming feet withdrew 
 And laughing all surceased their task. Lafinda blushing stood, 
 Elate with conscious joy to see so soon again renewed 
 A converse ah, how sweet compared with that of nurse or maid ! 
 But soon her joy met cruel check. 
 
 Congal tells how he has been insulted, that war is imminent, and that 
 their approaching marriage must await its issue. 
 
 She endeavours to dissuade him from his purpose, but Congal is 
 inexorable. He obtains hoped-for aid from abroad, and with a vast fleet 
 of auxiliaries sets sail for Erin. But evil omens await him, and at first 
 affright his allies. But the invading host, re-inspirited, marches inland and 
 pitches its tents for the night, but they get no rest in their encampment. 
 Mananan the Sea-God, figured as the Warder of Erin, marches round and 
 round the encamping army of invaders : 
 
 For all the night around their echoing camp 
 Was heard continuous from the hills a sound as of the tramp 
 Of giant footsteps ; but so thick the white mist lay around, 
 None saw the Walker save the King. He, starting at the sound, 
 Called to his foot his fierce red hound ; athwart his shoulders cast 
 A shaggy mantle, grasped his spear, and through the moonlight 
 
 passed 
 
 Alone up dark Ben-Boli's heights, towards which, above the woods 
 With sound as when at close of eve the noise of falling floods 
 Is borne to shepherd's ear remote on stilly upland lawn, 
 The steps along the mountain-side with hollow fall came on. 
 Fast beat the hero's heart ; and close down-crouching by his knee 
 Trembled the hound, while through the haze, huge as through 
 
 mists at sea 
 
 U2 
 
292 BOOK IV 
 
 The week-long sleepless mariner descries some mountain-cape, 
 Wreck-infamous, rise on his lee, appeared a monstrous Shape, 
 Striding impatient, like a man much grieved, who walks alone, 
 Considering of a cruel wrong ; down from his shoulders thrown 
 A mantle, skirted stiff with soil splashed from the miry ground, 
 At every stride against his calves struck with as loud rebound 
 As makes the mainsail of a ship brought up along the blast, 
 When with the coil of all its ropes it beats the sounding mast 
 So, striding vast, the giant passed ; the King held fast his breath 
 Motionless, save his throbbing heart ; and chill and still as death 
 Stood listening while, a second time, the giant took the round 
 Of all the camp : but when at length, for the third time, the sound 
 Came up, and through the parting haze a third time huge and dim 
 Rose out the Shape, the valiant hound sprang forth and challenged 
 
 him. 
 
 And forth, disdaining that a dog should put him so to shame, 
 Sprang Congal, and essayed to speak : ' Dread Shadow, stand ! 
 
 Proclaim 
 What wouldst thou, that thou thus all night around my camp 
 
 shouldst keep 
 
 Thy troublous vigil, banishing the wholesome gift of sleep 
 From all our eyes, who, though inured to dreadful sounds and 
 
 sights 
 
 By land and sea, have never yet in all our perilous nights 
 Lain in the ward of such a guard.' 
 
 The Shape made answer none, 
 
 But with stern wafture of its hand went angrier striding on, 
 Shaking the earth with heavier steps. Then Congal on his track 
 Sprang fearless. 
 
 'Answer me, thou churl ! ' he cried. ' I bid thee back ! ' 
 But while he spoke the giant's cloak around his shoulders grew 
 Like to a black bulged thunder-cloud, and sudden out there flew 
 From all its angry swelling folds, with uproar unconfined, 
 Direct against the King's pursuit, a mighty blast of wind. 
 Loud flapped the mantle tempest-lined, while fluttering down the 
 
 gale, 
 
 As leaves in autumn, man and hound were swept into the vale ; 
 And, heard o'er all the huge uproar, through startled Dalaray 
 The giant went, with stamp and clash, departing south away. 
 
SJK SAMUEL FERGUSON 293 
 
 At the ford of Moy-Linny they encounter a still more terrible spectre, 
 the Washer of the Ford. 
 
 Mid-leg deep she stood 
 
 Beside a heap of heads and limbs that swam in oozing blood, 
 Whereon, and on a glittering heap of raiment rich and brave, 
 With swift, pernicious hands she scooped and poured the crimson 
 wave. 
 
 Congal addresses her : 
 
 Who art thou, hideous one ? And from what curst abode 
 Comest thou thus in open day the hearts of men to freeze ? 
 And whose lopped heads and severed limbs and bloody vests are 
 
 these ? ' 
 
 ' I am the Washer of the Ford, 3 she answered ; ' and my race 
 Is of the Tuath de Danann line of Magi ; and my place 
 For toil is in the running streams of Erin ; and my cave 
 For sleep is in the middle of the shell-heaped cairn of Maev, 
 High up on haunted Knocknarea; ' and this fine carnage-heap 
 Before me, and these silken vests and mantles which I steep 
 Thus in the running waters, are the severed heads and hands 
 And spear-torn scarfs and tunics of these gay-dressed, gallant 
 
 bands 
 Whom thou, O Congal ! leadest to death. And this,' the Fury 
 
 said, 
 
 Uplifting by the clotted locks what seemed a dead man's head, 
 * Is thine own head, O Congal ! ' 
 
 The two foregoing passages may stand as types of the manner in which 
 Ferguson has fitted the English language to the wild shapes of Gaelic 
 mythology, and re-peopled the imaginative world of the Irish people with 
 the divine and mysterious figures that faded from it with the loss of the 
 ancient tongue. After these episodes there follows an affecting but vain 
 attempt on the part of Larinda and the spirit of St. Brigid to turn Congal 
 from his hostile purpose. He marches to battle against King Domnal and 
 his Irish hosts. One after another of the contending champions falls n 
 single combat with a rival hero, till the Christian champion, Prince Conal, 
 encounters Congal himself. After a fierce struggle Conal prevails, but 
 Congal is rescued from him only to fall, by a strange irony of fate, by an 
 
 1 This huge cairn on the mountain of Knocknarea, overlooking the 
 town of Sligo, is a landmark visible for many leagues around. 
 
294 BOOK IV 
 
 unexpected stroke of the idiot Prince Cuanna. This is the beginning of 
 the end. Congal fights on, though his life-blood is flowing fast, until his 
 fall causes the panic and flight of the Pagan forces. 
 
 Then dire was their disorder, as the wavering line at first 
 Swayed to and fro irresolute ; then, all disrupted, burst 
 Like waters from a broken dam effused upon the plain, 
 The shelter of Kilultagh's woods and winding glens to gain. 
 
 A fine episode is here introduced. Kellach, the old paralysed Pagan 
 Bard, who has been watching the battle from his tolg or litter, upraised on a 
 hill, cannot fly with the ' heavy-rolling tide of ruin and despair ' which 
 streams past him. 
 
 But keen-eyed Domnal, when he stood to view the rout, ere long 
 Spying that white, unmoving head amid the scattering throng, 
 Exclaimed : ' Of all their broken host one only man I see 
 Not flying ; and I therefore judge him impotent to be 
 Of use of limb. ' Go : take alive,' he cried, ' and hither fetch 
 The hoary-haired unmoving man . . .' 
 
 . . A swift battalion went 
 And, breaking through the hindmost line, where Kellach sat 
 
 hard by, 
 
 Took him alive ; and, chair and man uphoisting shoulder-high, 
 They bore him back, his hoary locks and red eyes gleaming far, 
 The grimmest standard yet displayed that day o'er all the war ; 
 And grimly, where they set him down, he eyed the encircling ring 
 Of Bishops and of chafing Chiefs who stood about the King. 
 
 Then, with his crozier's nether end turned towards him, 
 
 Bishop Ere 
 
 Said : ' Wretch abhorred, to thee it is we owe this bloody work ; 
 By whose malignant counsel moved, thy hapless nephew first 
 Sought impious aid of foreigners ; for which be thou accurst.' 
 And turned and left them. 
 
 Senach then approaching, mildly said : 
 
 ' No curse so strong but in the blood for man's redemption shed 
 May man dissolve ; arjd also thou, unhappy, if thou wilt 
 Mayst purchase peace and pardon now, and every stain of guilt 
 That soils thy soul may'st wash away, if but with heart sincere 
 Thou wilt repent thee and embrace the heavenly boon which here 
 I offer.' 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 295 
 
 * Speak him louder, sir,' said harsher Ronan Finn. 
 * Kellach, repent thy sins,' he cried ; * and presently begin, 
 For few the moments left thee now ; and, ere the hour be past, 
 Thy lot may, for eternity, in heaven or hell be cast.' 
 
 ' Repent thy sins,' said Domnal, ' and implore the Church's 
 
 grace ; 
 So shall thy life be spared thee yet a little breathing-space.' 
 
 Then Kellach from the Bishops' gaze withdrew his wavering 
 
 glance, 
 
 And, fixing his fast-glazing eyes on Domnal's countenance, 
 Said : ' I am old, and mainly deaf ; and much of what they say 
 I hear not. But I tell thee this : we'd not be here to-day 
 But for this trick of cursing, wherein much more expert 
 Are these front shaven Druids than in any manly art.' 
 
 'Injurious Kellach,' said the King, 'beware the chastening rod 
 The Church of Christ reserves for those who mock the priests of 
 God.' 
 
 ' Of no good God are these the priests,' said Kellach ; 'and, 
 
 for me, 
 
 I ne'er sought evil Spirit's aid 'gainst any enemy : 
 But what I've learned in bitter times among my noble peers, 
 That I have practised and upheld for well-nigh fourscore years ; 
 And never asked from clerk or witch, by sacrifice or charm, 
 To buy a demon's venal help to aid my own right arm : 
 But in my house good Poets, men expert in song and lay, 
 I've kept in bounteous sort, to teach my sons the prosperous way 
 Of open truth and manliness : for ever since the time 
 When Cathbad smothered Usnach's sons in that foul sea of slime 
 Raised by abominable spells at Creeveroe's bloody gate 
 Do ruin and dishonour still on priest-led Kings await. 
 Wherefore, by Fergus, son of Roy, ere that year passed away, 
 Emania was left bare and black ; and so lies at this day : 
 And thou in desert Tara darest not thyself to dwell, 
 Since that other bald magician, of Lorrah, from his bell 
 Shook out his maledictions on the unoffending hill.' 
 
 Said Domnal : * By my valour, old man, thou doest ill, 
 Comparing blessed saints of Christ with Pagan priests of Crom.' 
 
 'Crom or whomever else they serve,' said Kellach ; 'them 
 that come 
 
296 BOOK IV 
 
 Cursing, I curse.' 
 
 Then Ronan Finn, upheaving high his bell, 
 
 Rang it, and gave the banning word ; and Kellach therewith fell 
 Off his tolg side upon the ground, stone dead. The Poets there 
 Next night, in secret, buried him upon his brazen chair. 
 
 Brass-armed complete for standing fight, in Cahir- Laery, 
 
 wall, 
 
 Sun-smitten Laery, 1 rampart-tomb'd, awaits the judgment-call, 
 Facing the Leinstermen. Years roll, and Leinster is no more 
 The dragon-den of hostile men it was in days of yore ; 
 Still, constant till the day of doom, while the great stone-work 
 
 lasts, 
 Laery stands listening for the trump, at whose wall-bursting 
 
 blasts 
 
 He leaps again to fire thy plain, O Lififey, with the glare 
 Of that dread golden-bordered shield. Thus ever, on his chair, 
 Kellach awaits, from age to age, the coming of the time 
 Will bring the cursers and the curs'd before the Judge sublime. 
 
 Congal has meantime been whirled from the flying host by the giant 
 Warder, Mananan, who figures strangely and dimly in the background of 
 the tale both as the protector of Erin and the patron of heroes. True to the 
 Irish conception of the supernatural, he remains as a rule half merged in 
 Nature not completely disengaged from it, and taking firm and distinct 
 shape like a Greek deity, but rather communicating to what is natural and 
 visible the sense of the divinity behind it. Congal finds himself in his 
 native vale in Antrim, and laments his shame and grief : 
 
 'But more than for myself I mourn my generous friends deceived, 
 And all their wives and little ones of lord and sire bereaved.' 
 Tears, sent from whence the thought had come let faith divine 
 
 their source 
 Rose at the thought to Congal's eyes, and pressed with tender 
 
 force 
 
 1 Laoghaire MacNeill, King of Ireland in the days of St. Patrick, had 
 made a peace with the Leinstermen and ratified it with a vow by the Sun and 
 Wind. When he broke his compact, say the chroniclers, the Sun and Wind 
 slew him. He desired to be buried, standing and armed, in the rampart of 
 his cahir or fort, with his face towards Leinster. 
 
S/K SAMUEL FERGUSON 297 
 
 Unwonted passage ; and he wept, with many bitter sighs 
 
 In sudden vision of his life and all its vanities. 
 
 As when a tempest which all day, with whirlwind, fire, and hail 
 
 Vexing mid-air, has hid the sight of sunshine from the vale 
 
 Towards sunset rolls its thunderings ; fast as it mounts on high, 
 
 A flood of placid light refills the lately troubled sky ; 
 
 Shine all the full down-sliding streams, wet blades, and quivering 
 
 sprays, 
 
 And all the grassy-sided vales with emerald lustre blaze ; 
 So, in the shower of Congal's tears, his storms of passion passed, 
 So o'er his long-distempered soul came tranquil light at last. 
 
 Ere wonder in his calming mind had found reflection's aid, 
 There came across the daisied lawn a veiled religious maid, 
 From wicket of a neighbouring close ; and, as she nearer drew, 
 The peerless gesture and the grace indelible he knew. 
 
 Then follows a tender and touching conversation with Lafinda, after 
 which a marvellous vision rises before the sight of Congal Mananan, with 
 his mantle flashing like a summer sea, now appearing, not in anger, but as 
 a symbol of peace and regeneration for the distracted land. 
 
 Even as he spoke, soft rustling sounds to all their ears were 
 
 borne, 
 
 Such as warm winds at eve excite 'mongst brown-ripe rolling corn. 
 All, but Lafinda, looked ; but she, behind a steadfast lid, 
 Kept her calm eyes from that she deemed a sight unholy, hid. 
 And Congal reck'd not if the Shape that passed before his eyes 
 Lived only on the inward film, or outward 'neath the skies. 
 
 No longer soiled with stain of earth, what seemed his mantle 
 
 shone 
 
 Rich with innumerable hues refulgent, such as one 
 Beholds, and thankful-hearted he, who casts abroad his gaze 
 O'er some rich tillage-countryside when mellow Autumn days 
 Gild all the sheafy foodful stocks ; and broad before him spread 
 He looking landward from the brow of some great sea-cape's head, 
 Bray or Ben-Edar sees beneath, in silent pageant grand, 
 Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing 
 
 land; 
 
 Red glebe and meadow-margin green commingling to the view 
 With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of blue ; 
 
298 BOOK IV 
 
 Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns, seaward, to the verge 
 Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the far-down 
 
 surge, 
 
 Comes up the clamorous song of birds unseen, that, low beneath, 
 Poised off the rock, ply underfoot ; and, 'mid the blossoming 
 
 heath, 
 And mint-sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-air'd, at ease 
 
 reclined, 
 
 Surveys the wide pale-heaving floor crisped rjy a curling wind ; 
 With all its shifting, shadowy belts, and chasing scopes of green, 
 Sun-strown, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening squalls 
 
 between, 
 
 And slant, cerulean-skirted showers that with a drowsy sound, 
 Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round ; 
 And haply, being a citizen just 'scaped from some disease 
 That long has held him sick indoors, now, in the brine-fresh 
 
 breeze, 
 Health-salted, bathes ; and says, the while he breathes reviving 
 
 bliss, 
 
 ' I am not good enough, O God, nor pure enough for this ! ' 
 Such seemed its hues. His feet were set in fields of waving grain ; 
 His head, above, obscured the sun : all round the leafy plain 
 Blackbird and thrush piped loud acclaims : in middle air, breast- 
 high, 
 
 The lark shrill carolled ; overhead, and halfway up the sky, 
 Sailed the far eagle : from his knees, down dale and grassy steep, 
 Thronged the dun, mighty upland droves, and mountain-mottling 
 
 sheep, 
 
 And by the river-margins green, and o'er the thymy meads 
 Before his feet, careered, at large, the slim-knee'd, slender steeds, 
 It passed. Light Sweeny, as it passed, went also from their 
 
 view : 
 
 And, conscious only of her task, Lafinda bent anew 
 At Congal's side. She bound his wounds, and asked him, ' Has 
 
 thy heart 
 At all repented of its sins, unhappy that thou art ? ' 
 
 ' My sins,' said Congal, 'and my deeds of strife and blood- 
 shed seem 
 No longer mine, but as the shapes and shadows of a dream : 
 
SAMUEL FERGUSON 299 
 
 And I myself, as one oppressed with sleep's deceptive shows, 
 Awaking only now to life, when life is at its close.' 
 
 * Oh, grant,' she cried, with tender joy, ' Thou, who alone 
 
 canst save, 
 That this awaking be to light and life beyond the grave ! ' 
 
 'Twas then the long-corroded links of life's mysterious 
 
 chain 
 Snapped softly ; and his mortal change passed upon Congal Claen. 
 
 THE BURIAL OF KING CoRMAc 1 
 
 'CROM CRUACH and his sub-gods twelve/ 
 Said Cormac, ' are but carven treene ; 
 
 The axe that made them, haft or helve, 
 Had worthier of our worship been. 
 
 * But He who made the tree to grow 
 
 And hid in earth the iron-stone, 
 And made the man with mind to know 
 
 The axe's use, is God alone.' 
 
 Anon to priests of Crom was brought 
 Where, girded in their service dread, 
 
 They minister^ on red Moy Slaught 
 Word of the words King Cormac said. 
 
 They loosed their curse against the King 
 They cursed him in his flesh and bones 
 
 And daily in their mystic ring 
 
 They turn'd the maledictive stones, 
 
 Till, where at meat the monarch sate, 
 
 Amid the revel and the wine, 
 He choked upon the food he ate, 
 
 At Sletty, southward of the Boyne. 
 
 1 There is a Christian legend which tells that Cormac MacArt, who 
 ruled Ireland in the third century, had an early intuition of the true faith 
 and turned away from Paganism. Thereupon the priests of the great idol 
 Crom Cruach cursed him, and he died, but charged that he should be buried 
 at Rosnaree, and not at the great royal cemetery of Brugh (Newgrange) ; 
 which came about as the poem relates. 
 
300 BOOK IV 
 
 High vaunted then the priestly throng, 
 And far and wide they noised abroad, 
 
 With trump and loud liturgic song, 
 The praise of their avenging god. 
 
 But ere the voice was wholly spent 
 
 That priest and prince should still obey, 
 
 To awed attendants o'er him bent 
 
 Great Cormac gather'd breath to say : 
 
 ' Spread not the beds of Brugh for me 
 When restless death-bed's use is done ; 
 
 But bury me at Rosnaree, 
 
 And face me to the rising sun. 
 
 ' For all the Kings who lie in Brugh 
 Put trust in gods of wood and stone ; 
 
 And 'twas at Ross that first I knew 
 One, Unseen, who is God alone. 
 
 ( His glory lightens from the East ; 
 
 His message soon shall reach our shore ; 
 And idol-god and cursing priest 
 
 Shall plague us from Moy Slaught no more. 
 
 Dead Cormac on his bier they laid. 
 
 ' He reign'd a king for forty years, 
 And shame it were,' his captains said, 
 
 ' He lay not with his royal peers. 
 
 ' His grandsire, Hundred-Battle, sleeps 
 Serene in Brugh ; and all around 
 
 Dead kings in stone sepulchral keeps 
 Protect the sacred burial ground. 
 
 * What though a dying man should rave 
 Of changes o'er the Eastern sea ? 
 
 In Brugh of Boyne shall be his grave, 
 And not in noteless Rosnaree.' 
 
SAMUEL FERGUSON 301 
 
 Then northward forth they bore the bier 
 And down from Sletty side they drew, 
 
 With horseman and with charioteer, 
 To cross the fords of Boyne to Brugh. 
 
 There came a breath of finer air, 
 
 That touch'd the Boyne with ruffling wings ; 
 It stiriM him in his sedgy lair, 
 
 And in his mossy moorland springs. 
 
 And as the burial train came down 
 
 With dirge and savage dolorous shows, 
 
 Across their pathway, broad and brown, 
 The deep full-hearted river rose ; 
 
 From bank to bank through all his fords, 
 'Neath blackening squalls he swell'd and boil'd, 
 
 And thrice the wondering Gentile lords 
 Essay'd to cross, and thrice recoil'd. 
 
 Then forth stepp'd grey-hair'd warriors four ; 
 
 They said : * Through angrier floods than these 
 On link'd shields once our King we bore 
 
 From Dread-Spear and the hosts of Deece. 
 
 * And long as loyal will holds good, 
 And limbs respond with helpful thews, 
 
 Nor flood, nor fiend within the flood, 
 Shall bar him of his burial dues.' 
 
 With slanted necks they stoop'd to lift ; 
 
 They heaved him up to neck and chin ; 
 And, pair and pair, with footsteps swift, 
 
 Lock'd arm and shoulder, bore him in. 
 
 Twas brave to see them leave the shore ; 
 
 To mark the deep'ning surges rise, 
 And fall subdued in foam before 
 
 The tension of their striding thighs. 
 
302 BOOK IV 
 
 'Twas brave, when now a spear-cast out, 
 Breast-high the battling surges ran ; 
 
 For weight was great, and limbs were stout 
 And loyal man put trust in man. 
 
 But ere they reach'd the middle deep, 
 Nor steadying weight of clay they bore, 
 
 Nor strain of sinewy limbs could keep 
 Their feet beneath the swerving four. 
 
 And now they slide, and now they swim, 
 And now, amid the blackening squall, 
 
 Grey locks afloat, with clutchings grim, 
 They plunge around the floating pall ; 
 
 While as a youth with practised spear 
 
 Through justling crowds bears off the ring, 
 
 Boyne from their shoulders caught the bier 
 And proudly bore away the king. 
 
 At morning, on the grassy marge 
 Of Rosnaree, the corpse was found ; 
 
 And shepherds at their early charge 
 Entomb'd it in the peaceful ground. 
 
 A tranquil spot a hopeful sound 
 
 Comes from the ever youthful stream, 
 
 And still on daisied mead and mound 
 The dawn delays with tenderer beam 
 
 Round Cormac Spring renews her buds ; 
 
 In march perpetual by his side, 
 Down come the earth-fresh April floods, 
 
 And up \he sea-fresh salmon glide. 
 
 And life und time rejoicing run 
 
 From age to age their wonted way ; 
 
 But still he waits the risen Sun, 
 For still 'tis only dawning Day. 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 303 
 
 From AIDEEN'S GRAVE l 
 
 THEY heaved the stone ; they heap'd the cairn 
 Said Ossian, ' In a queenly grave 
 
 We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern, 
 Between the cliff and wave. 
 
 'The cliff behind stands clear and bare, 
 And bare, above, the heathery steep 
 
 Scales the clear heaven's expanse, to where 
 The Danann Druids sleep. 
 
 And all the sands that, left and right, 
 The grassy isthmus-ridge confine, 
 
 In yellow bars lie bare and bright 
 Amid the sparkling brine. 
 
 *A clear pure air pervades the scene, 
 
 In loneliness and awe secure ; 
 Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen 
 
 Who in her life was pure. 
 
 * Here, far from camp and chase removed, 
 
 Apart in Nature's quiet room, 
 The music that alive she loved 
 Shall cheer her in the tomb. 
 
 'The humming of the noontide bees, 
 The lark's loud carol all day long, 
 
 And, borne on evening's salted breeze, 
 The clanking sea-bird's song 
 
 * Shall round her airy chamber float, 
 
 And with the whispering winds and streams 
 Attune to Nature's tenderest note 
 The tenor of her dreams. 
 
 1 Aideen was the wife of Oscar, son of Oisin, son of Finn. She died 
 of grief after the slaying of Oscar and almost all the Fianna at the battle 
 of Gabhra, when the tribes of Ireland rose against them, and was buried 
 under the great cromlech on Howth. 
 
3 o 4 BOOK IV 
 
 ' And oft, at tranquil eve's decline 
 
 When full tides lip the Old Green Plain, 
 
 The lowing of Moynalty's kine 
 Shall round her breathe again, 
 
 'In sweet remembrance of the days 
 
 When, duteous, in the lowly vale, 
 Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze, 
 
 She fill'd the fragrant pail, 
 
 'And, duteous, from the running brook 
 Drew water for the bath ; nor deem'd 
 
 A King did on her labour look, 
 And she a fairy seern'd. 
 
 ' But when the wintry frosts begin, 
 And in their long-drawn, lofty flight, 
 
 The wild geese with their airy din 
 Distend the ear of night ; 
 
 'And when the fierce De Danann ghosts 
 At midnight from their peak come down ; 
 
 When all around the enchanted coasts 
 Despairing strangers drown ; 
 
 ' When, mingling with the wreckful wail, 
 From low Clontarf 's wave-trampled floor 
 
 Comes booming up the burthen'd gale 
 The angry Sand- Bull's roar ; 
 
 ' Or, angrier than the sea, the shout 
 Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined, 
 
 When Terror heads Oppression's rout, 
 And Freedom cheers behind : 
 
 ' Then o'er our lady's placid dream, 
 
 Where safe from storms she sleeps, may steal 
 Such joy as will not misbeseem 
 
 A queen of men to feel : 
 
SfK SAMUEL FERGUSON 305 
 
 'Such thrill of free, defiant pride, 
 
 As rapt her in her battle car 
 At Gavra, when by Oscar's side 
 
 She rode the ridge of war, 
 
 Exulting, down the shouting troops, 
 And through the thick confronting kings 
 With hands on all their javelin loops 
 And shafts on all their strings ; 
 
 * Ere closed the inseparable crowds. 
 
 No more to part for me, and show, 
 As bursts the sun through scattering clouds ; 
 My Oscar issuing so. 
 
 'No more, dispelling battle's gloom, 
 Shall son for me from fight return ; 
 
 The great green rath's ten-acred tomb 
 Lies heavy on his urn. 
 
 'A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay 
 
 Holds Oscar ; mighty heart and limb 
 
 One handful now of ashes grey : 
 And she has died for him. 
 
 1 And here, hard by her natal bower 
 On lone Ben-Edar's side, we strive 
 
 With lifted rock and sign of power 
 To keep her name alive ; 
 
 * That while, from circling year to year, 
 
 Her Ogham-letter'd stone is seen, 
 The Gael shall say, " Our Fenians here 
 Entomb'd their loved Aideen." ' 
 
 THE FAIRY THORN 
 
 AN ULSTER BALLAD 
 
 * GET up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning-wheel ; 
 
 For your father's on the hill, and your mother is asleep ; 
 Come up above the crags, and we'll dance a Highland reel 
 
 Around the fairy thorn on the steep.' 
 
 X 
 
306 BOOK IV 
 
 At Anna Grace's door 'twas thus the maidens cried, 
 Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green ; 
 
 And Anna laid the rock and the weary wheel aside 
 The fairest of the four, I ween. 
 
 They're glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve, 
 Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare ; 
 
 The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave, 
 And the crags in the ghostly air. 
 
 And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go, 
 
 The maids along the hillside have ta'en their fearless way, 
 
 Till they come to where the rowan trees in lonely beauty grow 
 Beside the Fairy Hawthorn grey. 
 
 The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim, 
 
 -Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee ; 
 The rowan berries cluster o'er her low head grey and dim 
 In ruddy kisses sweet to see. 
 
 The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row, 
 Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem, 
 
 And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds they go 
 Oh, never carolled bird like them ! 
 
 But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze 
 
 That drinks away their voices in echoless repose, 
 
 And dreamily the evening has stilled the haunted braes, 
 And dreamier the gloaming grows. 
 
 And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky 
 When the falcon's shadow saileth across the open shaw, 
 
 Are hushed the maidens' voices, as cowering down they lie 
 In the flutter of their sudden awe. 
 
 For, from the air above and the grassy ground beneath, 
 
 And from the mountain-ashes and the old White-thorn bet ween, 
 
 A power of faint enchantment doth through their beings breathe, 
 And they sink down together on the green. 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 307 
 
 They sink together silent, and, stealing side to side, 
 
 They fling their lovely arms o'er their drooping necks so fair ; 
 
 Then vainly strive again their naked arms to hide, 
 For their shrinking necks again are bare. 
 
 Thus clasped and prostrate all, with their heads together bowed, 
 Soft o'er their bosoms beating the only human sound 
 
 They hear the silky footsteps of the silent fairy crowd, 
 Like a river in the air gliding round. 
 
 Nor scream can any raise, nor prayer can any say, 
 But wild, wild the terror of the speechless three ; 
 
 For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently away 
 By whom, they dare not look to see. 
 
 They feel her tresses twine with their parting locks of gold, 
 And the curls elastic falling, as her head withdraws ; 
 
 They feel her sliding arms from their tranced arms unfold, 
 But they dare not look to see the cause. 
 
 For heavy on their senses the faint enchantment lies 
 Through all that night of anguish and perilous amaze ; 
 
 And neither fear nor wonder can ope their quivering eyes, 
 Or their limbs from the cold ground raise. 
 
 Till out of Night the Earth has rolled her dewy side, 
 With every haunted mountain and streamy vale below ; 
 
 When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow morning-tide, 
 The maidens' trance dissolveth so. 
 
 Then fly the ghastly three as swiftly as they may, 
 
 And tell their tale of sorrow to anxious friends in vain 
 
 They pined away and died within the year and day, 
 And ne'er was Anna Grace seen again. 
 
 X2 
 
308 BOOK IV 
 
 THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 A very close translation, in the original metre, of an Irish song of unknown 
 authorship dating from the end of the seventeenth century. The refrain means 
 ' O sad l?.ment. ' 
 
 A PLENTEOUS place is Ireland for hospitable cheer, 
 
 Uileacdn dubh O ! 
 Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow barley ear, 
 
 Uileacdn dubh O / 
 
 There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand, 
 And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters fann'd ; 
 There is dew at high noontide there, and springs i' the yellow sand 
 On the fair hills of holy Ireland. 
 
 Curl'd he is and ringleted, and plaited to the knee, 
 
 Uileacdn dubh O ! 
 Each captain who comes sailing across the Irish Sea, 
 
 Uileacdn dubh O ! 
 
 And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand, 
 Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand, 
 And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high command, 
 For the fair hills of holy Ireland. 
 
 Large and profitable are the stacks upon the ground, 
 
 Uileacdn dubh O ! 
 The butter and the cream do wondrously abound, 
 
 Uileacdn dubh O ! 
 
 The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand, 
 And the cuckoo's calling daily his note of music bland, 
 And the bold thrush sings so bravely his song i' the forests grand 
 On the fair hills of holy Ireland. 
 
 LAMENT FOR THOMAS DAVIS 
 
 I WALKED through Ballinderry in the spring-time, 
 
 When the bud was on the tree ; 
 And I said, in every fresh-ploughed field beholding 
 
 The sowers striding free, 
 
SAMUEL FERGUSON 309 
 
 Scattering broadcast forth the corn in golden plenty 
 
 On the quick seed-clasping soil, 
 4 Even such, this day, among the fresh-stirred hearts of Erin, 
 
 Thomas Davis, is thy toil ! ' 
 
 ( sat by Ballyshannon in the summer, 
 
 And saw the salmon leap ; 
 And I said, as I beheld the gallant creatures 
 
 Spring glittering from the deep, 
 Thro' the spray, and thro' the prone heaps striving onward 
 
 To the calm clear streams above, 
 ' So seekest thou thy native founts of freedom, Thomas Davis, 
 
 In thy brightness of strength and love ! ' 
 
 I stood on Derrybawn in the autumn, 
 
 And I heard the eagle call, 
 With a clangorous cry of wrath and lamentation 
 
 That filled the wide mountain hall, 
 O'er the bare deserted place of his plundered eyrie ; 
 
 And I said, as he screamed and soared, 
 * So callest thou, thou wrathful-soaring Thomas Davis, 
 
 For a nation's rights restored ! ' 
 
 And, alas ! to think but now, and thou art lying, 
 
 Dear Davis, dead at thy mother's knee ; 
 And I, no mother near, on my own sick-bed, 
 
 That face on earth shall never see : 
 I may lie and try to feel that I am not dreaming, 
 
 I may lie and try to say, ' Thy will be done ' 
 But a hundred such as I will never comfort Erin 
 
 For the loss of the noble son ! 
 
 Young husbandman of Erin's fruitful seed-time, 
 
 In the fresh track of danger's plough ! 
 Who will walk the heavy, toilsome, perilous furrow 
 
 Girt with freedom's seed-sheets now ? 
 Who will banish with the wholesome crop of knowledge 
 
 The flaunting weed and the bitter thorn, 
 Now that thou thyself art but a seed for hopeful planting 
 
 Against the Resurrection morn ? 
 
3io BOOK IV 
 
 Young salmon of the flood-tide of freedom 
 
 That swells round Erin's shore ! 
 Thou wilt leap against their loud oppressive torrent 
 
 Of bigotry and hate no more : 
 Drawn downward by their prone material instinct, 
 
 Let them thunder on their rocks and foam 
 Thou hast leapt, aspiring soul, to founts beyond their raging 
 
 Where troubled waters never come ! 
 
 But I grieve not, eagle of the empty eyrie, 
 
 That thy wrathful cry is still ; 
 And that the songs alone of peaceful mourners 
 
 Are heard to-day on Erin's hill ; 
 Better far, if brothers' war be destined for us 
 
 (God avert that horrid day, I pray !), 
 That ere our hands be stained with slaughter fratricidal 
 
 Thy warm heart should be cold in clay. 
 
 But my trust is strong in God, who made us brothers, 
 
 That He will not suffer those right hands 
 Which thou hast joined in holier rites than wedlock 
 
 To draw opposing brands. 
 Oh, many a tuneful tongue that thou mad'st vocal 
 
 Would lie cold and silent then ; 
 And songless long once more, should often-widowed Erin 
 
 Mourn the loss of her brave young men. 
 
 Oh, brave young men, my love, my pride, my promise, 
 
 'Tis on you my hopes are set, 
 In manliness, in kindliness, in justice, 
 
 To make Erin a nation yet : 
 Self-respecting, self-relying, self-advancing, 
 
 In union or in severance, free and strong 
 And if God grant this, then, under God, to Thomas Davis 
 
 Let the greater praise belong. 
 
BOOK V 
 
 AUBREY DE VERE 
 
 THE family of the De Veres has followed high traditions in 
 English poetry. The influence of Wordsworth, an intimate 
 friend, is predominant in the work of Sir Aubrey and Mr. 
 Aubrey de Vere ; but, determined by the natural bent of 
 their genius, both father and son achieved success in a form 
 uncongenial to Wordsworth the drama ; while the poetic 
 faculty was never more happily wedded to fine scholarship 
 than in the TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE of Mr. De Vere's 
 elder brother, Sir Stephen. 
 
 To achieve high distinction in poetry it is before all things 
 essential to maintain the balance between the intellectual and 
 sensuous elements. Simple in theme and method, strong in 
 its intellectual apprehension of life, nobly plain in diction, the 
 poetry of the De Veres is deficient in the qualities which arrest 
 popular attention ; it is not sensuous enough, it is not 
 passionate enough. Distinguished, too, by moral breadth and 
 depth rather than by natural magic, it suffers amid the poetry 
 of the day comparative neglect, and finds a narrow though 
 appreciative audience. It may be claimed for it, and with 
 justice, that if not throughout successful as art it is nevertheless 
 conceived and executed in the school of the great masters ; 
 and where successful, it is successful in their manner. Read 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere's SONNETS or his MARY TUDOR ; read 
 Mr. Aubrey de Vere's ALEXANDER or his 'Autumnal Ode,' 
 and the impression received is that one is on elevated ground, 
 on the higher slopes of Parnassus. We are not spoiled for 
 
312 BOOK V 
 
 this poetry by reading in the books of Homer, of Dante, or of 
 Milton. 
 
 ^schylus' bronze-throat, eagle bark for blood 
 Has somewhat spoilt my taste for twitterings 
 
 says Browning somewhere. The absence of largeness and 
 freedom, of far horizons and noble spaces, this we feel in the 
 company of the minor poets, but with the De Veres we are 
 among the mountains. Because neither Sir Aubrey nor Mr. 
 Aubrey de Vere found modern life rich in inspiring forces, and 
 each was touched less by the ideals of the present than by 
 those of the past, perhaps for this reason and because so much 
 of their work is dramatic in form and intention they have won no 
 large share of popular acceptance. It is not surprising that this 
 should be true of poetry characterised by its singular aloofness 
 from contemporary thought and feeling, characterised by its 
 impersonality, its dramatic method and character. This is poetry 
 whose themes are not chosen at the bidding of the poet's affec- 
 tions, but rather at the bidding of his genius. And when this 
 is said we have placed it, in conception and aim at least, in the 
 highest company. The lesser poet writes at the dictation of 
 his moods, but for Lucretius and Sophocles the sphere of 
 poetry is not delimited by the feelings that sway the inconstant 
 heart, making it an ^Eolian lyre responsive to all idle winds. 
 
 Not improbably, I think, Mr. De Vere would prefer to 
 be judged by his poems upon Irish subjects rather than by 
 any other part of his work. For in his old Irish lays, heroic 
 in theme, spiritual in significance, and in his poems which 
 enshrine the traditions of the Mediaeval Church, Mr. De Vere is 
 most at home in spirit, and perhaps is at his best. Here he strikes 
 a note which falls upon the ear with a mingled solemnity and 
 joyousness, and seems to breathe the very air of that old 
 world of unconscious saintliness and glad romance. Whatever 
 of beauty or of good dwelt with the ages that found in religion 
 their joy as well as their peace is gathered into these legends ; 
 Cuchullin, Oisin and Ethell, Naisi and Deirdre", look out 
 upon us like the faces on some old tapestry, but far more 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 313 
 
 lifelike. Cuchullin in his war-car, calling the horses by their 
 well-known names, and dashing through Eman's gateway as 
 a storm ; Ethell, bard of Brian MacGuire, who sang of policy 
 to chieftains and princes, of love to maids in the bower, and 
 
 Of war at the feastings in bawn or grove ; 
 
 the lovers Naisi and Deirdre, self-forgetful, hand in hand, 
 singing their passionate song of life and death these are the 
 true children of Ireland's golden age, called from the shores of 
 dreamland to feed our hearts with the poetry of a nation's 
 childhood. 
 
 It may be argued that the poetry of the De Veres is 
 distinctively English, formed by English traditions, the pro- 
 duct of English culture. It may be argued that it belongs 
 to the classical school rather than to the school of romance. 
 And indisputably in many of Mr. De Vere's finest and most 
 characteristic passages we feel that he inherits in the line of 
 Chaucer and of Dryden. Take this passage from his 
 magnificent ' Autumnal Ode : ' 
 
 It is the Autumnal epode of the year : 
 
 The Nymphs that urge the seasons on their round, 
 They to whose green lap flies the startled deer 
 
 When bays the far-off hound, 
 They that drag April by the rain- bright hair, 
 Though sun-showers doze her, and the rude winds scare, 
 
 O'er March's frosty bound, 
 
 They by whose warm and furtive hand unwound 
 The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast, 
 Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier, 
 
 With folded palms and faces to the West, 
 And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. De Vere is rightly ranked with the 
 Irish poets. The profound sympathy with the Celtic nature, 
 the insight into the Celtic heart, are there, and not a few un- 
 mistakable Celtic affinities, not a little of the Celtic charm. 
 For some reason or other the Celtic imagination is less 
 stirred by richness or picturesqueness in Nature than the 
 Saxon imagination, dwells less in its happiest moments upon 
 
314 BOOK V 
 
 landscape luxuriant in leaf and flower, the valley with its lush 
 pasture or the promise of the tilled glebe ; it is stirred rather 
 by Nature in her severer aspects and by landscape of fewer 
 elements by the austere outline of cliff or mountain, the pure 
 curve of the far rim of ocean. ' Delightful to be on Ben 
 Eddar,' sings Columba in some charming verses charming 
 even in translation written fifteen hundred years ago : 
 
 Delightful to be on Ben Eddar 
 Before going o'er the white sea ; 
 The dashing of the wave against its face, 
 The bareness of its shore and its border. 
 
 And in Celtic poetry likewise the emotions are purer, less 
 complex, more elemental, more spiritual than in Saxon poetry. 
 Simplicity, then, with full-heartedness whether in joy or grief 
 a childlike transparency of soul, a courageous spirituality, these 
 Celtic qualities Mr. De Vere's poetry preserves for us; and 
 because it preserves them his memory and his work are safe. 
 He will be enrolled as a worthy successor to the bards of long 
 ago, from Oiseen or 
 
 That Taliessin once who made the rivers dance, 
 
 And in his rapture raised the mountains from their trance. 
 
 W. MACNEILE DIXON. 
 
 Mr. Aubrey De Vere, third son of Sir Aubrey, was born at Curragh 
 Chase in 1814. Besides a number of prose works, critical and miscel- 
 laneous, Mr. De Vere's poetical works have been published in six 
 volumes, 1884. 
 
 Later volumes issued by him have been : LEGENDS AND RECORDS OF 
 THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE, 1887 ; ST. PETER'S CHAINS, 1888 ; 
 MEDIAEVAL RECORDS AND SONNETS, 1893. Two well-edited volumes of 
 selections from his poetical writings have appeared, one by John Dennis 
 (London, 1890) and one by G. E. Woodberry (New York > 1894). 
 
 THE SUN GOD 
 
 I SAW the Master of the Sun. He stood 
 
 High in his luminous car, himself more bright 
 An Archer of immeasurable might ; 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 315 
 
 On his left shoulder hung his quivered load, 
 Spurned by his steeds the eastern mountain glowed, 
 
 Forward his eager eye and brow of light 
 He bent ; and, while both hands that arch embowed, 
 
 Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night. 
 No wings profaned that godlike form ; around 
 
 His neck high held an ever-moving crowd 
 Of locks hung glistening ; while such perfect sound 
 Fell from his bowstring that th' ethereal dome 
 . Thrilled as a dewdrop ; and each passing cloud 
 Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam. 
 
 From THE BARD ETHELL 
 
 IRELAND, THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 I 
 
 I AM Ethell, the son of Conn ; 
 
 Here I live at the foot of the hill ; 
 I am clansman to Brian and servant to none ; 
 
 Whom I hated I hate, whom I loved love still. 
 Blind am I. On milk I live, 
 
 And meat ; God sends it on each Saint's day, 
 Though Donald MacArt may he never thrive ! 
 
 Last Shrovetide drove half my kine away. 
 
 At the brown hill's base, by the pale blue lake 
 
 I dwell, and see the things I saw ; 
 The heron flap heavily up frOm the brake, 
 
 The crow fly homeward with twig or straw, 
 The wild duck,, a silver line in wake, 
 
 Cutting the calm mere to far Bunaw. 
 And the things that I heard, though deaf I hear : 
 From the tower in the island the feastful cheer, 
 The horn from the wood, the plunge of the stag, 
 With the loud hounds after him down from the crag. 
 Sweet is the chase, but the battle is sweeter; 
 More healthful, more joyous, for true men meeter ! 
 
3i6 BOOK V 
 
 in 
 My hand is weak ; it once was strong. 
 
 My heart burns still with its ancient fire. 
 If any man smite me, he does me wrong, 
 
 For I was the Bard of Brian MacGuire. 
 If any man slay me not unaware, 
 
 By no chance blow, nor in wine and revel 
 I have stored beforehand a curse in my prayer 
 
 For his kith and kindred ; his deed is evil. 
 
 IV 
 
 There never was King, and there never will be, 
 In battle or banquet like Malachi ! 
 The Seers his reign have predicted long ; 
 He honoured the Bards, and gave gold for song. 
 If rebels arose, he put out their eyes ; 
 
 If robbers plundered or burned the fanes 
 He hung them in chaplets, like rosaries, 
 
 That others, beholding, might take more pains. 
 There was none to woman more reverent-minded, 
 
 For he held his mother and Mary dear ; 
 If any man wronged them, that man he blinded, 
 
 Or straight amerced him of hand or ear. 
 There was none who founded more convents none : 
 
 In his palace the old and the poor were fed ; 
 The orphan walked, and the widow's son, 
 
 Without groom or page to his throne or bed. 
 In council he mused with great brows divine 
 And eyes like the eyes of the musing kine, 
 Upholding a Sceptre o'er which, men said, 
 Seven spirits of wisdom like fire-tongues played. 
 He drained ten lakes and he built ten bridges ; 
 
 He bought a gold book for a thousand cows ; 
 He slew ten Princes who brake their pledges ; 
 
 With the bribed and the base he scorned to carouse. 
 He was sweet and awful ; through all his reign 
 God gave great harvests to vale and plain ; 
 From his nurse's milk he was kind and brave ; 
 And when he went down to his well-wept grave 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 317 
 
 Through the triumph of penance his soul uprose 
 To God and the Saints. Not so his foes ! 
 
 The King that came after ! ah ! woe, woe, woe ! 
 He doubted his friend and he trusted his foe ; 
 He bought and he sold ; his kingdom old 
 
 He pledged and pawned to avenge a spite ; 
 No Bard or prophet his birth foretold ; 
 
 He was guarded and warded both day and night : 
 He counselled with fools and had boors at his feast ; 
 He was cruel to Christian and kind to beast ; 
 Men smiled when they talked of him far o'er the wave, 
 Well paid were the mourners that wept at his grave. 
 God plagued for his sake his people sore : 
 
 They sinned ; for the people should watch and pray, 
 That their prayers like angels at window and door 
 
 May keep from the King the bad thought away ! 
 
 I forgive old Cathbar, who sank my boat. 
 
 Must I pardon Feargal, who slew my son ; 
 Or the pirate Strongbow, who burned Granote, 
 
 They tell me, and in it nine priests, a nun, 
 And worst Saint Finian's crosier staff ? 
 At forgiveness like that I spit and laugh. 
 My Chief, in his wine-cups, forgave twelve men ; 
 And of these a dozen rebelled again ! 
 There never was Chief more brave than he ! 
 
 The night he was born Loch Gur up-burst ; 
 He was Bard-loving, gift-making, loud of glee, 
 
 The last to fly, to advance the first ; 
 He was like the top spray upon Uladh's oak, 
 
 He was like the tap-root of Argial's pine ; 
 He was secret and sudden ; as lightning his stroke ; 
 
 There was none that could fathom his hid design. 
 He slept not : if any man scorned his alliance 
 He struck the first blow for a frank defiance 
 
318 BOOK V 
 
 With that look in his face, half night, half light, 
 
 Like the lake gust-blackened yet ridged with white. 
 
 There were comely wonders before he died : 
 
 The eagle barked and the Banshee cried ; 
 
 The witch-elm wept with a blighted bud ; 
 
 The spray of the torrent was red with blood ; 
 
 The Chief, returned from the mountain's bound, 
 
 Forgat to ask after Bran, his hound. 
 
 We knew he would die ; three days passed o'er ; 
 
 He died. We waked him for three days more. 
 
 One by one, upon brow and breast 
 
 The whole clan kissed him. In peace may he rest . 
 
 XII 
 
 How long He leaves me the great God here ! 
 
 Have I sinned some sin, or has God forgotten ? 
 This year, I think, is my hundredth year : 
 
 I am like a bad apple, unripe yet rotten. 
 They shall lift me ere long, they shall lay me the clan 
 By the strength of men on Mount Cruachan. 
 God has much to think of. How much He has seen 
 And how much has gone by that once has been ! 
 On sandy hills where the rabbits burrow 
 
 Are raths of Kings men name not now ; 
 On mountain tops I have tracked the furrow, 
 
 And found in forests the buried plough. 
 For one now living the strong land then 
 Gave kindly food and raiment to ten. 
 No doubt they waxed proud, and their God defied ; 
 
 So their harvest He blighted or burned their hoard ; 
 
 Or He sent them plaguej or He sent the sword ; 
 Or He sent them lightning ; and so they died 
 Like Dathi, the King, on the dark Alp's side. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Ah me ! that man who is made of dust 
 
 Should have pride toward God ! 'Tis a demon's spleen. 
 I have often feared lest God, the All-just, 
 
 Should bend from heaven and sweep earth clean 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 319 
 
 Should sweep us all into corners and holes, 
 Like dust of the house- floor, both bodies and souls. 
 I have often feared He would send some wind 
 In wrath, and the nation wake up stone-blind. 
 In age or in youth we have all wrought ill : 
 I say not our great King Nial did well, 
 Although he was Lord of the Pledges Nine, 
 
 When, beside subduing this land of Eire, 
 He raised in Armorica banner and sign 
 
 And wasted the British coast with fire. 
 Perhaps in His mercy the Lord will say : 
 ' These men ! God's help ! 'Twas a rough boy -play ! 
 He is certain, that young Franciscan priest, 
 God sees great sin where men see least : 
 Yet this were to give unto God the eye 
 Unmeet the thought ! - of the humming fly. 
 I trust there are small things He scorns to see 
 In the lowly who cry to Him piteously. 
 Our hope is Christ. I have wept full oft 
 
 He came not to Eire in Oisin's time ; 
 Though love and those new monks would make men 
 soft 
 
 If they were not hardened by war and rhyme. 
 I have done my part : my end draws nigh : 
 I shall leave Old Eire with a smile and sigh : 
 She will miss not me as I missed my son : 
 Yet for her, and her praise, were my best deeds done. 
 Man's deeds ! man's deeds ! they are shades that fleet, 
 Or ripples like those that break at my feet : 
 The deeds of my Chief and the deeds of my King 
 Grow hazy, far seen, like the hills in spring. 
 Nothing is great save the death on the Cross. 
 
 But Pilate and Herod I hate, and know 
 
 Had Fionn lived then he had laid them low, 
 Though the world thereby had sustained great loss. 
 My blindness and deafness and aching back 
 With meekness I bear for that suffering's sake 
 And the Lent-fast for Mary's sake I love, 
 And the honour of Him the Man above ! 
 
320 BOOK V 
 
 My songs are all over now : so best ! 
 
 They are laid in the Heavenly Singer's breast, 
 
 Who never sings but a star is born : 
 
 May we hear His song in the endless morn ! . 
 
 I give glory to God for our battles won 
 
 By wood or river, on bay or creek ; 
 For Norna who died ; for my father, Conn ; 
 
 For feasts, and the chase on the mountains bleak. 
 I bewail my sins, both unknown and known, 
 
 And of those I have injured forgiveness seek. 
 The men that were wicked to me and mine 
 Not quenching a wrong, nor in war or wine 
 I forgive and absolve them all, save three : 
 May Christ in His mercy be kind to me ! 
 
 THE WEDDING OF THE CLANS 
 
 I GO to knit two clans together, 
 
 Our clan and this clan unseen of yore. 
 
 Our clan fears naught : but I go, oh, whither ? 
 This day I go from my mother's door. 
 
 Thou, redbreast, singest the old song over, 
 
 Though many a time hast thou sung it before ; 
 
 They never sent thee to some strange new lover 
 To sing a new song by my mother's door. 
 
 I stepped from my little room down by the ladder 
 The ladder that never so shook before ; 
 
 I was sad last night, to-day I am sadder, 
 Because I go from my mother's door. 
 
 The last snow melts upon bush and bramble, 
 The gold bars shine on the forest's floor ; 
 
 Shake not, thou leaf ; it is I must tremble, 
 Because I go from my mother's door. 
 
 From a Spanish sailor a dagger I bought me, 
 I trailed a rose-bush our grey bawn o'er ; 
 
 The creed and the letters our old bard taught me \ 
 My days were sweet by my mother's door. 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 321 
 
 My little white goat, that with raised feet huggest 
 
 The oak stock, thy horns in the ivy frore ; 
 Could I wrestle like thee how the wreaths thou tuggest ! 
 
 I never would move from my mother's door. 
 
 Oh, weep no longer, my nurse and mother ; 
 
 My foster-sister, weep not so sore ; 
 You cannot come with me, Ir, my brother 
 
 Alone I go from my mother's door. 
 
 Farewell, my wolf-hound, that slew MacOwing, 
 
 As he caught me and far through the thickets bore, 
 
 My heifer Alb in the green vale lowing, 
 My cygnet's nest upon Loma's shore. 
 
 He has killed ten Chiefs, this Chief that plights me, 
 
 His hand is like that of the giant Balor ; 
 But I fear his kiss, and his beard affrights me, 
 
 And the great stone dragon above his door. 
 
 Had I daughters nine, with me they should tarry ; 
 
 They should sing old songs ; they should dance at my door 
 They should grind at the quern, no need to marry ! 
 
 Oh, when shall this marriage day be o'er ? 
 
 Had I buried, like Moirin, three mates already, 
 I might say, Three husbands, then why not four ? 
 
 But my hand is cold, and my foot unsteady, 
 Because I never was married before ! 
 
 DIRGE OF RORY O'MORE 
 
 A.D. 1642 
 
 UP the sea-saddened valley, at evening's decline, 
 A heifer walks lowing * the Silk of the Kine ; ' 
 From the deep to the mountains she roams, and again 
 From the mountain's green urn to the purple- rimmed main. 
 
 What seek'st thou, sad mother ? Thine own is not thine ! 
 He dropped from the headland he sank in the brine ! 
 'Twas a dream ! but in dreams at thy foot did he follow 
 Through the meadow-sweet on by the marish and mallow ! 
 
 Y 
 
322 BOOK V 
 
 Was he thine ? Have they slain him ? Thou seek'st him, not 
 
 knowing 
 
 Thyself, too, art theirs thy sweet breath and sad lowing ! 
 Thy gold horn is theirs, thy dark eye and thy silk, 
 And that which torments thee, thy milk, is their milk ! 
 
 Twas no dream, Mother Land ! J Twas no dream, Innisfail ! 
 Hope dreams, but grief dreams not the grief of the Gael ! 
 From Leix and Ikerrin to Donegal's shore 
 Rolls the dirge of thy last and thy bravest O'More ! 
 
 SONG 
 
 i 
 
 WHEN I was young, I said to Sorrow : 
 ' Come and I will play with thee.' 
 He is near me now all day, 
 And at night returns to say : 
 ' I will come again to-morrow 
 I will come and stay with thee.' 
 
 II 
 
 Through the woods we walk together 
 His soft footsteps rustle nigh me ; 
 To shield an unregarded head 
 He hath built a winter shed ; 
 And all night in rainy weather 
 
 I hear his gentle breathings by me. 
 
 SORROW 
 
 COUNT each affliction, whether light or grave, 
 God's messenger sent down to thee ; do thou 
 With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow ; 
 And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave 
 Permission first his heavenly feet to lave ; 
 Then lay before him all thou hast : allow 
 No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow 
 Or mar thy hospitality ; no wave 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 323 
 
 Of mortal tumult to obliterate 
 The soul's marmoreal calmness ; grief should be 
 
 Like joy majestic, equable, sedate, 
 Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; 
 Strong to consume small troubles ; to commend 
 Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to theend. 
 
 THE YEAR OF SORROW: IRELAND, 1849 
 
 SPRING 
 
 ONCE more, through God's high will, and grace 
 
 Of hours that each its task fulfils, 
 Heart-healing Spring resumes her place, 
 
 The valley throngs, and scales the hills. 
 
 In vain. From earth's deep heart, o'ercharged, 
 
 The exulting life runs o'er in flowers. 
 The slave unfed is unenlarged ; 
 
 In darkness sleep a Nation's powers. 
 
 Who knows not Spring ? Who doubts, when blows 
 Her breath, that Spring is come indeed ? 
 
 The swallow doubts not ; nor the rose 
 That stirs, but wakes not ; nor the weed. 
 
 I feel her near, but see her not ; 
 
 For these with pain- uplifted eyes 
 Fall back repulsed, and vapours blot 
 
 The vision of the earth and skies. 
 
 I see her not ; I feel hei near, 
 
 As, charioted in mildest airs, 
 She sails through yon empyreal sphere, 
 
 And in her arms and bosom bears 
 
 That urn of flowers and lustral dews 
 
 Whose sacred balm, o'er all things shed, 
 
 Revives the weak, the old renews, 
 And crowns with votive wreaths the dead. 
 
 Y2 
 
324 BOOK V 
 
 Once more the cuckoo's call I hear ; 
 
 I know, in many a glen profound, 
 The earliest violets of the year 
 
 Rise up like water from the ground. 
 
 The thorn, I know, once more is white ; 
 
 And, far down many a forest dale, 
 The anemones in dubious light 
 
 Are trembling like a bridal veil. 
 
 By streams released, that singing flow 
 From craggy shelf through sylvan glades, 
 
 The pale narcissus, well I know, 
 
 Smiles hour by hour on greener shades. 
 
 The honeyed cowslip tufts once more 
 The golden slopes ; with gradual ray 
 
 The primrose stars the rock, and o'er 
 The wood-path strews its milky way. 
 
 From ruined huts and holes come forth 
 
 Old men, and look upon the sky. 
 The Power Divine is on the earth : 
 
 Give thanks to God before ye die ! 
 
 And ye, O children, worn and weak, 
 Who care no more with flowers to play, 
 
 Lean on the grass your cold, thin cheek 
 And those slight hands, and, whispering, say 
 
 1 Stern mother of a race unblest, 
 
 In promise kindly, cold in deed, 
 Take back, O Earth, into thy breast, 
 
 The children whom thou wilt not feed.' 
 
 SUMMER 
 
 Approved by works of love and might, 
 The Year, consummated and crowned, 
 
 Hath scaled the zenith's purple height, 
 And flings his robe the earth around. 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 325 
 
 Impassioned stillness, fervours calm, 
 
 Brood, vast and bright, o'er land and deep ; 
 
 The warrior sleeps beneath the palm ; 
 The dark-eyed captive guards his sleep. 
 
 The Iberian labourer rests from toil ; 
 
 Sicilian virgins twine the dance ; 
 Laugh Tuscan vales in wine and oil ; 
 
 Fresh laurels flash from brows of France. 
 
 Far off, in regions of the North, 
 The hunter drops his winter fur ; 
 
 Sun-wakened babes their feet stretch forth ; 
 And nested dormice feebly stir. 
 
 But thou, O land of many woes ! 
 
 What cheer is thine ? Again the breath 
 Of proved Destruction o'er thee blows, 
 
 And sentenced fields grow black in death. 
 
 In horror of a new despair 
 
 His blood-shot eyes the peasant strains 
 With hands clenched fast, and lifted hair, 
 
 Along the daily darkening plains. 
 
 Why trusted he to them his store ? 
 
 Why feared he not the scourge to come ? ' 
 Fool ! turn the page of History o'er 
 
 The roll of Statutes and be dumb ! 
 
 Behold, O People ! thou shalt die ! 
 
 What art thou better than thy sires ? 
 The hunted deer a weeping eye 
 
 Turns on his birthplace, and expires. 
 
 Lo ! as the closing of a book, 
 
 Or statue from its base o'erthrown, 
 
 Or blasted wood, or dried-up brook, 
 Name, race, and nation, thou art gone 1 
 
326 BOOK V 
 
 The stranger shall thy hearth possess ; 
 
 The stranger build upon thy grave. 
 But know this also he, not less, 
 
 His limit and his term shall have. 
 
 Once more thy volume, open cast, 
 
 In thunder forth shall sound thy name j 
 
 Thy forest, hot at heart, at last 
 
 God's breath shall kindle into flame. 
 
 Thy brook, dried up, a cloud shall rise, 
 And stretch an hourly widening hand, 
 
 In God's good vengeance, through the skies, 
 And onward o'er the Invader's land. 
 
 Of thine, one day, a remnant left 
 
 Shall raise o'er earth a Prophet's rod, 
 
 And teach the coasts, of Faith bereft, 
 The names of Ireland and of God. 
 
 AUTUMN 
 
 Then die, thou Year thy work is done ; 
 
 The work, ill done, is done at last ; 
 Far off, beyond that sinking sun, 
 
 Which sets in blood, I hear the blast 
 
 That sings thy dirge, and says : ' Ascend, 
 And answer make amid thy peers, 
 
 Since all things here must have an end, 
 Thou latest of the famine years.' 
 
 I join that voice. No joy have I 
 
 In all thy purple and thy gold ; 
 Nor in that ninefold harmony 
 
 From forest on to foreot rolled ; 
 
 Nor in that stormy western fire 
 
 Which burns on ocean's gloomy bed, 
 
 And hurls, as from a funeral pyre, 
 
 A glare that strikes the mountain's head ; 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 327 
 
 And writes on low-hung clouds its lines 
 Of ciphered flame, with hurrying hand : 
 
 And flings, amid the topmost pines 
 That crown the cliff, a burning brand. 
 
 Make answer, Year, for all thy dead, 
 Who found not rest in hallowed earth : 
 
 The widowed wife, the father fled, 
 
 The babe age-stricken from his birth ! 
 
 Make answer, Year, for virtue lost ; 
 
 For courage, proof 'gainst fraud and force, 
 Now waning like a noontide ghost ; 
 
 Affections poisoned at their source ! 
 
 The labourer spurned his lying spade ; 
 
 The yeoman spurned his useless plough ; 
 The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid 
 
 Obtruded once, exhausted now. 
 
 The roof-trees fall of hut and hall ; 
 
 I hear them fall, and falling cry : 
 * One fate for each, one fate for all ! 
 
 So wills the Law that willed a lie.' 
 
 Dread power of Man ! what spread the waste 
 In circles hour by hour more wide, 
 
 And would not let the past be past ? 
 
 That Law which promised much, and lied. 
 
 Dread power of God, Whom mortal years 
 Nor touch, nor tempt, Who sitt'st sublime 
 
 In night of night oh, bid Thy spheres 
 Resound, at last, a funeral chime ! 
 
 Call up at last the afflicted race, 
 . Whom Man, not God, abolished. Sore, 
 For centuries, their strife ; the place 
 That knew them once shall know no more ! 
 
328 BOOK V 
 
 WINTER 
 
 Fall, snow, and cease not ! Flake by flake 
 The decent winding-sheet compose ; 
 
 Thy task is just and pious ; make 
 An end of blasphemies and woes ! 
 
 Fall, flake by flake ! by thee alone, 
 
 Last friend, the sleeping draught is given. 
 
 Kind nurse, by thee the couch is strown 
 The couch whose covering is from Heaven. 
 
 Descend and clasp the mountain's crest ; 
 
 Inherit plain and valley deep. 
 This night on thy maternal breast 
 
 A vanquished nation dies in sleep. 
 
 Lo ! from the starry Temple Gates 
 
 Death rides, and bears the flag of peace ; 
 
 The combatants he separates ; 
 He bids the wrath of ages cease. 
 
 Descend, benignant Power ! But, oh, 
 Ye torrents, shake no more the vale ! 
 
 Dark streams, in silence seaward flow ! 
 Thou rising storm, remit thy wail ! 
 
 Shake not, to-night, the cliffs of Moher, 
 
 Nor Brandon's base, rough sea ! Thou Isle, 
 
 The Rite proceeds ! From shore to shore 
 Hold in thy gathered breath the while ! 
 
 Fall, snow ! in stillness fall, like dew, 
 On church's roof and cedar's fan ; 
 
 And mould thyself on pine and yew, 
 And on the awful face of Man. 
 
 Without a sound, without a stir, 
 
 In streets and wolds, on rock and mound, 
 O omnipresent Comforter, 
 
 By Thee this night the lost are found ! 
 
AUBREY DE VERE 329 
 
 On quaking moor and mountain moss, 
 
 With eyes upstaring at the sky, 
 And arms extended like a cross, 
 
 The long-expectant sufferers lie. 
 
 Bend o'er them, white-robed Acolyte ! 
 
 Put forth thine hand from cloud and mist ; 
 And minister the last sad Rite, 
 
 Where altar there is none, nor priest ; 
 
 Touch thou the gates of soul and sense ; 
 
 Touch darkening eyes and dying ears ; 
 Touch stiffening hands and feet, and thence 
 
 Remove the trace of sins and tears ! 
 
 And, ere thou seal those filmed eyes, 
 
 Into God's urn thy fingers dip, 
 And lay, 'mid eucharistic sighs, 
 
 The sacred wafer on the lip. 
 
 This night the Absolver issues forth ; 
 
 This night the Eternal Victim bleeds. 
 O winds and woods, O heaven and earth, 
 
 Be still this night ! The Rile proceeds ! 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK ROSE 
 
 THE Little Black Rose ' shall be red at last ; 
 
 What made it black but the March wind dry, 
 And the tear of the widow that fell on it fast ? 
 
 It shall redden the hills when June is nigh ! 
 
 The Silk of the Kine 1 shall rest at last ; 
 
 What drove her forth but the dragon fly ? 
 In the golden vale she shall feed full fast, 
 
 With her mild gold horn and her slow, dark eye. 
 
 The wounded wood-dove lies dead at last ! 
 
 The pine long-bleeding, it shall not die ! 
 This song is secret. Mine ear it passed 
 
 In a wind o'er the plains at Athenry. 
 
 1 Mystical names of Ireland, frequently occurring in Gaelic poetry. 
 
330 BOOK V 
 
 GEORGE SIGERSON 
 
 DR. SIGERSON in the Ireland of to-day stands forward a potent 
 personality, to link in an embrace of amity the spirits of the 
 Gall and of the Gael. Gall of the Gall himself, he is yet, as 
 were also his ancestors, more Gaelic than the Gael ; and how 
 thoroughly his ancestors had become one in soul and spirit 
 with their new country the lament of the eighteenth-century 
 poet for Francis Sigerson shows, for he describes the Suir as 
 overflowing in its grief, the hills of Ireland as opening, and the 
 Skellings as shrieking aloud 'A man has died' all three 
 bewailing. 
 
 The handsome Hawk who towered the country o'er, " 
 Top-spray of all who sprang from Sigerson Mor. 
 
 And he himself has been true to his ancestry, for while no 
 man has been more keen than he in investigating the history 
 of his own forefathers, the Northmen, no man has at the same 
 time done more to save and popularise the literature of the 
 Irish Gael, the men whom his ancestors first met as their 
 red-enemies. It is now close upon forty years ago since, in 
 conjunction with old John O'Daly of Anglesea Street, Dublin, 
 he took up the work which fell from the hands of Mangan, 
 and in the second series of the POETS AND POETRY OF MUNSTER 
 performed a task of immense service to the then neglected 
 cause of native Irish literature, by publishing with metrical 
 translations the text of nearly fifty Munster poems of great 
 beauty. For close upon three decades he and John O'Daly 
 held aloft almost single-handed the banner of the Irish Gael, 
 and their efforts prepared the way for the great and real 
 revival of the last three years. From the very earliest did Dr. 
 Sigerson fall under the spell of that strange wild witch-soul 
 which steals through Ireland under many names whom some 
 of our fathers have known as * Moneen,' others as * Sheela the 
 Bright,' and others again as * Kathleen ' daughter of Houlihan 
 
GEORGE SIGERSON 331 
 
 and ever since his youth he has been her faithful attendant, 
 proceeding in her cause from service to service, and finishing 
 one task for her, only to take up another. For as leader-writer, 
 essayist, land-reformer, scientist, poet, and lastly as President 
 of the National Literary Society, Dr. Sigerson has performed 
 for the ' Sean Bhean Bhocht ' the part of many workers, and 
 his home has been the rendezvous of those who loved her. 
 
 His recent book of translations from the Irish, THE BARDS 
 OF THE GAEL AND GALL, 1 is really an extension into the past of 
 his POERTY OF MUNSTER, and it is a contribution to the so-called 
 Celtic Revival the importance of which it would be difficult to 
 over-estimate. In this work he has given metrical translations 
 of about one hundred and forty Irish poems, covering the 
 ground from the earliest unrhymed chant ascribed to the first 
 invading Milesian, down to the peasant songs of the last 
 century. He has thus, for the first time, brought before the 
 English reader a long gallery of poetic pictures, receding back 
 into the past, and extending demonstrably over a period of 
 one thousand two hundred years, and quite possibly over two 
 thousand, and such as no other country in Europe except one 
 can boast of. His merit as a translator is great, and his rhymed 
 versions are the result of a subtle fusion of scholar and poet. 
 To catch the music of Irish verse is extremely difficult ; it is 
 perhaps easier to catch its spirit than its music ; but Dr. 
 Sigerson has in many cases yoked both together with an 
 extreme felicity. The heptasyllabic lines that prior to the 
 seventeenth century were so beloved by the Irish are extremely 
 hard to reproduce in English, which is far more suited to an 
 octosyllabic measure ; but in scarcely any case has the translator 
 allowed himself to be seduced from the severe path of scholar- 
 ship, and his translations may be better relied on by the 
 English reader for their accuracy than those of any other who 
 has ever attempted to turn Irish into English verses. Indeed, 
 this fidelity to his originals enormously enhances the value of 
 the book for those who may consult it for other reasons than 
 
 1 Fisher Unwin, 1897. 
 
332 BOOK V 
 
 those of pure poetry. It is a book which is at present essential 
 to all who would form for themselves an idea of the Irish 
 literary past and of Irish versification. 
 
 As an original poet Dr. Sigerson is perhaps most dis- 
 tinctly a lyrist, as is natural to one who has come under the 
 native Irish spell. Many of his songs are written, like the 
 Gaelic ones, to Irish airs, and most of them lend themselves 
 naturally to music. The nobler characteristics of Irish verse, 
 which he has acquired from his lifelong acquaintance with the 
 Gaelic poets, tinge his own verses very appreciably especially 
 the smoothness, the desire for recurrent or even interwoven 
 vowel sounds, and the love of alliteration, which when wholly 
 natural and devoid of any obtrusiveness, as they are here, 
 possess in themselves a subtle charm which is very Irish. 
 These characteristics will strike the careful reader in such 
 lyrics as 'Far- Away,' 'The Swans of Tir,' or 'The Roman 
 Tree ;' while they are wholly absent from the fine elegy on 
 Isaac Butt, with the severity of which they would not be in 
 keeping. 
 
 DOUGLAS HYDE (AN CHRAOIBHIN). 
 
 George Sigerson is a native of Tyrone, a descendant of a Norse-Irish 
 family, whose name, Filius Segeri, is on the oldest municipal roll of 
 Dublin (twelfth century). His studies in arts and medicine were chiefly 
 pursued in Paris, where he was a pupil of Claude Bernard, Duchenne (de 
 Boulogne), Charcot, Ranvier, Ball, and Behier. His first medical treatise 
 was published at the instance of Duchenne ; he translated and edited the 
 first two volumes of Charcot, on DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 
 Darwin was interested in his biological work, and Tyndall observed that 
 his microscopic researches on the atmosphere revealed the true nature of 
 the organisms whose presence he himself had detected. As a sequel to his 
 work on the Dublin Mansion House Committee in 1880-81 (of which he 
 was named Medical Commissioner), he published a ract on the NEED AND 
 USE OF VILLAGE HOSPITALS in 1882. As a member of Lord Spencer's 
 Royal Commission on Prisons, in 1883-84, he aided in improving the dietary 
 (an improvement since followed in England) and the condition of weak- 
 minded prisoners, and in having a Medical Commissioner appointed. As a 
 sequel he published, in 1890, a work on THE TREATMENT OF POLITICAL 
 PRISONERS. He also published a book entitled MODERN IRELAND ; his 
 study of the LAND TENURES AND LAND CLASSES OF IRELAND was read 
 
GEORGE SIGERSON 333 
 
 by Mr. Gladstone in proof, and convinced him on the subject of customary 
 rights, which he embodied in his first Land Law. To Two CENTURIES 
 OF IRISH HISTORY, edited by the Right Honourable James Bryce, Dr. 
 Sigerson contributed a study on the work of the independent Irish 
 Parliament. Having, when a student, given some versions of the Munster 
 poets (second series), he in 1897 produced an Irish anthology, BARDS OF 
 THE GAEL AND GALL : DONE INTO ENGLISH AFTER THE MODES AND 
 METRES OF THE GAEL. He has also prepared an analysis, with metrical 
 examples, of the CARMEN PASCHALE of Sedulius, the first saint of Erin and 
 her only epic poet. Other work professional, scientific, and literary has 
 appeared in periodicals. He is a Fellow of the Royal University, professor 
 of Biology in University College, and President of the ational Literary 
 Society. 
 
 * 
 
 THE LOST TRIBUNE 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF ISAAC BUTT 
 
 FAREWELL ! the doom is spoken. All is o'er. 
 
 One heart we loved is silent ; and one head, 
 Whose counsel guided Nations, guides no more ; 
 
 A Man of the few foremost Men is dead. 
 
 With giant might of mind and mould of form 
 He towered aloft ; with mightier love he bowed : 
 
 Strong not alone to dominate the storm, 
 To brave the haughty, and rebuke the proud 
 
 But strong to weep, to heed an infant's care, 
 To gather sorrow to his heart ; nor scorn 
 
 To stoop from Fortune's brilliant ranks and share 
 A weight of woe to which he was not born. 
 
 The secret of his greatness, there behold ! 
 
 More truly there than in th' unrivalled fence, 
 The vivid wit, the reason keen and bold, 
 
 And all the power of peerless eloquence ! 
 
 Mark yonder peasants who, in dumb despair, 
 Kneel down to kiss the ruins of their home, 
 
 While beats the rain upon their hoary hair, 
 Then turn to face the salt Atlantic foam ; 
 
334 BOOK V 
 
 See, where yon massive dungeon walls surround 
 The pale confessors of a country's cause, 
 
 Their grave, perchance, that plot of felon ground, 
 Their name, their honour, branded by the laws 
 
 These were his clients. Their defend.:! he 
 Whose genius, wielding justice as a glaive, 
 
 Delivered those from the strange bitter sea, 
 And these from prison gyve and felon grave. 
 
 One chiefly served he, with chivalric faith ; 
 
 One chiefly loved he, with devoted soul ; 
 His shield was spread between her breast and scathe ; 
 
 His life was spent to save her life from dole. 
 
 Her fallen banner from the dust he raised, 
 And proud advanced it, with uplifted brow, 
 
 Till the sun kissed it, and the Nations gazed 
 Whose was that Standard ? Answer, Erin, thou ! 
 
 Farewell to all of personal joy that came 
 Of seeing, 'mid these common days, a man 
 
 Titanic, victor of enduring fame, 
 W T hose immortality on earth began ; 
 
 Of that enlargement which the mind receives, 
 The wider range, the deeper, subtler sense, 
 
 The higher flight of thought that upward cleaves, 
 When near us moves a great Intelligence 
 
 But not farewell to him who hath outgrown 
 
 The confines of mortality ; he survives 
 In every heart, and shall henceforth be known 
 
 Long as his country loves, long as his Nation lives ! 
 
 THE CALLING 
 
 O SlGH of the Sea, O soft lone- wandering sound, 
 Why callest thou me, with voice of all waters profound, 
 With sob and with smile, with lingering pain and delight, 
 With mornings of blue, with flash of thy billows at night? 
 
GEORGE SIGERSON 335 
 
 The shell from the shore, though borne far away from thy side, 
 Recalls evermore the flowing and fall of thy tide, 
 And so, through my heart thy murmurs gather and grow 
 Thy tides, as of old, awake in its darkness, and flow. 
 
 O Sigh of the Sea, from luminous isles far away, 
 Why callest thou me to sail the impassable way ? 
 Why callest thou me to share the unrest of thy soul 
 Desires that avail not, yearnings from pole unto pole ? 
 
 Still call, till I hear no voice but the voice of thy love, 
 Till stars shall appear the night of my darkness above, 
 Till night to the dawn gives way, and death to new life 
 Heart-full of thy might, astir with thy tumult and strife. 
 
 FAR-AWAY 
 As chimes that flow o'er shining seas 
 
 When Morn alights on meads of May, 
 Faint voices fill the western breeze 
 
 With whisp'ring songs from Far-Away. 
 Oh, dear the dells of Dunanore, 
 
 A home is odorous Ossory ; 
 But sweet as honey, running o'er, 
 The Golden Shore of Far-Away ! 
 
 There grows the Tree whose summer breath 
 
 Perfumes with joy the azure air ; 
 And he who feels it fears not Death, 
 Nor longer heeds the hounds of Care. 
 Oh, soft the skies of Seskinore, 
 
 And mild is meadowy Mellaray ; 
 But sweet as honey, running o'er, 
 The Golden Shore of Far-Away ! 
 
 There sings the Voice whose wondrous tune 
 
 Falls, like diamond-showers above 
 That in the radiant dawn of June 
 Renew a world of Youth and Love. 
 Oh, fair the founts of Farranfore, 
 
 And bright is billowy Ballintrae ; 
 But sweet as honey, running o'er, 
 The Golden Shore of Far-Away I 
 
336 BOOK V 
 
 Come, Fragrance of the Flowering Tree, 
 
 Oh, sing, sweet Bird, thy magic lay, 
 Till all the world be young with me, 
 And Love shall lead us far away. 
 Oh, dear the dells of Dunanore, 
 
 A home is odorous Ossory ; 
 But sweet as honey, running o'er, 
 The Golden Shore of Far- Away ! 
 
 THE BLACKBIRD'S SONG 
 
 FROM THE IRISH : A.D. 850 
 
 An Irish scribe in the monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, while copying 
 a Latin MS., heard a thrush's song in the woods outside his cell, and paused 
 to indite these quatrains on the margin of his MS. , where they were found by 
 the Cavaliere Nigra, and published in RELIQUIE CELTICHE, 1872. Note 
 that at this early date (about 850) the Gaelic system of rhyming verse with 
 its internal chimes is fully developed. 
 
 GREAT woods gird me now around, 
 With sweet sound Merle sings to me ; 
 
 My much-lined pages over 
 Sings its lover-minstrelsie. 
 
 Soft it sings its measured song, 
 
 Hid among the tree-tops green ; 
 May God on high thus love me, 
 
 Thus approve me, all unseen. 
 
 THE RUINED NEST 
 
 AUTHOR UNKNOWN 
 
 The original of this touching poem is found in ' the famous fourteenth- 
 century manuscript known as the Lebor Breac,' writes Prof. Kuno Meyer, 
 who first edited it and translated it for The Gaelic Journal, 1890. It was 
 composed long before the fourteenth century. Translator 's note. 
 
 SAD is yonder blackbird's song, 
 Well I know what wrought it wrong ; 
 Whosoe'er the deed has done, 
 Now its nestlings all are gone. 
 
. GEORGE SIGERSON 337 
 
 Such a sorrow I, too, know 
 For such loss, not long ago ; 
 Well, O bird, I read thy state, 
 For a home laid desolate. 
 
 How thy heart has burned, nigh broke, 
 At the rude and reckless stroke ; 
 To lay waste thy little nest 
 Seems to cowboys but a jest. 
 
 Thy clear note called together 
 Plutt'ring young in new feather ; 
 From thy nest comes now not one 
 O'er its mouth the nettle's gone. 
 
 Sudden came the callous boys, 
 Their deed all thy young destroys ; 
 Thou and I one fate deplore, 
 For my children are no more. 
 
 By thy side there used to be 
 Thy sweet mate from o'er the sea ; 
 The herd's net ensnared her head, 
 She is gone from thee and dead. 
 
 Ruler of high heaven, 
 Thou'st laid our loads uneven ; 
 For our friends on ev'ry side 
 'Mid their mates and children bide. 
 
 Hither came hosts of Faery 
 To waste our home unwary : 
 Though they left no wound to tell, 
 Brunt of battle were less fell. 
 
 Woe for wife for children, woe ! 
 
 1 in sorrow's shadow go ; 
 Not a trace of them I had ! 
 Hence my heavy heart is sad. 
 
BOOK V 
 
 THE DIRGE OF GAEL 
 FROM THE IRISH : BY CREDE, HIS SPOUSE 
 
 The rhymes and metre of the original are given. It is taken from a Bodleian 
 MS. of the fourteenth century. 
 
 MOANS the bay 
 Billows gray round Ventry roar ; 
 Drowned is Gael MacCrimtann brave 
 Tis for him sob wave and shore. 
 
 Heron hoar 
 
 'Mid the moor of Dromatren, 
 Found the fox her young attack, 
 Bleeding, drove him back again. 
 
 Sore the sigh 
 
 Sobs the stag from Drumlis nigh ; 
 Dead the hind of high Drumsailin, 
 Hence the sad stag's wailing cry. 
 
 Wild the wail 
 
 From the thrush of Drumkeen's dale ; 
 Not less sad the blackbird's song, 
 Mourning long in Leitir's vale. 
 
 Woe is me ! 
 
 Dead my Gael is, fair and free ; 
 Oft my arms would ward his sleep, 
 Now it is the deep, dark sea. 
 
 Woe, the roar 
 
 Rolling round from sea and shore ; 
 Since he fought the foreign foe, 
 Mine the woe for Gael no more. 
 
 Sad the sound, 
 
 From the beach and billows round ; 
 I have seen my time this day : 
 Change in form and face is found. 
 
GEORGE SIGERSON 339 
 
 Ever raining, 
 
 Fall the plaining waves above ; 
 I have hope of joy no more, 
 Since 'tis o'er, our bond of love. 
 
 Dead, the swan 
 
 Mourns his mate on waters wan ; 
 Great the grief that makes me know, 
 Share of woe with dying swan. 
 
 Drowned was Gael MacCrimtann brave, 
 Now I've nought of life my own ; 
 Heroes fell before his glaive, 
 His high shield has ceased to moan. 
 
 THINGS DELIGHTFUL 
 
 FROM THE IRISH : OISIN 
 
 The original appeared in the Dean of Lismore's Book 
 
 SWEET is a voice in the land of gold, 
 Sweet is the calling of wild birds bold ; 
 Sweet is the shriek of the heron hoar, 
 Sweet fall the billows of Bundatrore. 
 
 Sweet is the sound of the blowing breeze, 
 Sweet is the blackbird's song in the trees ; 
 Lovely the sheen of the shining sun, 
 Sweet is the thrush over Casacon. 
 
 Sweet shouts the eagle of Assaroe, 
 Where the gray seas of MacMorna flow ; 
 Sweet calls the cuckoo the valleys o'er, 
 Sweet, through the silence, the corrie's roar. 
 
 Fionn, my father, is chieftain old 
 Of seven battalions of Fianna bold ; 
 When he sets free all the deerhounds fleet 
 To rise and to follow with him were sweet. 
 
 Z2 
 
340 BOOK V 
 
 SOLACE IN WINTER 
 
 FROM THE IRISH : CAILTE loquitur 
 
 From SILVA GADELICA : Colloquy with the Ancients 
 Circa A.D. 1200 
 
 CHILL the winter, cold the wind, 
 Up the stag springs, stark of mind : 
 Fierce and bare the mountain fells 
 But the brave stag boldly bells. 
 
 He will set not side to rest 
 On Sliav Carna's snowy breast ; 
 Echta's stag, also rousing, 
 Hears wail of wolves carousing. 
 
 Cailte I, and Diarmid Bonn, 
 Oft, with Oscar apt to run, 
 When piercing night was paling 
 Heard rousing wolves a-wailing. 
 
 Sound may sleep the russet stag, 
 With his hide hid in the crag ; 
 Him, hidden, nothing aileth 
 When piercing night prevaileth. 
 
 I am aged now and gray, 
 Few of men I meet this day 
 But I hurled the javelin bold 
 Of a morning, icy cold. 
 
 Thanks unto the King of Heaven, 
 And the Virgin's Son be given : 
 Many men have I made still, 
 Who this night are very chill. 
 
GEORGE SIGERSON 341 
 
 LAY OF NORSE-IRISH SEA-KINGS 
 
 FROM THE IRISH OF ARTUR MacGURCAICH, THE BLIND 
 
 Dean of Lismore's Book, pp. 117-151. Sweyn has been Gaelicised ' Suivne ' 
 and ' Sweeney but this is a confusion of the Norse with a somewhat similar 
 Gaelic name. ^Translator's note. 
 
 FAIR our fleet at Castle Sweyn 
 Glad good news for Innisfail ! 
 Never rode on bounding brine 
 Barks so fine with soaring sail. 
 
 Tall men urge the ships and steer 
 Our light, leaping, valiant van ; 
 Each hand holds a champion's spear 
 Gay of cheer is ev'ry man. 
 
 Coats of black the warriors wear 
 On the barks with tree-mast tall ; 
 Broad the brown belts that they bear, 
 Norse and Nobles are they all. 
 
 Sword-hilts gold and iv'ry gleam 
 On our barks with banners high ; 
 Hung on hooks the bucklers beam, 
 Sheaves of spears are standing nigh. 
 
 Purple wings our ships expand 
 O'er the fleckt and flowing wave ; 
 'Mid the masts the champions stand 
 Fit for foray, mild and brave. 
 
 Blue is the sea surrounding 
 Prows o'er the billows bounding ; 
 Swords in their sheaths are glowing, 
 The lances thrill for throwing. 
 
342 BOOK V 
 
 Fair are the forms reclining 
 On the cushioned couches high, 
 Wives in their beauty shining 
 'Neath the chequered canopy. 
 
 Silks in varied fold on fold 
 Clothe our king-ship sailing fast j 
 Silks of purple splendour hold 
 Wells of wind at every mast. 
 
 There is seen no hardened hand 
 Waist of worker belted tight ; 
 High- voiced heroes hold command, 
 Fond of music, play, and fight. 
 
 Ne'er did Finn or Fianna know 
 Gallant chiefs of deeds more grand, 
 Nor could Erinn braver show 
 Than this fair-haired battle band. 
 
 Swifter ship of ships there's none 
 None shall go, and none has gone ; 
 Here comes nor sigh nor sorrow, 
 Night or noon, day or morrow. 
 
 Fleeter bark of barks ne'er fared 
 Full of princely folk she goes ; 
 Gold with bards they've, gen'rous, shared 
 While the foam-topt ocean flows. 
 
 Who took this fleet together 
 Close to the high hill heather ? 
 Dauntless he ; he braves the blast 
 Claims his right with upraised mast. 
 
 Sail the ship, Ion, son of Sweyn ! 
 O'er the hard-backed brilliant brine ; 
 Raise aloft its conq'ring crown 
 O'er the billows' fret and frown. 
 
GEORGE SIGERSON 343 
 
 Many welcomes, many smiles, 
 Greet our ship, 'mid Alba's isles ; 
 Bards, the narrow seas among, 
 Welcome us with harp and song. 
 
 Then we came to Castle Sweyn, 
 Like a bright hawk o'er the brine ; 
 By that rock we raised the fight, 
 Facing foes with fierce delight. 
 
 There we pierced the foreign foes 
 As the stinging serpent goes ; 
 Sore we smote them, men and lords, 
 With our thin, sharp, shearing swords. 
 
 Chanting Sweyn-son's battle-song, 
 All the surging seas along ; 
 Till the shore-rock, tall and black, 
 Over ocean sends it back. 
 
 Vain their spears and swords and darts, 
 Our brown bucklers hold our hearts ; 
 Rocky Rathlin, 1 rousing, hears 
 Singing of our swords and spears. 
 
 That thin sword is Europe's best, 
 That swift spear serves each behest ; 
 Where were shield safe in the world 
 When the victor weapon's hurled ? 
 
 Son of Sweyn, whose ways are wide, 
 These keen arms keeps at his side ; 
 Be it now the blind bard's care 
 Him to sing, strong, sage, and fair. 
 
 An isle off the north coast of Ireland. 
 
344 BOOK V 
 
 LOVE'S DESPAIR 
 
 FROM THE IRISH OF DIARMAD O CURNAIN 
 
 O'Curnain was born in Cork in 1740, and died in Modeligo, Waterford, in 
 the first quarter of the present century. He was a tall, handsome young 
 farmer. He travelled to Cork to purchase wedding presents for his betrothed, 
 but was met on his way home by the news that she had married a wealthy 
 suitor. He flung all his presents into the fire, and, from the shock, lost his 
 reason, which he never recovered. He was known to several persons recently 
 alive. Translator 's note. 
 
 I AM desolate, 
 
 Bereft by bitter fate ; 
 No cure beneath the skies can save me, 
 
 No cure on sea or strand, 
 
 Nor in any human hand 
 But hers, this paining wound who gave me. 
 
 I know not night from day, 
 
 Nor thrush from cuckoo gray, 
 Nor cloud from the sun that shines above thee 
 
 Nor freezing cold from heat, 
 
 Nor friend if friend I meet ; 
 I but know heart's love ! I love thee. 
 
 Love that my life began, 
 
 Love that will close life's span, 
 Love that grows ever by love-giving ; 
 
 Love from the first to last, 
 
 Love till all life be passed, 
 Love that loves on after living ! 
 
 This love I gave to thee, 
 
 For pain love has given me, 
 Love that can fail or falter never 
 
 But, spite of earth above, 
 
 Guards thee, my Flower of love, 
 Thou Marvel-maid of life, for ever. 
 
 Bear all things evidence, 
 Thou art my very sense, 
 
GEORGE SIGERSON 345 
 
 My past, my present, and my morrow ! 
 
 All else on earth is crossed, 
 
 All in the world is lost 
 Lost all, but the great love-gift of sorrow. 
 
 My life not life, but death : 
 
 My voice not voice a breath ; 
 No sleep, no quiet thinking ever 
 
 On thy fair phantom face, 
 
 Queen eyes and royal grace, 
 Lost loveliness that leaves me never. 
 
 I pray thee grant but this : 
 
 From thy dear mouth one kiss, 
 That the pang of death-despair pass over 
 
 Or bid make ready nigh 
 
 The place where I shall lie, 
 For aye, thy leal and silent lover. 
 
 WHITLEY STOKES 
 
 MR. WHITLEY STOKES was born in Dublin in 1830, and was 
 the eldest son of William Stokes, M.D., Regius Professor of 
 Medicine in Trinity College, Dublin. He was educated at 
 Trinity College. A pupil of A. Cayley, H. M. Cairns, and 
 T. Chitty, he was called to the English bar, and went in 1862 
 to India, where he became Secretary to the Government in 
 che Legislative Department, Law Member of the Viceroy's 
 Council, and President of the Indian Law Commission. It 
 was at this time that Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his CELTIC 
 LITERATURE, wrote of Mr. Whitley Stokes as * one of the 
 very ablest scholars formed in Zeuss's school, a born philologist 
 he now occupies, alas ! a post under the Government of 
 India.' In spite of this disability, however, Mr. Stokes, 
 besides THE ANGLO-INDIAN CODES and other legal works, 
 has produced editions and translations of ancient Irish texts 
 
346 BOOK V 
 
 which have placed him at the head of Celtic scholarship in 
 Europe, and have revealed to modern Irish and English 
 readers a great deal of what is best in ancient Irish literature. 
 His translation of the tale of Deirdre, in Windisch and 
 Stokes's IRISCHE TEXTE, Bd. II. , has given us the noblest 
 relic of that literature which yet survives in pure and un- 
 mutilated form. He has published the Cornish dramas THE 
 PASSION (Berlin, 1862) and GUREANS AN BYS ; OR, THE CREA- 
 TION OF THE WORLD (1864), edited Old-Welsh and Old- 
 Breton glosses ; and has contributed verse to The Academy 
 and other periodicals. The following poems are founded on 
 Celtic originals, but are not translations. Mr. Stokes has 
 received the orders of C.S.I, and C.I.E., and is an honorary 
 D.C.L. of Oxford, an honorary LL.D. of Dublin and Edin- 
 burgh, a Foreign Associate of the Institute of France, and an 
 honorary member of the German Oriental Society. 
 
 LAMENT FOR KING IVOR 
 
 Place. The south-west coast of Ireland. Time. The middle of the ninth 
 century. Author. The hereditary bard of a Kerry clan. Cause of making. 
 To lament his King, slain in battle with Danish Vikings. 
 
 THOU golden sunshine in the peaceful day ! 
 
 Thou livid lightning in the night of war ! 
 
 Hearing the onrush of thy battle-car, 
 Who could endure to meet thee in the fray ? 
 
 Who dared to see thine eyes aflame in fight, 
 
 Thou stormer through the whistling storm of darts ? 
 Pourer of panic into heroes' hearts ! 
 
 Our hope, our strength, our glory, our delight ! 
 
 Thy soul is striding down the perilous road ; 
 
 And, see, the ghosts of heathen whom thy spear 
 
 Laid low, arise and follow in their fear 
 Him who is braver than their bravest god ! 
 
 Why is thy soul surrounded by no more 
 
 Of thine adoring clansmen ? ' You had been 
 Full worthy,' wouldst thou answer, hadst thou seen 
 
 The charge that drove the pirates from our shore. 
 
WHITLEY STOKES 347 
 
 But thou wast lying prone upon the sand, 
 
 Death-wounded, blind with blood, and gasping : ' Go ! 
 
 Two swords are somewhat ; join the rest. I know 
 Another charge will beat them from the land.' 
 
 So when the slaughter of the Danes was done, 
 We found thee dead a-stare with sunken eyes 
 At those red surges, and bewailed by cries 
 
 Of sea-mews sailing from the fallen sun. 
 
 We kissed thee, one by one, lamenting sore : 
 
 Men's tears have washed the blood- stain from thy brow ; 
 Thy spear and sword and our dear lo\ e hast thou : 
 
 We have thy name and fame for evermore. 
 
 So sang the warriors to their clouded star, 
 King Ivor, as thsy heapt his cairn on high ; 
 A landmark to the sailor sailing by, 
 
 A warning to the spoiler from afar. 
 
 KING AILILL'S DEATH 
 
 FROM THE EARLY MIDDLE IRISH 
 
 Book of Leinster, fol. 214 
 
 I KNOW who won the peace of God, 
 
 King Ailill, called the Beardless Man ; ' 
 
 Who fought beyond the Irish Sea 
 All day against a Connaught clan. 
 
 His host was broken : as he fled 
 
 He muttered to his charioteer : 
 'Look back the slaughter, is it red? 
 
 The slayers, are they drawing near ? ' 
 
 The boy looks back. The west wind blows 
 Dead clansmen's hair against his face ; 
 
 He heard the war-shout of his foes, 
 The death-cry of his ruined race. 
 
 The foes came darting from the height, 
 Like pine trees down a flooded fall : 
 Like heaps of hay in spate, his clan 
 Swept on or sank he saw it all. 
 
348 BOOK V 
 
 And spake : ' The slaughter is full red, 
 But we may still be saved by flight.' 
 
 Then groaned the king : ' No sin of theirs 
 Falls on my people here to-night : 
 
 ' No sin of theirs, but sin 
 
 For I was worst of evil kings ; 
 Unrighteous, wrathful, hurling down 
 
 To death or shame all weaker things. 
 
 { Draw rein, and turn the chariot round : 
 My face against the foeman bend 
 
 When I am seen and slain, mayhap 
 The slaughter of my tribe will end.' 
 
 They drew, and turned. Down came the foe, 
 The king fell cloven on the sod ; 
 
 The slaughter then was stayed, and so 
 King Ailill won the peace of God. 
 
 MAN OCTIPARTITE 
 
 FROM THE MIDDLE IRISH 
 
 Cod. Clarend. (Mus. Brit.), vol. xv. fol. 70, col. i 
 
 THUS sang the sages of the Gael 
 A thousand years ago well-nigh : 
 ' Hearken how the Lord on high 
 Wrought man, to breathe and laugh and wail, 
 To hunt and war, to plough and sail, 
 To love and teach, to pray and die ! ' 
 
 Then said the sages of the Gael : 
 
 * Of parcels eight was Adam built. 
 
 The first was earth, the second sea, 
 
 The third and fourth were sun and cloud, 
 
 The fifth was wind, the sixth was stone, 
 
 The seventh was the Holy Ghost, 
 
 The last, the Light which lighteth God.' 
 
WHITLEY STOKES 349 
 
 Then sang the sages of the Gael : 
 
 * Man's body, first, was built of earth 
 To lodge a living soul from birth, 
 And earthward home again to go 
 When Time and Death have spoken so. 
 Then of the sea his blood was dight 
 To bound in love and flow in fight. 
 Next, of the sun, to see the skies, 
 His face was framed with shining eyes. 
 From hurrying hosts of cloud was wrought 
 His roaming, rapid- changeful thought. 
 Then of the wind was made his breath 
 To come and go from birth to death. 
 And then of earth-sustaining stone 
 Was built his flesh-upholding bone. 
 The Holy Ghost, like cloven flame, 
 The substance of his soul became ; 
 Of Light which lighteth God was made 
 Man's conscience, so that unafraid 
 His soul through haunts of night and sin 
 May pass and keep all clean within. 
 
 ' Now, if the earthiness redound, 
 He lags through life a slothful hound. 
 But, if it be the sea that sways, 
 In wild unrest he wastes his days. 
 Whene'er the sun is sovran, there 
 The heart is light, the face is fair. 
 If clouds prevail, he lives in dreams 
 A deedless life of gloom and gleams. 
 ' If stone bear rule, he masters men, 
 And ruthless is their ransom then. 
 But when the wind has won command, 
 His word is harder than his hand. 
 The Holy Ghost, if He prevail, 
 Man lives exempt from lasting bale, 
 And, gazing with the eyes of God, 
 Of all he sees at home, abroad, 
 
350 BOOK V 
 
 Discerns the inmost heart, and then 
 Reveals it to his fellow-men, 
 And they are truer, gentler, more 
 Heroic than they were before. 
 
 * But he on whom the Light Divine 
 Is lavished bears the sacred sign, 
 And men draw nigh in field or mart 
 To hear the wisdom of his heart. 
 For he is calm and clear of face, 
 And unperplexed he runs his race, 
 Because his mind is always bent 
 On Right, regardless of event. 
 
 * Of each of those eight things decreed 
 To make and mould the human breed, 
 Let more or less in man and man 
 
 Be set as God has framed His plan. 
 But still there is a ninth in store 
 (Oh grant it now and evermore !) - 
 Our Freedom, wanting which, we read, 
 
 The bulk of earth, the strength of stone, 
 The bounding life o' the sea, the speed 
 
 Of clouds, the splendour of the sun, 
 The never-flagging flight of wind, 
 
 The fervour of the Holy Ghost, 
 
 The Light before the angels* host, 
 Though all be in our frame combined, 
 Grow tainted, yea, of no avail.' 
 
 So sang the sages of the Gael. 
 
 JOHN TODHUNTER 
 
 DR. TODHUNTER'S gifts and tastes are very various. While it 
 is not quite certain whether his versatility has been the most 
 favourable ally of his poetic genius, that it has contributed 
 charms to his poetic productions is unquestionable. Few 
 
JOHN TOD HUNTER 351 
 
 poets have been able to interpret the emotions of music in 
 another art more effectively than he. His ' In a Gondola ' 
 (written in Trinity College Park, when he was an under- 
 graduate) exhibits this power to a remarkable degree, and he 
 has written no more genuine poems than the series in which 
 he describes the essential characteristics of the music of 
 Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Rossini. In these poems he 
 conducts the reader into a region of imagination to which no 
 man who is not a poet ever finds his way alone. His eye for 
 colour and form enables him to describe the objects of Nature 
 with extreme minuteness a faculty which recalls that of Keats, 
 united with a manner which, no doubt, has been suggested by 
 Keats. The rhythmic swing and verbal melody which abound 
 in some of his poems make us miss them all the more in poems 
 in which he seems deliberately to neglect them. His love of 
 the stage, his intelligent appreciation of the greatest works of 
 the greatest dramatists, and his eye for stage grouping and 
 stage effects, have induced him to write dramas ; but there is 
 little doubt that he has excelled most in his lyrical poems. 
 His humour asserts itself most successfully certainly most 
 agreeably in ' Laurella,' which, though closely following 
 Paul Heyse's tale, is yet an original and delightful narrative 
 poem. In this poem the difficult ottava rima is handled, 
 frequently after the fashion of * Beppo ' and ' Don Juan,' 
 with skill and dexterity ; and the narrative is so condensed, so 
 well proportioned, and so well arranged, that one cannot help 
 thinking that the author, if he had chosen, might have 
 developed into one of the brightest and pleasantest of our 
 story-tellers in verse. Until about the year 1888 he does not 
 seem to have turned his attention to his native country. In 
 his principal poems on Irish themes he has discarded rhyme 
 in his regular lyrical measures a dangerous experiment until 
 something better and more pleasing to the ear can be provided 
 as a substitute for it. Dr. Todhunter } ossesses a priceless 
 gift, without which no man need ever hope to be a poet of the 
 highest order he is a thinker all that he has written in verse 
 and prose bears upon it the attractive impress of a mind 
 
352 BOOK V 
 
 that has grown rich by reading and by thought, and refined by 
 long self-culture ; and he has at times attained loftier altitudes 
 in poetry than most Irish poets have been able to approach. 
 
 G. F. SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG. 
 
 Dr. John Todhunter, the elder son of an eminent Dublin merchant, 
 was born in Dublin on December 30, 1839. Both his parents being 
 members of the society of Friends, he received his early education at 
 Quaker schools at Mountmellick and York. At the age of sixteen he 
 was placed in a mercantile establishment in Ireland, but, emancipating 
 himself from uncongenial employment, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, 
 in 1 86 1, with the intention of studying for the medical profession. After 
 a college career of much distinction he took his degree of B.A. in 1865, 
 M.B. in 1866, and M.D. in 1871, and in 1871 also a Diploma in State 
 Medicine, which had been instituted in that year. After rambles and 
 studies on the Continent he settled in Dublin, to practise, in 1870. 
 Between 1870 and 1874 he was Assistant Physician to the Cork Street 
 Fever Hospital in Dublin, and also Lecturer in English Literature at 
 Alexandra College. He acted also as one of the Honorary Secretaries of 
 the Dublin Sanitary Association, which did good service in examining and 
 exposing the sanitary condition of the Dublin slums. In 1874, resigning 
 his appointments for the purpose of devoting himself exclusively to 
 literature, he left Dublin, and has since resided chiefly in London, making 
 occasional visits to the Continent and more distant lands. 
 
 Dr. Todhunter's works are: LAUREI.LA AND OTHER POEMS, 1876; 
 ALKESTIS (a Drama), 1879 ; A STUDY OF SHELLEY, 1880 ; THE TRUE 
 TRAGEDY OF RIENZI, 1881 ; FOREST SONGS, 1881 ; HELENA IN TROAS 
 (produced at Hengler's Circus as an imitation of a Greek play), 1885 ; 
 THE BANSHEE AND OTHER POEMS, 1888 ; A SICILIAN IDYLL (pro- 
 duced at the theatre of the Club, Bedford Park, and at the Vaudeville), 
 1891 ; THE POISON-FLOWER (produced at the Vaudeville), 1891 ; THE 
 BLACK CAT (produced by the Independent Theatre Society), 1893 ; A 
 LIFE OF SARSFIELD, 1895 > THREE BARDIC TALES, 1896 ; and various 
 essays and pamphlets. 
 
 MORNING IN THE BAY OF NAPLES 
 
 From LAURELLA 
 
 LIKE a great burst of singing came the day, 
 
 After the dawn's soft prelude, from heaven's cave ; 
 
 Swooping to clasp the billowy-bosomed bay 
 In his ecstatic arms, wooing each wave 
 
JOHN TODHUNTER 353 
 
 To give him kiss for kiss. His glorious way 
 
 Was pioneered by the brisk winds, which gave 
 New life to the waking world, and filled each sense 
 With measureless desire and hopes immense. 
 
 In short, it was a most delicious morn 
 
 What clouds there were soared in the upper sky, 
 
 Or round the mountains died as they were born 
 In the bright haze that clung mysteriously 
 
 To the dim coast. An Amalthea's horn 
 
 Of rathe delight seemed emptied from on high 
 
 On all the progeny of land and sea 
 
 Shore-maidens sang and sea birds shrieked for glee. 
 
 There was a breath of fragrance in the air 
 That stole upon the spirit like young love ; 
 
 An incense wafted from, you knew not where 
 From thymy dell and seaweed-scented cove. 
 
 Ocean and earth had found each other fair, 
 
 And mingled their fresh lips the tamarisk grove 
 
 Sighed for the kiss of the wave, and waves leapt up 
 
 To yield the winds dew for the myrtle's cup. 
 
 THE LAMENTATION FOR THE THREE SONS OF TURANN, 
 WHICH TURANN, THEIR FATHER, MADE OVER THEIR GRAVE 
 
 THE LITTLE LAMENTATION 1 
 
 I 
 
 Low lie your heads this day, 
 My sons ! my sons, 
 Make wide the grave, for I hasten 
 To lie down among my sons. 
 
 II 
 
 Bad is life to the father 
 In the house without a son, 
 Fallen is the House of Turann, 
 And with it I lie low. 
 
 1 From THREE IRISH BARDIC TALES, by John Todhunter, 1896. 
 
 A A 
 
354 BOOK V 
 
 THE FIRST SORROW 
 
 I 
 
 The staff of my age is broken ! 
 Three pines I reared in Dun-Turann 
 Brian, luchar, lucharba, 
 Three props of my house they were. 
 
 II 
 
 They slew a man to their wounding, 
 In the fierceness of their youth ! 
 For Kian, the son of Cainte, 
 Their comely heads lie low. 
 
 in 
 
 A dreadful deed was your doing, 
 My sons ! my sons ! 
 No counsel ye took with me 
 When ye slew the son of Caintd 
 
 IV 
 
 A bad war with your hands 
 
 Ye made upon Innisfail, 
 
 A bad feud on your heads 
 
 Ye drew when ye slew no stranger. 
 
 And cruel was the blood-fine 
 That Lugh of the outstretched arm, 
 The avenging son of Kian, 
 Laid on you for his father. 
 
 VI 
 
 Three apples he claimed, a sow-skin, 
 A spear, two steeds and a war-car, 
 Seven swine, and a staghound's whelp, 
 A spit, three shouts on a mountain. 
 
JOHN TODHUNTER 355 
 
 VII 
 
 A little eric it seemed 
 
 For the blood of De-Danaan ; 
 
 A paltry eric and foolish, 
 
 Yet there was death for the three ! 
 
 THE SECOND SORROW 
 
 I 
 
 Crafty was Lugh, when he laid 
 The fine on the sons of Turann, 
 And pale we grew when we fathomed 
 The mind of the son of Kian. 
 
 II 
 
 Three apples of gold ye brought him 
 From the far Hesperian garden ; 
 Ye slew the King of Greece 
 For the skin that heals all wounds. 
 
 in 
 
 Ye took from the King of Persia 
 The spear more deadly than dragons ; 
 It keeps the world in danger 
 With the venom of its blade. 
 
 IV 
 
 Ye won from the King of Sicil 
 His horses and his war-car ; 
 The fleetness of wings their fleetness, 
 Their highway the land and the sea. 
 
 The King of the Golden Pillars 
 Yielded the swine to your challenge ; 
 Each night they smoked at the banquet, 
 Each morning they lived again. 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 BOOK V 
 
 VI 
 
 Ye took from the King of Iceland 
 His hound, like the sun for splendour ; 
 Ye won by your hands of valour 
 Those wonders, and brought them home. 
 
 VII 
 
 But short was the eric of Lugh 
 When your hearts grew hungry for Turann ; 
 For Lugh had laid upon you 
 Forgetfulness by his craft. 
 
 THE GREAT LAMENTATION 
 
 I 
 
 Death to the sons of Turann 
 
 Had Lugh in his crafty mind : 
 
 ' Yet lacks of my lawful eric 
 
 The spit, three shouts on the mountain.' 
 
 The strength of the babe was left us 
 At the hearing of that word 
 Brian, luchar, lucharba, 
 Like dead men they fell down. 
 
 in 
 
 But Brian your courage kindled, 
 
 My sons ! my sons ! 
 
 For the Island of Finchory 
 
 A year long ye searched the seas. 
 
 IV 
 
 Then Brian set the clearness 
 Of crystal upon his forehead, 
 And, his water-dress around him, 
 Dived through the waves' green gloom. 
 
JOHN TODHUNTER 357 
 
 Days twice-seven was he treading 
 The silent gloom of the deep, 
 His lanterns the silver salmon, 
 To the sea-sunk Isle of Finchory. 
 
 VI 
 
 Soft shone the moony splendour 
 Of the magic lamps of Finchory ; 
 There sat in their hall of crystal 
 The red-haired ocean-wraiths. 
 
 VII 
 
 Twice-fifty they sat and broidered 
 With pearls their sea-green mantles ; 
 But Brian strode to their kitchen 
 And seized a spit from the rack. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Soft rippled their silvery laughter, 
 Like the laughter of summer wavelets : 
 * Strong is the son of Turann, 
 But stronger the weakest here. 
 
 IX 
 
 * And now, should we withstand thee, 
 No more shouldst thou see thy brothers. 
 Yet keep the spit for thy daring ; 
 Brian, we love the bold.' 
 
 SONG 
 
 BRING from the craggy haunts of birch and pine 
 
 Thou wild wind, bring, 
 Keen forest odours from that realm of thine, 
 
 Upon thy wing ! 
 
358 BOOK V 
 
 O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind, 
 
 Blow through me, blow ! 
 Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind 
 
 From long ago. 
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 Music as of the winds when they awake, 
 
 Wailing, in the mid forest ; music that raves 
 
 Like moonless tides about forlorn sea-caves 
 On desolate shores, where swell weird songs and break 
 In peals of demon laughter ; chords athirst 
 
 With restless anguish of divine desires 
 
 The voice of a vexed soul ere it aspires 
 With a great cry for light ; anon a burst 
 Of passionate joy fierce joy of conscious might, 
 
 Down-sinking in voluptuous luxury ; 
 Rich harmonies, full-pulsed with deep delight, 
 
 And melodies dying deliciously 
 As odorous sighs breathed through the quiet night 
 
 By violets. Thus Beethoven speaks for me. 
 
 THE FATE OF THE SONS OF UsNA. 1 
 From THE FIRST DUAN : THE COMING OF DEIRDRE 
 
 So Kings and Chiefs and Bards, in Eman of the Kings, 
 Feasted with Felimy ; and rank and order due 
 Were kept between them all, each Bard, or Chief, or King 
 Being marshalled to his place by stewards of the feast. 
 But Conchobar alone came armed into the hall. 
 
 And there the amber mead, crowning the golden cup, 
 Welcomed each noble guest. There Conall Carnach sat, 
 Whose eyes, renowned in song, the blue eye and the brown, 
 Abashed his foes ; but now beamed kindly as he pledged 
 
 1 From THREE IRISH BARUIC TALES, 1896. Deirdre was the Helen 
 of the Irish Iliad, and the story of her elopement with Naisi and the 
 vengeance taken by King Conchobar on the pair forms the most celebrated 
 of Irish bardic tales. 
 
JOHN TODHUNTER 359 
 
 The man of glorious heart who laughed a realm away 
 Fergus MacRoy ; who now pledged him again, and laughed, 
 With frank heart-easing roar, the laugh that all men loved. 
 
 So Fergus laughed, and looked a mighty man of men ; 
 Ruddy his face, and red the great beard on his breast, 
 Fergus, whose heart contained the laughter and the tears 
 Of all the world ; who held the freedom of his mood, 
 Love, and the dreaming harp that made the world a dream, 
 The comradeship offcasts, the wild joy of the chase, 
 Dearer than power ; Fergus, who sang in after-years 
 The raid of red Queen Meave, the wasting of the Branch, 
 Breaches in famous loves, long wars, and deaths renowned 
 Of many a feaster there ; where Conall now in mirth 
 Pledged his old friend, whose son ere long by him should fall. 
 
 And there Fardia felt the broad hand of his death 
 Laid on his shoulder now in comrade's love ; for there, 
 A friend beside his friend, unarmed Cuchullin sat, 
 Like a swift hound for strength and graceful slenderness, 
 In the first flower of his youth ; the colours of his face 
 Fresh as the dawning day, and in his clear blue eyes 
 The glad undaunted light of life's unsullied morn. 
 
 There in his royal state, a grave man among Kings, 
 
 Sat Conchobar, still, stern. The dark flame of his face 
 
 Tamed, as the sun the stars, all faces else : a face 
 
 Of subtle splendour ; brows of wisdom, broad and high, 
 
 Where strenuous youth had scored the runes of hidden power 
 
 Not easily read ; a mouth pliant for speech, an eye 
 
 Whose ambushed fires at need could terribly outleap 
 
 In menace or command, mastering the wills of men. 
 
 He wore upon him all the colours of a King 
 By ancient laws ordained : the three colours, the white, 
 Crimson, and black ; with these blending, by ancient law, 
 The four colours, the red, yellow, and green, and blue, 
 Enriched with gleaming gold. But subtly Conchobar 
 Loved to display the seven fair colours of a King 
 Inwoven and intertwined in traceries quaint and rare ; 
 And his keen eye would search the play of shimmering hues, 
 
360 BOOK V 
 
 Even as his ear the turns and tricks of tuneful art 
 
 Of skilled harpers. For craft of hand as craft of mind 
 
 Was ever his delight, and subtle as his mind 
 
 Ever his dress. No King in splendour was his peer ; 
 
 Each looked a gaudy clown, at vie with Conchobar. 
 
 Over his chair of state four silver posts upheld 
 
 A silken canopy ; and by him were his arms : 
 
 ' The Hawk,' his casting-spear, that never left his hand 
 
 But death sang in its scream ; and, in its jewelled sheath, 
 
 His sword, ' Flame of the Sea,' won by his sires, of yore, 
 
 From some slain Eastern King the blade, with wizard spells, 
 
 Tempered in magic baths under the Syrian moon. 
 
 But in the House of Arms bode his long thrusting-spear, 
 
 ' Spoil-winner ; ' there, too, bode, far-famed in bardic song, 
 
 * The Bellower,' his great shield, seven-bossed, whose pealing voice, 
 
 Loud o'er the battle's roar, would call its vassal waves, 
 
 The wave of Toth, tjie wave of Rury, and the wave 
 
 Of Cleena, the three waves, to thunder on their shores, 
 
 Ireland's three magic waves, at danger of her King. 
 
 On the High- King's right hand sat Cathvah, that white peer 
 
 Of hoary Time, like Time wrinkled and hoar ; the beard 
 
 Upon his breast, the hair upon his druid head 
 
 Wintered with eld ; Cathvah, whose voice was like a sea's 
 
 For mystery and awe, and like the brooding sea 
 
 Blue were his druid eyes, and sad with things to come. 
 
 And on his left was set old Shancha of the Laws, 
 His Councillor ; none lived wiser in all the lore 
 Of statecraft, and the laws and customs of old time. 
 Thin was his shaven face ; deep under the black brows 
 Gleamed his keen eyes that weighed coldly each thing they saw ; 
 Long was his head and high, fringed round with silver hair ; 
 Smooth as an egg above, where baldness on the dome 
 Sat in grave state, yet looked no blemish where it sat. 
 These two after the King were honoured in the hall. 
 
 On wings of song flew by the hastening day, and song 
 Led in the hooded night, soft stealing on the feast ; 
 And without stint the wife of Felimy the Bard 
 
JOHN TODHUNTER 361 
 
 Crowned the great horn with ale, with mead the golden cup, 
 
 To circle the great hall. Praised for her open hand, 
 
 She served with nimble cheer, though now her hour drew nigh. 
 
 But when the hearts of all were merry, and their brains 
 Hummed with the humming ale, and drowsily the harps 
 Murmured of deeds long done, till sleep with downy wing 
 Fanned heavy lids, a cry a thin, keen, shuddering cry 
 Rang eerily through the hall, dumbing all tongues, for lo ! 
 Foreboding birth's dread hour, loud shrieked the babe unborn. 
 
 Then cheeks grew pale that ne'er in danger's grimmest hour 
 
 Failed of their wholesome red ; and ghastly looks met looks 
 
 As ghastly in the eyes of champions whose proud names 
 
 Were songs of valour. First came loosing of the tongue 
 
 To Felimy. His words shook on the breath of fear : 
 
 'Woman, what woeful voice that rends my heart like steel, 
 
 Keenes from thee now? ' His wife with trembling hands of prayer 
 
 Sank pale at Cathvah's feet : ' From what night-shrieking wraith, 
 
 O Druid, came that voice ? A hand of ice is laid 
 
 Upon my heart : the keene comes to the house of death ! ' 
 
 And Cathvah said : * A child cries in the gate of birth 
 For terror of this world ; yet shall she be the queen 
 Of all this world for beauty. Ushered by fear she comes, 
 And " Dread " shall be her name ; Deirdre' I name her now, 
 For dear shall Eri dree her beauty and her birth.' 
 
 Then, with her pangs upon her, the mother from the hall 
 Was hurried by her maids ; and ere they rose that night 
 A wail was in the house, for Death came to that birth, 
 And Deirdre"'s mother passed with the coming of her child. 
 
 Anon the aged crones that haunt with equal feet 
 The house of joy or tears, pnestesses hoar like-skilled 
 In rites of death or birth, solemnly up the hall 
 Paced slow, bearing the babe ; and with a weeping word, 
 ' Thy dead wife sends thee this,' laid it in its father's arms. 
 And Felimy bent down and, dazed with sudden grief, 
 Kissed it without a tear. Then Cathvah took the child 
 And o'er its new-born head murmured his druid song : 
 
362 BOOK V 
 
 THE DRUID SONG OF CATHVAH 
 
 I 
 
 O Deirdre, terrible child, 
 For thee, red star of our ruin, 
 Great weeping shall be in Eri 
 Woe, woe, and a breach in Ulla ! 
 
 The flame of thy dawn shall kindle 
 The pride of Kings to possess thee, 
 The spite of Queens for thy slander : 
 In seas of blood is thy setting. 
 
 Ill 
 
 War, war is thy bridesmaid, 
 Thou soft, small whelp of terror ; 
 Thy feet shall trample the mighty, 
 Yet stumble on heads thou lovest. 
 
 IV 
 
 The little heap of thy grave 
 Shall dwell in thy desolation ; 
 Sad songs shall wail over Eri 
 Thy dolorous name, O Deirdr^ ! 
 
 To the nurse he gave the child. In silence from the hall 
 Deirdrd was borne. Anon the vast hush of the night 
 Was filled with dreadful sound : the shield of Conchobar, 
 Raising its brazen voice within the House of Arms, 
 Bellowed ; and at its call a mighty voice they knew 
 Thundered from the far shore, the voice of the great Wave 
 Of Rury. And the voice of the great Wave of Toth, 
 And the great Wave of Cleena, answered him from afar, 
 Thundering upon their shores at danger of their King. 1 
 
 1 According to the legend, the magic shield of Conchobar roared like 
 the sea when the king was in danger, and the seas of Erinn answered it, 
 thundering upon their beaches. 
 
JOHN TODHUNTER 363 
 
 FAIRY GOLD 
 
 A BALLAD OF '48 
 
 BUTTERCUPS and daisies in the meadow, 
 
 And the children pick them as they pass, 
 Weaving in the sunlight and the shadow 
 
 Garlands for each little lad and lass ; 
 Weave with dreams their buttercups and daisies, 
 
 As the poor dead children did of old. 
 Will the dreams, like sunshine in their faces, 
 
 Wither with their flowers like Fairy Gold? 
 
 Once, when lonely in Life's crowded highway, 
 
 Came a maiden sweet, and took my hand, 
 Led me down Love's green delightful byway, 
 
 Led me dreaming back to Fairyland. 
 But Death's jealous eye that lights on lovers 
 
 Looked upon her, and her breast grew cold, 
 And my heart's delight the green sod covers, 
 
 Vanished from my arms like Fairy Gold ! 
 
 Then to Ireland, my long-suffering nation, 
 
 That poor hope life left me yet I gave ; 
 With her dreams I dreamed, her desolation 
 
 Found me, called me, desolate by that grave. 
 Once again she raised her head, contending 
 
 For her children's birthright as of old ; 
 Once again the old fight had the old ending, 
 
 All her hopes and dreams were Fairy Gold. 
 
 Now my work is done and I am dying, 
 
 Lone, an exile on a foreign shore ; 
 But in dreams roam with my love that's lying 
 
 Lonely in the old land I'll see no more. 
 Buttercups and daisies in the meadows 
 
 When I'm gone will bloom ; new hopes for old 
 Comfort her with sunshine after shadows, 
 
 Fade no more away like Fairy Gold. 
 
364 BOOK V 
 
 WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 
 
 IN his beautiful and touching preface to IRISH SONGS AND 
 POEMS, published in 1887, Allingham dwells upon his love 
 for Ballyshannon, his native home a place of primitive and 
 kindly folk, a place of haunting loveliness. His heart clung to 
 it always. He came to form friendships and interests and 
 ways of life which might have turned him into a very English 
 poet and man : he became intimate with Tennyson and 
 Carlyle, with Rossetti, Patmore, Millais, and the Pre-raphaelites 
 at large. Much of his work was influenced by these English 
 artists, and he was probably more at home with them than 
 with his own countrymen of letters. He was not bound to 
 Ireland by any crusading passion of Nationalism : he even had 
 something of that detachment which sometimes accompanies a 
 devotion to art. But his early home kept him Irish at the 
 heart. His most popular poem in Ireland is his * Emigrant's 
 Farewell ' that * adieu to Ballyshannon and the winding 
 banks of Erne' which is sung to-day by wandering singers 
 who never heard of Allingham, and has become a classic 
 lament among his own people. Though not of peasant stock, 
 he had all the peasant's passion for the old home with its 
 memories and associations, and in him it blossomed into 
 poetry, poignant and simple and sincere. We are told that in 
 twilight walks about Ballyshannon he would listen to girls 
 singing old ballads at their cottage doors : if imperfect or 
 crude, he would complete and correct them, have them printed 
 in the old-fashioned broadsheet form, and have them sold 
 or distributed about the district. Then, like Goldsmith in 
 Dublin, but under happier conditions, he would listen 
 delightedly to the sound of his own verses. Most of his Irish 
 themes come from local legends and ways, from his loving 
 knowledge of that countryside and shore ' on the extreme 
 western verge of Europe,' as the moving preface to IRISH 
 SONGS AND POEMS puts it. His longest work upon an Irish 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 365 
 
 theme is a novel in verse, somewhat after the manner of 
 Crabbe, though without his tragic power and with more of 
 Goldsmith's gentleness. LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD IN IRELAND 
 abounds in excellent portraits of Irish scenery and society. 
 The great Russian writer, Turgenev, said upon reading it : * I 
 never understood Ireland before.' The poet himself said 
 of it : ' Alas ! when all's done, who will like it ? Think of 
 the Landlord and Tenant Question in flat decasyllabics ! ' 
 Despite the poem's many incidental merits, that self-criticism 
 is not unjust. In truth, Allingham's power was not in poems 
 of any considerable length : he was a lyrist, and not an inspired 
 writer of narrative or dramatic poems. * Perfection,' he wrote, 
 * seems to me the most inalienable quality of a poem. From 
 the chaos of incident and reflection arise the rounded worlds 
 of poetry, and go singing on their way.' But, as Rossetti said 
 of Allingham's * Music Master,' the longer poems, though 
 ' full of beauty and nobility,' are * perhaps too noble or too 
 resolutely healthy : ' the strenuous conscientiousness of com- 
 position results in some lack of charm. Tennyson, Rossetti, 
 and Mr. Ruskin agreed in an ardent admiration of Allingham's 
 lyrics, his flying or sighing snatches of song ; and the loveliest 
 of these are among his DAY AND NIGHT SONGS, with which 
 Mr. Ruskin was * most delighted,' declaring that ' some of it 
 is heavenly.' Here we find all his better qualities : his 
 wistful, smiling Irish humour and sympathy with Irish 
 character, with Irish ways and scenes ; his delicate love of 
 Nature and earth's creatures, with children, and with the faery 
 world of fancy and myth ; his uncomplaining pensiveness at 
 the memory of the past, of old time, * little things ' that his 
 heart remembers. Sunt lacrimce rerum et mentem mortalia 
 tangunt is very much the burden of his best singing : yet he 
 can sing blithely enough of Kitty O'Hea, and Mary Donnelly, 
 and ' Kate O'Belashanny,' or celebrate with artful homeliness 
 of tone the good labours of country man and maid, of the 
 toilers of the sea. * Most comforting and gentle thoughts I 
 had:' so runs the last line of a very familiar poem, and it 
 expresses the feeling with which most of Allingham's readers 
 
366 > BOOK V 
 
 lay down his lyrics. For if these poems are often sad, it is 
 with a sane and wholesome sadness. As Rossetti wrote to a 
 friend in 1871 : 'another happy man, after all, seems to be 
 Allingham, for all his want of " success." Nothing but the 
 most absolute calm and enjoyment of outside Nature could 
 account for so much gadding about on the soles of his two 
 feet.' Not all his poems of action are failures : once or twice 
 he has caught the fierce old Irish note of Ferguson. But we 
 chiefly remember him as a poet whose aerial, yEolian melodies 
 steal into the heart a poet of twilight and the evening star, 
 and the sigh of the wind over the hills and waters of an 
 Ireland that broods and dreams. His music haunts the ear 
 with its perfect simplicity of art, the cunning of its quiet 
 cadences. Song upon song makes no mention, direct or 
 indirect, of Ireland : yet an Irish atmosphere and temperament 
 are to be felt in almost all. Hawthorne, who resembles 
 Allingham, both in official position and in artistic quality and 
 kind, described his looks as ' intelligent, dark, pleasing, and 
 not at all John-Bullish.' As the outer aspect of the man, so 
 his characteristic work the work of a poet who was many 
 things, but always and essentially an Irishman of the secluded 
 west, with ancient visions and ponderings in his heart, and the 
 gift of tears and smiles. He stands somewhat lonely and 
 apart from the Irish poets of his time : he belonged to the 
 minority in religious and political faith ; he was nothing of an 
 Irish scholar, able to draw inspiration from Gaelic literature ; 
 he lived in no centre of Irish literary society. He passed along 
 his way alone, with a heart responding, a soul vibrating, to 
 the voices of Nature and of tranquil lives : and to him those 
 voices came in Irish. He wrote much ambitious work which 
 may not live : he lacked concentrated strength and energy of 
 imagination to succeed in the loftiest and most elaborate 
 strains. But his lyric voice of singular sweetness, his Muse of 
 passionate or pensive meditation, his poetic consecration of 
 common things, his mingled aloofness and homeliness, assure 
 him a secure place among the poets of his land and the Irish 
 voices which never will fall silent. And though 'the Irish 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 367 
 
 cause' receives from him but little direct encouragement or 
 help, let it be remembered that Allingham wrote this great and 
 treasurable truth : 
 
 We're one at heart, if you be Ireland's friend, 
 Though leagues asunder our opinions tend : 
 There are but two great parties in the end. 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON. 
 
 William Allingham was born, in 1824, at Ballyshannon, in the County 
 Donegal. He had his early education at his native place, and at the age 
 of fourteen became a clerk in the town bank, of which his father was 
 manager. In this employment he passed seven dissatisfied years, during 
 which his chief delight was in reading and in acquiring foreign literature. 
 An opening was then found for him in the Customs Office, and after two 
 years' preliminary training at Belfast he returned to Ballyshannon as 
 Principal Officer. In 1847 he visited London for the first time, and the 
 rest of his life was largely spent in England, where he received various 
 official appointments. He retired from the Government service in 1870, 
 when he became sub-editor, under Mr. Froude, of Fraser's Magazine. In 
 1874 he succeeded him as editor. Some years before he had been granted 
 a pension for his literary services. In the same year (1874) he married, and 
 he died at Hampstead in 1889. He was a fairly prolific writer, both in 
 verse and prose : his first volume appeared in 1850, and there is a posthu- 
 mous edition of his works in six volumes. No Life of him has been written, 
 but the LETTERS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI TO WILLIAM ALLING- 
 HAM, edited and annotated by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, with a valuable intro- 
 duction, record the chief facts of his life and literary friendships. 
 
 Allingham's principal volumes are: POEMS, 1850; DAY AND NIGHT 
 SONGS, 1854; THE Music MASTER, &c., 1855 (containing Rossetti's 
 illustration of ' The Maids of Elfin-Mere ' which moved Burne-Jones to 
 become a painter); FIFTY MODERN POEMS, 1865; LAURENCE BLOOM- 
 FIELD IN IRELAND: A MODERN POEM, 1864; with SONGS, BALLADS, AND 
 STORIES, 1877 ; EVIL MAY-DAY, 1883 ; ASHBY MANOR : A PLAY, 1883 ; 
 FLOWER PIECES, 1888 ; LIFE AND PHANTASY, 1889 ; BLACKBERRIES, 
 1896. 
 
 HARP 
 
 WHAT is it that is gone we fancied ours ? 
 Oh, what is lost that never may be told ? 
 We stray all afternoon, and we may grieve 
 Until the perfect closing of the night 
 
368 BOOK V 
 
 Listen to us, thou gray Autumnal Eve, 
 Whose part is silence. At thy verge the clouds 
 Are broken into melancholy gold ; 
 The waifs of Autumn and the feeble flow'rs 
 Glimmer along our woodlands in wet light ; 
 Within thy shadow thou dost weave the shrouds 
 Of joy and great adventure, waxing cold, 
 Which once, or so it seemed, were full of m'ght. 
 Some power it was, that lives not with us now, 
 A thought we had, but could not, could not hold. 
 Oh, sweetly, swiftly pass'd ! air sings and murmurs 
 Green leaves are gathering on the dewy bough : 
 Oh, sadly, swiftly pass'd ! air sighs and mutters ; 
 Red leaves are dropping on the rainy mould. 
 Then comes the snow, unfeatured, vast, and white. 
 Oh, what has gone from us, we fancied ours ? 
 
 A GRAVESTONE 
 
 FAR from the churchyard dig his grave, 
 On some green mound beside the wave ; 
 To westward, sea and sky alone, 
 And sunsets. Put a massy stone, 
 With mortal name and date, a harp 
 And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp ; 
 Then leave it free to winds that blow, 
 And patient mosses creeping slow, 
 And wandering wings, and footstep rare 
 Of human creature pausing there. 
 
 THE BAN-SHEE 
 
 A BALLAD OF ANCIENT ERIN 
 
 * HEARD'ST thou over the Fortress wild geese flying and crying ? 
 Was it a gray wolf's howl ? wind in the forest sighing ? 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 369 
 
 Wail from the sea as of wreck ? Hast heard it, Comrade ?' * Not 
 
 so. 
 Here, all's still as the grave, above, around, and below. 
 
 ' The Warriors lie in battalion, spear and shield beside them, 
 Tranquil, whatever lot in the coming fray shall betide them. 
 See, where he rests, the Glory of Erin, our Kingly Youth ! 
 Closed his lion's eyes, and in sleep a smile on his mouth.' 
 
 * The cry, the dreadful cry ! I know it louder and nearer, 
 Circling our Dun the Ban-shee \ my heart is frozen to hear her ! 
 Saw you not in the darkness a spectral glimmer of white 
 Flitting away ? I saw it ! evil her message to-night. 
 
 * Constant, but never welcome, she, to the line of our Chief; 
 Bodeful, baleful, fateful, voice of terror and grief. 
 
 Dimly burneth the lamp hush ! again that horrible cry ! 
 If a thousand lives could save thee, Tierna, thou shouldest not 
 die.' 
 
 Now ! what whisper ye, Clansmen ? I wake. Be your words 
 
 of me ? 
 
 Wherefore gaze on each other ? I too have heard the Ban-shee. 
 Death is her message : but ye, be silent. Death comes to no man 
 Sweet as to him who in fighting crushes his country's foeman. 
 
 ' Streak of dawn in the sky morning of battle. The Stranger 
 Camps on our salt-sea strand below, and recks not his danger. 
 Victory ! that was my dream : one that shall fill men's ears 
 In story and song of harp after a thousand years. 
 
 Give me my helmet and sword. Whale-tusk, gold-wrought, I 
 
 clutch thee ! 
 Blade, Flesh-Biter, fail me not this time ! Yea, when I touch 
 
 thee, 
 
 Shivers of joy run through me. Sing aloud as I swing thee ! 
 Glut of enemies' blood, meseemeth, to-day shall bring thee. 
 
 * Sound the horn ! Behold, the Sun is beginning to rise. 
 Whoso seeth him set, ours is the victor's prize, 
 
 When the foam along the sand shall no longer be white but red 
 Spoils and a mighty feast for the Living, a earn for the Dead.' 
 
 B B 
 
370 BOOK V 
 
 THE FAIRIES * 
 A CHILD'S SONG 
 
 UP the airy mountain, 
 
 Down the rushy glen, 
 We daren't go a-hunting 
 
 For fear of little men. 
 Wee folk, good folk, 
 
 Trooping all together ; 
 Green jacket, red cap, 
 
 And white owl's feather ! 
 
 Down along the rocky shore 
 
 Some make their home 
 They live on crispy pancakes 
 
 Of yellow tide-foam ; 
 Some in the reeds 
 
 Of the black mountain-lake, 
 With frogs for their watch- dogs, 
 
 All night awake. 
 
 High on the hill-top 
 
 The old King sits ; 
 He is now so old and grey, 
 
 He's nigh lost his wits. 
 With a bridge of white mist 
 
 Columbkill he crosses, 
 On his stately journeys 
 
 From Slieveleague to Rosses ; 
 Or going up with music 
 
 On cold starry nights, 
 To sup with the Queen 
 
 Of the gay Northern Lights. 
 
 They stole little Bridget 
 
 For seven years long ; 
 When she came down again, 
 
 Her friends were all gone. 
 They took her lightly back, 
 
 Between the night and morrow ; 
 
WILLIAM A LUNCH AM 371 
 
 They thought that she was fast asleep, 
 
 But she was dead with sorrow. 
 They have kept her ever since 
 
 Deep within the lake, 
 On a bed of flag-leaves, 
 
 Watching till she wake. 
 
 By the craggy hill-side, 
 
 Through the mosses bare, 
 They have planted thorn-trees, 
 
 For pleasure here and there. 
 Is any man so daring 
 
 As dig them up in spite, 
 He shall find their sharpest thorns 
 
 In his bed at night. 
 
 Up the airy mountain, 
 
 Down the rushy glen, 
 We daren't go a-hunting 
 
 For fear of little men. 
 Wee folk, good folk, 
 
 Trooping all together ; 
 Green jacket, red cap, 
 
 And white owl's feather ! 
 
 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE ; 
 OR, THE EMIGRANT'S ADIEU TO BALLYSHANNON 
 
 A LOCAL BALLAD 
 
 ADIEU to Belashanny ! where I was bred and born ; 
 
 Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and morn 
 
 The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is known, 
 
 And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own ; 
 
 There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill, 
 
 But, east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still. 
 
 I leave my warm heart with you, tho' my back I'm forced to 
 
 turn 
 So adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne ! 
 
 B n 2 
 
372 BOOK V 
 
 ii 
 
 No more on pleasant evenings we'll saunter down the Mall, 
 When the trout is rising to the fly, the salmon to the fall. 
 The boat comes straining on her net, and heavily she creeps. 
 Cast off ! cast off ! she feels the oars, and to her berth she 
 
 sweeps ; 
 
 Now fore and aft keep hauling, and gathering up the clew, 
 Till a silver wave of salmon rolls in among the crew. 
 Then they may sit, with pipes a-lit, and many a joke and ' yarn 
 Adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne ! 
 
 in 
 
 The music of the waterfall, the mirror of the tide, 
 When all the green-hill' d harbour is full from side to side 
 From Portnasun to Bulliebawns, and round the Abbey Bay, 
 From rocky Inis Saimer to Coolnargit sand-hills gray ; 
 While far upon the southern line, to guard it like a wall, 
 The Leitrim mountains clothed in blue gaze calmly over all, 
 And watch the ship sail up or down, the red flag at her stern 
 Adieu to these, adieu to all the winding banks of Erne ! 
 
 IV 
 
 Farewell to you, Kildoney lads, and them that pull an oar, 
 A lug-sail set, or haul a net, from the Point to Mullaghmore ; 
 From Killybegs to bold Slieve- League, that ocean-mountain 
 
 steep, 
 
 Six hundred yards in air aloft, six hundred in the deep, 
 From Dooran to the Fairy Bridge, and round by Tullen strand, 
 Level and long, and white with waves, where gull and curlew 
 
 stand ; 
 
 Head out to sea when on your lee the breakers you discern 
 Adieu to all the billowy coast and winding banks of Erne ! 
 
 V 
 
 Farewell, Coolmore ! Bundoran ! and your summer crowds that 
 
 run 
 
 From inland homes to see with joy th' Atlantic-setting sun ; 
 To breathe the buoyant salted air, and sport among the waves ; 
 To gather shells on sandy beach, and tempt the gloomy caves ; 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 373 
 
 To watch the flowing, ebbing tide, the boats, the crabs, the fish ; 
 Young men and maids to meet and smile, and form a tender 
 
 wish ; 
 The sick and old in search of health, for all things have their 
 
 turn 
 And I must quit my native shore and the winding banks of 
 
 Erne ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Farewell to every white cascade from the Harbour to Belleek, 
 And every pool where fins may rest, and ivy-shaded creek ; 
 The sloping fields, the lofty rocks, where ash and holly grow, 
 The one split yew-tree gazing on the curving flood below ; 
 The Lough, that winds through islands under Turaw mountain 
 
 green ; 
 And Castle Caldwell's stretching woods, with tranquil bays 
 
 between ; 
 
 And Breesie Hill, and many a pond among the heath and fern 
 For I must say adieu adieu to the winding banks of Erne ! 
 
 VII 
 
 The thrush will call through Camlin groves the livelong summer 
 
 day; 
 
 The waters run by mossy cliff, and bank with wild flowers gay ; 
 The girls will bring their work and sing beneath a twisted thorn, 
 Or stray with sweethearts down the path among the growing corn ; 
 Along the riverside they go, where I have often been 
 Oh ! never shall I see again the days that I have seen ! 
 A thousand chances are to one I never may return 
 Adieu to Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Adieu to evening dances, when merry neighbours meet, 
 
 And the fiddle says to boys and girls : ' Get up and shake your 
 
 feet ! ' 
 
 To ' shanachus ' and wise old talk of Erin's days gone by 
 Who trench'd the rath on such a hill, and where the bones 
 
 may lie 
 
 Of saint, or king, or warrior chief ; with tales of fairy power, 
 And tender ditties sweetly sung to pass the twilight hour. 
 
374 BOOK V 
 
 The mournful song of exile is now for me to learn 
 Adieu, my dear companions on the winding banks of Erne ! 
 
 IX 
 
 Now measure from the Commons down to each end of the Purt, 
 Round the Abbey, Moy, and Knather I wish no one any hurt ; 
 The Main Street, Back Street, College Lane, the Mall, and 
 
 Portnasun, 
 
 If any foes of mine are there, I pardon every one. 
 I hope that man and womankind will do the same by me ; 
 For my heart is sore and heavy at voyaging the sea. 
 My loving friends I'll bear in mind, and often fondly turn 
 To think of Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne. 
 
 x 
 
 If ever I'm a money'd man, I mean, please God, to cast 
 
 My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were pass'd ; 
 
 Though heads that now are black and brown must meanwhile 
 
 gather gray, 
 
 New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away 
 Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside ; 
 It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and waters 
 
 wide. 
 
 And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return 
 To my native Belashanny, and the winding banks of Erne. 
 
 THE RUINED CHAPEL 
 
 BY the shore, a plot of ground 
 Clips a ruin'd chapel round, 
 Buttress'd with a grassy mound, 
 
 Where Day and Night and Day go by, 
 . And bring no touch of human sound. 
 
 Washing of the lonely seas, 
 Shaking of the guardian trees, 
 Piping of the salted breeze ; 
 
 Day and Night and Day go by, 
 To the endless tune of these. 
 
 Or when, as winds and waters keep 
 A hush more dead than any sleep, 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 375 
 
 Still morns to stiller evenings creep, 
 
 And Day and Night and Day go by ; 
 Here the silence is most deep. 
 
 The empty ruins, lapsed again 
 
 Into Nature's wide domain, 
 
 Sow themselves with seed and grain 
 
 As Day and Night and Day go by ; 
 And hoard June's sun and April's rain. 
 
 Here fresh funeral tears were shed ; 
 
 Now the graves are also dead ; 
 
 And suckers from the ash-tree spread, 
 
 While Day and Night and Day go by 
 And stars move calmly overhead. 
 
 THERANIA 
 
 O UNKNOWN Belov'd One ! to the perfect season 
 Branches in the lawn make drooping bovv'rs ; 
 
 Vase and plot burn scarlet, gold, and azure ; 
 
 Honeysuckles wind the tall gray turret, 
 And pale passion-flow'rs. 
 
 Come thou, come thou to my lonely thought, 
 O Unknown Belov'd One. 
 
 Now, at evening twilight, dusky dew down-wavers, 
 
 Soft stars crown the grove-encircled hill ; 
 Breathe the new-mown meadows, broad and misty ; 
 Through the heavy grass the rail is talking ; 
 
 All beside is still. 
 Trace with me the wandering avenue, 
 
 O Unknown Belov'd One. 
 
 In the mystic realm, and in the time of visions, 
 
 I thy lover have no need to woo ; 
 There I hold thy hand in mine, thou dearest, 
 And thy soul is mine, and feels its throbbing, 
 
 Tender, deep, and true : 
 Then my tears are love, and thine are love, 
 O Unknown Belov'd One. 
 
376 BOOK V 
 
 Is thy voice a wavelet on the listening darkness ? 
 
 Are thine eyes unfolding from their veil ? 
 Wilt thou come before the signs of winter 
 Days that shred the bough with trembling fingers, 
 
 Nights that weep and wail? 
 Art thou Love indeed, or art thou Death, 
 O Unknown Belov'd One? 
 
 STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE 
 
 BORN at Glendoen, Letterkenny, County Donegal, 1832. 
 B.A. Trinity College, Dublin, 1856 ; M.A. 1862. Entered the 
 Church of England, and was for some time Chaplain to the 
 British Embassy at Berlin. Mr. Brooke joined the Unitarian 
 body in 1880. His poetical works are : RIQUET OF THE TUFT, 
 a romantic drama in prose and verse (1880) ; and POEMS, 1888. 
 He is author of a well-known biography of the Rev. Frederick 
 W. Robertson, of a HISTORY OF EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE, 
 a study of Tennyson, and several volumes of sermons. He 
 succeeded Sir Charles Gavan Duffy in 1899 as President of the 
 Irish Literary Society of London. 
 
 THE NOBLE LAY OF AILLINN 
 AFTER AN IRISH TALE FROM THE ' BOOK OF LEINSTER 
 
 PRINCE BAIL of Ulster rode out in the morn 
 
 To meet his love at the ford ; 
 And he loved her better than lands or life, 
 
 And dearer than his sword. 
 
 And she was Aillinn, fair as the sea, 
 
 The Prince of Leinster's daughter, 
 And she longed for him more than a wounded man, 
 
 Who sees death, longs for water. 
 
STOPFORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE 377 
 
 They sent a message each to each : 
 
 * Oh, meet me near or far ; ' 
 And the ford divided the kingdoms two, 
 
 And the kings were both at war. 
 
 And the Prince came first to the water's pass, 
 
 And oh, he thought no ill : 
 When he saw with pain a great grey man 
 
 Come striding o'er the hill. 
 
 His cloak was the ragged thunder-cloud, 
 
 And his cap the whirling snow, 
 And his eyes were the lightning in the storm, 
 
 And his horn he 'gan to blow. 
 
 ' What news, what news, thou great grey man ? 
 
 I fear 'tis ill with me.' 
 ' Oh, Aillinn is dead, and her lips are cold, 
 
 And she died for loving thee.' 
 
 And he looked and saw no more the man, 
 
 But a trail of driving rain. 
 * Woe ! woe ! ' he cried, and took his sword 
 
 And drave his heart in twain. 
 
 And out of his blood burst forth a spring, 
 And a yew-tree out of his breast ; 
 
 And it grew so deep, and it grew so high, 
 The doves came there to rest. 
 
 But Aillinn was coming to keep her tryst, 
 
 The hour her lover fell ; 
 And she rode as fast as the western wind 
 
 Across the heathery hill. 
 
 Behind her flew her loosened hair, 
 
 Her happy heart did beat ; 
 When she was 'ware of a cloud of storm 
 
 Came driving down the street 
 
378 BOOK V 
 
 And out of it stepped a great grey man, 
 And his cap was peaked with snow ; 
 
 The fire of death was in his eyes, 
 And he 3 gan his horn to blow. 
 
 4 What news, what news, thou great grey man ? 
 
 And is it ill to me ? ' 
 < Oh, Baile the Prince is dead at the ford, 
 
 And he died for loving thee. 1 
 
 Pale, pale she grew, and two large tears 
 
 Dropped down like heavy rain, 
 And she fell to earth with a woeful cry, 
 
 For she broke her heart in twain. 
 
 And out of her tears two fountains rose 
 
 That watered all the ground, 
 And out of her heart an apple-tree grew 
 
 That heard the water's sound. 
 
 Oh, woe were the kings, and woe were the queens, 
 
 And woe were the people all ; 
 And the poets sang their love and their death 
 
 In cottage and in hall. 
 
 And the men of Ulster a tablet made 
 
 From the wood of Baile's tree, 
 And the men of Leinster did the like 
 
 Of Aillinn's apple-tree. 
 
 And on the one the poets wrote 
 
 The lover-tales of Leinster, 
 And on the other all the deeds 
 
 That lovers wrought in Ulster. 
 
 Now when a hundred years had gone 
 
 The King of all the land 
 Kept feast at Tara, and he bade 
 
 His poets sing a strand. 
 
STOP FORD AUGUSTUS BROOKE 379 
 
 They sang the sweet unhappy tale, 
 
 The noble Aillinn's lay. 
 4 Go, bring the tablets,' cried the King 
 
 ' For I have wept to-day.' 
 
 But when he held in his right hand 
 
 The wood of Haile's tree 
 And in his left the tablet smooth 
 
 From Aillinn's apple-tree, 
 
 The lovers in the wood who kept 
 
 Love-longing ever true, 
 Knew one another, and at once 
 
 From the hands of the king they flew. 
 
 As ivy to the oak they clung, 
 
 Their kiss no man could sever 
 Oh, joy for lovers parted long 
 
 To meet, at last, for ever ! 
 
 THE EARTH AND MAN 
 
 A LITTLE sun, a little rain, 
 
 A soft wind blowing from the west, 
 
 And woods and fields are sweet again, 
 And warmth within the mountain's breast 
 
 So simple is the earth we tread, 
 
 So quick with love and life her frame, 
 
 Ten thousand years have dawned and fled, 
 And still her magic is the same. 
 
 A little love, a little trust, 
 
 A soft impulse, a sudden dream, 
 
 And life as dry as desert dust 
 
 Is fresher than a mountain stream. 
 
 So simple is the heart of man, 
 So ready for new hope and joy ; 
 
 Ten thousand years since it began 
 Have left it younger than a boy. 
 
3 8o BOOK V 
 
 ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 
 
 THERE is a story current, according to which Mr. A. P. Graves 
 was once informed by a young gentleman whom he had 
 casually met in a club-room that there was no one now living 
 who could write really good and racy Irish songs 'such songs, 
 for instance, as " Father O'Flynn." ' Another would-be critic a 
 lady this time, doubtless otherwise well informed was until cor- 
 rected under the impression that Mr. Graves lived in the time 
 of Queen Elizabeth. Nothing, I think, could afford more con- 
 vincing testimony than do these anecdotes (for the authenticity 
 of which the present writer can vouch) to the extent to which 
 certain of Alfred Perceval Graves's songs and lyrics have passed 
 into the general literary treasury of the Irish people and 
 have been accepted as accurate embodiments of the national 
 character in music and song. 
 
 Of these ballads and lyrics, mainly written for music and 
 constituting no doubt the most popular and the most widely 
 known portion of his literary work, I shall necessarily have 
 something to say presently. But I wish to observe at the 
 outset that to those who have studied Mr. Graves's work in its 
 entirety, it is an inadequate estimate of his literary position which 
 represents him as the successor of Samuel Lover, and which, 
 having compared one or two of his songs with some of Lover's 
 or with Charles Lever's 'Widow Malone,' dismisses him without 
 further notice. Not only has he a distinctly individual note of 
 his own, but there is in his work ample evidence of wider scope 
 and greater variety. He may not have surpassed perhaps he 
 has not surpassed his predecessors in the line which Lover 
 made so peculiarly his own, and in which others have occasion- 
 ally attained high excellence ; it is high enough praise, in 
 this respect, to place him at their side. But he has also given 
 us work which they could not have done or, at least, which 
 they did not do and exercised an influence to which they did 
 not aspire. 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 381 
 
 Let us remember, in developing this proposition, that this 
 is an age in which the cultivation of literature in dialect has 
 attained, throughout all Europe, dimensions hitherto unknown. 
 No one who has not had occasion to look into the matter has 
 any idea of the number of dialects in Germany and in Italy 
 alone which have been raised during the past half-century from 
 the despised position of vulgar patois to something like the 
 dignity of written literature. In Provence to change the 
 field of observation we should be able to find the most 
 notable instance of this re-integration, were it not doubtful 
 whether Provencal had ever forfeited its rank as a separate 
 language, and whether therefore the parallel to be drawn 
 should not be between the Provei^al and the Gaelic move- 
 ments. But innumerable other cases may be pointed out in 
 which the dialect is in reality an ancient though a neglected 
 branch a poor cousin, so to speak of the classical literary 
 tongue, differing from the latter partly because it has preserved 
 old forms and peculiarities which the language of the Court and 
 the bookmen has suffered to fall into oblivion, partly because 
 it has been influenced by the grammar, the idioms, and the 
 vocabulary of another and often a more ancient language, with 
 which it has come locally in contact This is precisely the 
 position of the Anglo- Irish dialect, which, as spoken and 
 written to-day, shows clear traces not only of the English 
 of Elizabethan and even earlier days, but also of the manner 
 of thought, and consequently of construction and wording, 
 resultant upon the familiarity of the speaker or of his ancestors 
 with the ancient Celtic tongue. 
 
 The study of such a dialect is at once a matter of scientific 
 importance, and one of great and often loving interest to the 
 native of the land wheie it is spoken ; and the better an Irish- 
 man speaks English, the more he is enabled to appreciate the 
 resources and the raciness of what may be called (apart from 
 Gaelic, which is a separate tongue) his native dialect. Cer- 
 tainly, the reproduction of Anglo-Irish in books written 
 mainly in English began long ago, both in prose and in songs 
 such as Lover's ; but however accurate the representation of the 
 
382 BOOK V 
 
 peasants' forms of speech, and however amusing the substance 
 and brilliant the execution of such pieces may be (no one 
 wishes to detract from their merit less than the present writer), 
 there has, generally speaking, been an absence of serious effort 
 in this line, so far as verse is concerned. It is in this connec- 
 tion that, without going so far as to number Mr. Graves 
 among the greatest writers those who create a literary vehicle 
 or build up a language by individual effort I claim for him 
 the honourable distinction of having caused Anglo-Irish litera- 
 ture in verse to take a distinct step forwards. In ' The Girl 
 with the Cows,' in his first volume, we have, so far as I know, 
 the first instance of a really excellent long narrative in verse 
 written in this dialect and, notwithstanding the racy humour of 
 the style and manner of expression, of serious import. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is no doubt true that Mr. Graves owes a 
 great part of his popularity to the fact that he has caught the 
 ear of the public by the successful production of songs of the 
 Irish peasantry not dissimilar to those on which Lover's repu- 
 tation is founded ; nor is it in any way derogatory to his 
 literary position to admit that many of his keenest admirers 
 might not be so familiar with his verse as they are, had it not 
 in many cases been wedded to beautiful and characteristic 
 Irish music. This very fact constitutes, indeed, an essential 
 portion of his achievement, and gives him a notable claim to 
 the gratitude of his countrymen. The services which he has 
 done to the cause of Irish music by rescuing from oblivion a 
 large number of fine old airs would not perhaps require more 
 than passing notice here, but for the fact that the words to 
 which he has set them attain in many instances to a degree of 
 literary merit not often found in work of this kind. The art 
 of writing verse for music already existing an inversion, as 
 most poets are in the habit of thinking, of the natural order of 
 affairs is, no doubt, a trick easy enough to catch, if the writer 
 is content to remain on that level of meaningless inanity and 
 sham sentiment above which the ordinary drawing-room song 
 does not usually attempt to soar. But to produce, under 
 conditions much more difficult than most people are apt to 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 383 
 
 suppose, work of this kind that shall be true literature true 
 poetry is an achievement so difficult that but few have suc- 
 ceeded in it. Nor do I pretend that Mr. Graves has in every 
 instance succeeded : that his not always 'been possible. The 
 public has judged him by his best work, and the result is shown 
 by the position to which he has attained. 
 
 In, estimating, in their literary aspect, Mr. Graves's services 
 to Irish music, it must here suffice to say that in the opinion 
 of competent critics he has done more than any of Moore's 
 successors to ' unbind the island harp ; ' and in his own 
 sphere he is even more distinctly Irish than many of them. 
 Mr. Graves knows and understands the peasantry of Ireland 
 as but few writers of high merit and culture have known and 
 understood them ; and he has given us in his popular songs 
 and ballads a gallery of pictures in which the genial, passionate, 
 lovable, and withal somewhat inconsequent Irish countryman 
 is depicted merry-making, love-making, cutting capers, joking, 
 lamenting, telling stories of the 'good people,' getting married, 
 and dying, against backgrounds of Irish hills and lakes, rivers, 
 and woods. And the great sea is there too, and the memory 
 of those who have passed over it. 
 
 It is by such work as this that Mr. Graves's reputation is 
 most likely to endure. Nevertheless it is not to be forgotten 
 that much of it could not have been so well and daintily done 
 had he not been a man of general culture, having a special 
 devotion for the study of Irish character and of ancient Irish 
 literature. He does not indeed (as his poetry testifies) hold 
 that Irishmen should write only on Irish subjects and in 
 what is called a Celtic manner ; that certain forms of verse 
 are un-Irish ; and that the only high literary field for Celtic 
 activity lies in the ancient mythology and in the heroic ages 
 of the Celtic peoples. He cannot but be well aware that 
 a literature bound (as none worthy of the name ever has 
 been bound) by limitations so narrow and restrictions so 
 arbitrary and paralysing would be destined only to a lingering 
 inefficiency and a not distant extinction. But he fully re- 
 cognises that there are periods in the development of every 
 
384 BOOK V 
 
 literature during which its national characteristics must be 
 maintained by having recourse to the original fountains, to the 
 national epos and to the local folklore so closely connected 
 therewith. Therefore he has entered sympathetically into the 
 movement known as the Celtic renascence, and while main- 
 taining in those of his poems which are not written in dialect 
 the purity of that English tongue in which of necessity the 
 Celtic movement must mainly find expression to-day, he has 
 given proof, in 'The Fairy Branch' and other pieces from the 
 Gaelic, of his devotion to the study of that ancient literature the 
 importance of which has of recent years come to be widely 
 acknowledged. In the domain of folklore * The Fairy Pig ' is 
 a good instance of his treatment of those popular tales, once so 
 much despised and neglected, in which the gods of De Danaan 
 legend, in their ancient greatness so far removed from the 
 peasant's ken, have become the little dwellers in rath and lis, 
 the 'good people' who play so real a part in the popular imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Much of Mr. Graves's verse does not come under any of 
 the categories already mentioned. In ' The Beautiful Bay,' for 
 instance, he has given us an exquisite descriptive poem no 
 more Irish, in the perverse limited sense of the word, than is 
 the echo-song in Tennyson's ' Princess,' which also owes its 
 inspiration to the scenery of the County Kerry. Many other 
 fine pieces of verse bear witness to his powers in wider fields ; 
 yet it is doubtful whether his output in work of this kind 
 would have entitled him to a higher position than has been 
 attained by many a ' minor ' English poet of the day. His 
 reputation, not only among Irishmen, but among all who speak 
 the English tongue, must finally rest upon those of his poems 
 which treat of Irish subjects, and especially upon the songs and 
 ballads in dialect full, as many of them are, not only of quiet 
 humour or of rollicking mirth, but also of an unobtrusive, yet 
 deep and tender pathos. 
 
 GEORGE A. GREENE. 
 
 Born in Dublin, July 22, 1846, the son of the Right Rev. Charles Graves, 
 D.D., Bishop of Limerick, Alfred Perceval Graves belongs to a distinguished 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 385 
 
 literary family. He went to a school in the English Lake country, but spent 
 a good deal of his youth in the South-West of Ireland, amid the scenery 
 which forms the background for the best-known and most successful of his 
 lyrics. Proceeding to the University of Dublin, he took his degree in 1871 
 after a distinguished academical career (during which he obtained a 
 classical scholarship and Double First honours in classics and English 
 literature and history), and became a contributor to Kottabos and 
 other periodicals. He was for some time in the Home Office, and became 
 private' secretary to one of the chiefs in that department, but was 
 subsequently appointed one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, and 
 now holds that position in the London district. His first volume, SONGS 
 OF KILLARNEY, appeared in 1873, and was followed by InsH SONGS 
 AND BALLADS, 1880, which has passed through several editions, and by 
 FATHER O'FLYNN AND OTHER IRISH LYRICS (largely a reprint) in 1889. 
 The following were published in conjunction with the musical accompani- 
 ments : SONGS OF OLD IRELAND (music arranged by Professor C. Villiers 
 Stanford), Boosey&Co., 1883 ; IRISH SONGS AND BALLADS ( safe w), Novel lo, 
 Ewer, & Co., 1893 ; IRISH FOLK SONGS (the airs arranged by Mr. Charles 
 Wood), Boosey & Co., 1897. Other lyrics of his written to music may 
 be found in MANX NATIONAL SONGS, Boosey & Co., 1896. Mr. Graves 
 is the editor of SONGS OF IRISH WIT AND HUMOUR, 1884; of THE 
 PURCELL PAPERS, by J. S. Le Fanu, three volumes, 1880; and of THE 
 IRISH SONG BOOK, Fisher Unwin, 1894, now in its fourth edition ; and 
 as a lecturer on Irish literature and music and honorary secretary of 
 the Irish Literary Society has taken his share in the Irish literary and 
 musical renascence of the day. 
 
 From THE GIRL WITH THE Cows 
 
 So he trassed away dreamin' of Nora na Mo, 
 While the mist it crept down to the valleys below 
 Unknownst to O'Neale, for each inch of the way 
 He'd have travelled as surely by night as by day. 
 Still an' all at long last on the edge of a bog 
 There puffed in his face such a powderin' fog 
 That he gave a great start and looked doubtin'ly down, 
 To be sure he'd made off the right track to the town ; 
 And he just then could see to the left of his path, 
 Roundin' out of the vapour, the ould Irish rath, 
 And says he wid a smile : ' Why, I might be a hound 
 For facin' so fair for the Barony's bound. 
 
 cc 
 
386 BOOK V 
 
 But I'd best hurry on, then, or Mother Machree ! 
 
 It's in dread for me out in the mist but you'll be.' 
 
 So he started to run, when he heard from above 
 
 The voice of the girl that had stolen his love : 
 
 ' Magrina, magrina, magrinashin oge ! 
 
 Come hither, my Laidir ; come. Kitty, you rogue ; 
 
 Come up, Blackbird', come, Snow, to the beautiful house? 
 
 4 Tis the Colleen na Mo,' he said, ' callin' her cows.' 
 
 But her voice sounded sadly and strange in his ear, 
 
 And the heart of O'Neale began knockin' for fear, 
 
 And he looked and he saw, risin' up from below, 
 
 The Shadow of the Shape of the Colleen na Mo, 
 
 Growin' greater for ever, till a monster of black, 
 
 Like the Spirit of Death, it stood out of the track ; 
 
 And O'Neale knew the warnin' and shouted, ' Stand back, 
 
 Stand back for your life T But the Shadow went still, 
 
 Wid its arms wavtn' wild on the brow of the hill ; 
 
 Then it trembled, and balanced, and staggered, and fell, 
 
 Down, down vvid the moan of a muffled death-bell. 
 
 ' Come, Jack, we'll go down to the foot of the rock, 
 And protect the poor corpse from the ravenous flock ; ' 
 And he coaxed him to come, but the dog wouldn't stir, 
 So alone down the clift Pat went searchin' for her. 
 
 But as he was goin', a far hullahoo 
 
 Rose out of the distance, and into his view 
 
 Red torches came wavin' their way up the hill, 
 
 And he laughed a wild laugh, through his wanderin' will, 
 
 And he cried : '/$ /'/ wake-lights yez are drawiri near? 
 
 Hurry up, then, and show me the corpse of my dear? 
 
 And the red lights approached, and a voice wid the light : 
 
 ' Who are ye in distress on the mountain to-night?' 
 
 And he answered : ' Come up, for our name it is Death 
 
 Wid the eagle above and the white-worm beneath ; 
 But the death-lights that hover by night o'er the grave 
 
 Will restore us our dead when your torches can save? 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 387 
 
 4 What is it, O'Neale, man ? How wildly you rave ! ' 
 And the hand of Murt Shea, the best friend that he had, 
 \Vas lovingly laid on the arm of the lad. 
 
 * Oh, Murt, give me hould of that splinter,' he said, 
 
 * And let me look down on the face of the dead ; 
 For Nora Maguire, Murt, my own secret love, 
 Has fallen from the clift of Coomassig above.' 
 
 ' Is it she, wirra ! wirra ! the pride of us all ? 
 
 Do you say that the darlin's been killed by a fall ? 
 
 Ologone, my poor Pat, and you loved her at heart.' 
 
 Then O'Neale groaned again : * Sure, I've searched every part 
 And no sign of her here at the foot of the clift.' 
 And the rest they come up, and the bushes they sift, 
 But sorra a trace to the right or the left. 
 
 Then O'Neale shouted : * Come, every man of ye lift 
 His fire altogether.' And one said : ' I see 
 Somethin' hangin' high up from the juniper-tree.' 
 "Tis herself! ' shouted Pat, wid his hand to his brow. 
 ' How far from the top is that juniper bough ?' 
 4 Ten foot of a fall,' said a mountain gossoon. 
 'Wid no tussocks betune them ?' 
 
 * Wid nothin' betune. 
 
 * Have yez e'er a rope handy, boys ? ' 
 
 4 Divle a rope ! 
 And not nearer nor Sneem for the likes you could hope. 
 
 * Come hither, gossoon, and be off wid this splinter, 
 For 'tis you know the mountain ; away widout hinder 
 To the nearest good haggard, and strip the sugane, 
 Not forgettin' a sop of the finest finane. 
 
 Brustig, brustig, alanah ! ' and hardly the rest 
 
 Had followed O'Neale up the vapoury crest 
 
 To the spot that the faithful, wise hound wouldn't pass, 
 
 When the boy he was back wid the hayropes and grass. 
 
 Then says Pat, leanin' down wid a splinter of light : 
 
 * God bless the good dog ! after all he was right. 
 Ten foot underneath us she's plainly in sight. 
 
 Now give hither the ropes, and hould on while I twist.' 
 So he caught the suganes up like threads in his fist, 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 BOOK V 
 
 And twined them and jined them a thirty-foot length, 
 
 Fourplait to a thickness of terrible strength ; 
 
 Then roped it around the two biggest boys there, 
 
 To see was it fit for supportin' a pair. 
 
 And he easily lifted the two through the air, 
 
 Up and down, till he'd proved it well able to bear. 
 
 ' Now make the rope fast to me, boys, while I go 
 
 Down the side of the clift for the Colleen na Mo. 
 
 Livin' or dead tho' I'm hopeful for all, 
 
 There's life in her still tho' she's kilt from the fall.' 
 
 Then he turns to one side, and he whispers Murt Shea : 
 
 * If I'm killed from the clift of Coomassig to-day, 
 
 Come promise me faithful you'll stand to the mother 
 
 Like a son, till she's help from the sister and brother. 
 
 And give her this kiss, and I'll meet her again 
 
 In the place where's no poverty, sorrow, or pain.' 
 
 And he promised and all then shook hands wid O'Neale, 
 
 And he cheered them and said : * Have no dread that we'll Jail, 
 
 For I'd not be afear'd why, to balance the Pope 
 
 Himself from the clift by so hearty a rope. 
 
 So a torch in his hand and a stick in his teeth, 
 
 And his coat round his throat, the boys lowered him beneath. 
 
 And all but Murt Shea, then, they couldn't make out 
 
 The coat round his throat and the stick in his mout'. 
 
 But it wasn't for long they'd the doubt in their mind, 
 
 For they saw his torch quenched wid a noise like the wind, 
 
 And 'Steady above !' came his voice from below. 
 
 Then heavy wings flapped wid a scream and a blow. 
 
 "Tis the eagles,' they cried, 'at the Colleen na Mo.' 
 
 But an old man amongst them spoke up and he said : 
 
 "Tis the eagles, for sartin but not at the dead ; 
 
 For they'll not touch the corpse. Murther ! but for the mist, 
 
 'Tis I could have told you that this was their nest. 
 
 It's O'Neale that they're at pull him back, or they'll tear 
 
 The poor boy to pieces below in the air ; ' 
 
 And they shouted together the eagles to scare. 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 389 
 
 And they called to O'Neale from the edge of the height : 
 
 ' She's dead, Pat she's dead ; never mind her to-night, 
 
 But come back, or the eagles'll pick out your sight.' 
 
 And they made for to pull ; but he cries, ' If you do, 
 
 I give you my oath that I'll cut the rope through.' 
 
 And they b'lieved him, and waited wid hearts beatin' loud, 
 
 Screechin' down at the birds through the vapoury cloud, 
 
 Showerin' splinters for ever to give the boy light, 
 
 And warnin' him watch to the left or the right, 
 
 As each eagle in turn it would fly at his head, 
 
 Till he dropped one below in the darkness for dead, 
 
 And the other flew off wid a yell through the night. 
 
 Then they felt the rope slacken as he crossed to the bough, 
 
 Then tighten again and he called to them ' Now ! ' 
 
 And they knew that the dangerous moment was come ; 
 
 So wid wrist draggin' shoulder, tight finger to thumb, 
 
 And tooth crushing tooth in the silence of death, 
 
 They drew up the two from the blackness beneath. 
 
 THE LIMERICK LASSES 
 
 ' HAVE you e'er a new song, 
 
 My Limerick Poet, 
 To help us along 
 
 Wid this terrible boat 
 Away over to Tork ? ' 
 Arrah ! I understand 
 For all of your work 
 
 'Twill tighten you, boys, 
 To cargo that sand 
 To the overside strand 
 
 Wid the current so strong, 
 Unless you've a song 
 A song to lighten and brighten you, boys. 
 Be listenin' then, 
 My brave Kerry men, 
 And the new song, 
 And the true song 
 Of the Limerick lasses 'tis I will begin. 
 
390 BOOK V 
 
 O Limerick dear, 
 It's far and it's near 
 
 I've travelled the round of this circular sphere ; 
 Still an' all to my mind 
 No colleens you'll find 
 As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
 As our Limerick lasses ; 
 Our Limerick lasses 
 So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 
 
 So row, 
 
 Strong and slow, 
 Chorusing after me as we go : 
 
 Still an' all to my mind 
 
 No colleens you'll find 
 As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
 
 As our Limerick lasses ; 
 
 Our Limerick lasses 
 So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 
 
 O your English colleen 
 Has the wonderful mien 
 
 Of a goddess in marble, all grand and serene ; 
 And, though slow to unbend, 
 Win her once for your friend, 
 And no alter or falter she's yours to the end. 
 But oh ! row, 
 Strong and slow, 
 Chorusing after me as we go : 
 Still an' all to my mind 
 No colleens you'll find 
 As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
 As our Limerick lasses ; 
 Our Limerick lasses 
 So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 
 
 Of the French demoiselle 
 Delighted I'll tell, 
 For her sparkle and grace suit us Irishmen well; 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 391 
 
 And taken complete, 
 From her head to her feet, 
 She's the perfectest picture of polish you'll meet 
 But oh ! row, 
 Strong and slow, 
 Chorusing after me as we go : 
 Still an' all to my mind 
 No colleens you'll find 
 As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
 As our Limerick lasses ; 
 Our Limerick lasses 
 So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 
 
 O Donna of Spain, 
 It's the darlingest pain 
 
 From your dark eyes I've suffered again and again, 
 When you'd gracefully glide 
 Like a swan at my side, 
 
 Or sing till with rapture the woodbird replied. 
 But oh ! row, 
 Strong and slow, 
 Chorusing after me as we go : 
 Still an' all to my mind 
 No colleens you'll find 
 As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
 As our Limerick lasses ; 
 Our Limerick lasses 
 So lovely and modest, so merry and kind. 
 
 Now, my Maryland girl, 
 With your sunshiny curl, 
 
 Your sweet spirit eyes, and complexion of pearl ; 
 And the goodness and grace 
 That illumine your face, 
 
 You're the purtiest approach to my Limerick lass. 
 For oh ! row, 
 Strong and slow, 
 Chorusing after me as we go : 
 
392 BOOK V 
 
 Still an' all to my mind 
 
 No maiden you'll find 
 As lovely and modest, as merry and kind, 
 
 As our Limerick lasses ; 
 
 Our Limerick lasses 
 So lovely and modest, and merry and kind. 
 
 THE IRISH SPINNING-WHEEL 
 
 SHOW me a sight 
 
 Bates for delight 
 An ould Irish wheel wid a young Irish girl at it. 
 
 Oh no ! 
 
 Nothing you'll show 
 Aquals her sittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 
 
 Look at her there 
 
 Night in her hair, 
 The blue ray of day from her eye laughin' out on us ! 
 
 Faix, an' a foot, 
 
 Perfect of cut, 
 Peepin' to put an end to all doubt in us 
 
 That there's a sight 
 
 Bates for delight 
 An ould Irish wheel wid a young Irish girl at it 
 
 Oh no ! 
 
 Nothin' you'll show 
 Aquals her sittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 
 
 See ! the lamb's wool 
 
 Turns coarse an' dull 
 By them soft, beautiful weeshy white hands of her. 
 
 Down goes her heel, 
 
 Roun' runs the wheel, 
 Purrin' wid pleasure to take the commands of her. 
 
 Then show me a sight 
 Bates for delight 
 An ould Irish wheel wid a young Irish girl at it. 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 393 
 
 Oh no ! 
 
 Nothin' you'll show 
 Aquals her isittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 
 
 Talk of Three Fates, 
 
 Seated on sates, 
 Spinnin' and shearin' away till they've done for me ! 
 
 You may want three 
 
 For your massacree, 
 But one Fate for me, boys - and only the one for me ! 
 
 And isn't that fate 
 
 Pictured complate 
 An ould Irish wheel with a young Irish girl at it ? 
 
 Oh no! 
 
 Nothin' you'll show 
 Aquals her sittin' an' takin' a twirl at it. 
 
 IRISH LULLABY 
 
 I'D rock my own sweet childie to rest in a cradle of gold on a bough 
 
 of the willow, 
 
 To the shoheen ho of the wind of the west and the lullalo of the 
 soft sea billow. 
 
 Sleep, baby dear, 
 Sleep without fear, 
 Mother is here at your pillow. 
 
 I'd put my own sweet childie to sleep in a silver boat on the 
 
 beautiful river, 
 
 Where a shoheen whisper the white cascades, and a lullalo the 
 green flags shiver. 
 
 Sleep, baby dear, 
 Sleep without fear, 
 Mother is here with you for ever. 
 
 Shoheen^ ho ! to the rise and fall of mother's bosom 'tis sleep has 
 
 bound you, 
 
 And, O my child, what cosier nest for rosier rest could love have 
 found you ? 
 
 Sleep, baby dear, 
 Sleep without fear, 
 Mother's two arms are clasped around you. 
 
394 BOOK V 
 
 FATHER O'FLYNN 
 
 OF priests we can offer a charmin' variety, 
 Far renowned for larnin' and piety ; 
 Still, I'd advance ye widout impropriety, 
 
 Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all. 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn, 
 Sldinte, and sldinte, and sldinte agin ; 
 
 Powerfulest preacher, and 
 
 Tinderest teacher, and 
 Kindliest creature in ould Donegal. 
 
 Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity, 
 Famous for ever at 'Greek and Latinity, 
 Faix ! and the divels and all at Divinity 
 
 Father O'Flynn 'd make hares of them all ! 
 Come, I vinture to give ye my word, 
 Niver the likes of his logic was heard, 
 Down from mythology 
 Into thayology, 
 Troth ! and conchology if he'd the call. 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 Here's a health to you Father O'Flynn, 
 Sldinte and sldinte, and sldinte agin ; 
 Powerfulest preacher, and 
 Tinderest teacher, and 
 Kindliest creature in ould Donegal. 
 
 Och ! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you, 
 All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you, 
 All the young childer are wild for to play wid you, 
 You've such a way wid you, Father avick ! 
 Still, for all you've so gentle a soul, 
 Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control, 
 Checking the crazy ones, 
 Coaxin' onaisy ones, 
 Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick. 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 395 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn, 
 Sldinte^ and sldinte, and sldinte agin ; 
 
 Powerfulest preacher, and 
 
 Tinderest teacher, and 
 Kindliest creature in ould Donegal. 
 
 And though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity 
 Still, at all seasons of innocent jollity, 
 Where was the play-boy could claim an equality 
 At comicality, Father, wid you ? 
 
 Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest, 
 Till this remark set him off wid the rest : 
 4 Is it lave gaiety 
 All to the laity ? 
 Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?' 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn, 
 Sldinte, and sldinte, and sldinte agin ; 
 
 Powerfulest preacher, and 
 
 Tinderest teacher, and 
 Kindliest creature in ould Donegal. 
 
 FAN FITZGERL 
 
 WIRRA, wirra ! ologone ! 
 
 Can't ye lave a lad alone, 
 Till he's proved there's no tradition left of any other girl 
 
 Not even Trojan Helen 
 
 In beauty all excellin' 
 Who's been up to half the divlement of Fan Fitzgerl ? 
 
 Wid her brows of silky black 
 
 Arched above for the attack, 
 Her eyes they dart such azure death on poor admirin' man ; 
 
 Masther Cupid, point your arrows, 
 
 From this out, agin the sparrows, 
 For you're bested at Love's archery by young Miss Fan. 
 
396 BOOK V 
 
 See what showers of goolden thread 
 
 Lift and fall upon her head, 
 The likes of such a trammel-net at say was niver spread ; 
 
 For whin accurately reckoned, 
 
 'Twas computed that each second 
 Of her curls has cot a Kerryman and kilt him dead. 
 
 Now mintion, if ye will, 
 
 Brandon Mount and Hungry Hill, 
 Or Ma'g'llicuddy's Reeks renowned for cripplin' all they can ; 
 
 Still the countryside confisses 
 
 None of all its precipices 
 Cause a quarter of the carnage of the nose of Fan. 
 
 But your shatthered hearts suppose 
 
 Safely steered apast her nose, 
 She's a current and a reef beyant to wreck them rovin' ships. 
 
 My maning it is simple, 
 
 For that current is her dimple, 
 And the cruel reef 'twill coax ye to 's her coral lips. 
 
 I might inform ye further 
 
 Of her bosom's snowy murther, 
 And an ankle ambuscadin' through her gown's delightful whirl ; 
 
 But what need, when all the village 
 
 Has forsook its peaceful tillage 
 And flown to war and pillage all for Fan Fitzgerl ? 
 
 HERRING is KING 
 
 LET all the fish that swim the sea, 
 
 Salmon and turbot, cod and ling, 
 Bow down the head and bend the knee 
 To herring, their king ! to herring, their king ! 
 Sing, Thugamarfein an samhradh linn, 
 'Tis we have brought the summer in. 1 
 
 The sun sank down, so round and red, 
 Upon the bay, upon the bay ; 
 
 1 The second line of the refrain translates the first, which is pronounced 
 Hugamar fain an soivra linn. 
 
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 397 
 
 The sails shook idly overhead 
 Becalmed we lay, becalmed we lay. 
 Sing, Thugamar f tin an samhradh linn, 
 Tis we have brought the summer in. 
 
 Till Shawn the eagle dropped on deck, 
 
 The bright-eyed boy, the bright-eyed boy ; 
 'Tis he has spied your silver track, 
 Herring, our joy herring, our joy. 
 
 Sing, Thugainar fe"in an samhradh linn, 
 'Tis we have brought the summer in. 
 
 It was in with the sails and away to shore, 
 
 With the rise and swing, the rise and swing 
 Of two stout lads at each smoking oar, 
 After herring, our king herring, our king. 
 Sing, Thugamar fein an samhradh linn, 
 'Tis we have brought the summer in. 
 
 The Manx and the Cornish raised the shout, 
 And joined the chase, and joined the chase, 
 But their fleets they fouled as they went about, 
 And we won the race, we won the race. 
 Sing, Thugamar fein an samhradh linn, 
 'Tis we have brought the summer in. 
 
 For we turned and faced you full to land, 
 
 Down the goleen long, the goleen ! long, 
 And after you slipped from strand to strand 
 Our nets so strong, our nets so strong. 
 Sing, Thugamar fein an samhradh linn, 
 'Tis we have brought the summer in. 
 
 Then we called to our sweethearts and our wives, 
 * Come, welcome us homewelcome us home,' 
 Till they ran to meet us for their lives 
 Into the foam, into the foam. 
 Sing, Thugamar f^in an samhradh linn, 
 'Tis we have brought the summer in. 
 
 1 Creek. 
 
398 BOOK V 
 
 Oh, the kissing of hands and waving of caps 
 From girl and boy, from girl and boy, 
 
 While you leapt by scores in the lasses' laps, 
 Herring, our joy herring, our joy. 
 Sing, Thugamar fein an samhradh 
 'Tis we have brought the summer in. 
 
 FRANCIS A. FAHY 
 
 BORN at Kinvara, County Galway, 1854, and entered the Civil 
 Service in London (Board of Trade Department) 1873. Mr. 
 Fahy has taken an active part in various Irish literary move- 
 ments in London, especially in the formation of the Southwark 
 Irish Literary Club and the Irish Literary Society which grew 
 out of it. He wrote a play, THE LAST OF THE O'LEARYS, at 
 the age of sixteen, which was performed in his native town. 
 He has contributed verses marked by much humour and grace 
 to many Irish periodicals. His songs, of which a large 
 number are well-known favourites in concert-rooms, have the 
 merit of being eminently singable. His volume of IRISH SONGS 
 AND POEMS appeared in 1887, 
 
 THE DONOVANS 
 
 IF you would like to see the height of hospitality, 
 The cream of kindly welcome, and the core of cordiality : 
 Joys of all the olden time - you're wishing to recall again ? 
 Come down to Donovans, and there you'll meet them all again. 
 
 Cead mile fdilte they'll give you down at Donovans, 
 
 As cheery as the springtime and Irish as the cannawaun? 
 
 The wish of my heart is, if ever I had any one 
 
 That every luck that lightens life may light upon the Donovans. 
 
 As soon as e'er you lift the latch, the little ones are meeting you ; 
 Soon as you're beneath the thatch, oh ! kindly looks are greeting 
 you; 
 
 1 Bog-cotton. 
 
FRANCIS A. FAHY 399 
 
 Scarcely are you ready to be holding out the fist to them, 
 When down by the fireside you're sitting in the midst of them. 
 Ctad mile fdilte they'll give you down at Donovans, &c. 
 
 There sits the cailin deas l oh ! where on earth's the peer of her ? 
 The modest face, the gentle grace, the humour and the cheer of 
 
 her 
 
 Eyes like the summer skies when twin stars beam above in them, 
 Oh ! proud will be the boy That's to light the lamp of love in them. 
 Ctad mile fdilte they'll give you down at Donovans, &c. 
 
 Then when you rise to go, it's ' Ah, then, now sit down again ! ' 
 'Isn't it the haste you're in?' and ' Won't you soon come round 
 
 again ? ' 
 
 Your catibeen and your overcoat you'd better put astray from them, 
 'Twill take you all your time to try and tear yourself away from them, 
 Ctad mile fdilte they'll give you down at Donovans, &c. 
 
 IRISH MOLLY O 
 
 OH ! fairer than the lily tall, and sweeter than the rose, 
 
 As modest as the violet in dewy dell that blows ; 
 
 With heart as warm as summer noon, and pure as winter snow 
 
 The pride of Erin's isle is she, dear Irish Molly O ! 
 
 No linnet of the hazel grove than she more sweetly sang, 
 No sorrow could be resting where her guileless laughter rang, 
 No hall of light could half so bright as that poor cabin glow 
 Where shone the face of love and grace of Irish Molly O ! 
 
 But fever's breath struck down in death her father strong and 
 
 brave, 
 
 And who should now his little ones from want and sorrow save ? 
 4 Oh, never fear, my mother dear, across the seas I'll go, 
 And win for ye a new home there,' said Irish Molly O ! 
 
 And far away 'mid strangers cold she toiled for many a year, 
 And no one heard the heart-wrung sigh or saw the silent tear, 
 But letters fond the seas beyond would kind and constant go, 
 W 7 ith gold won dear, and words of cheer, from Irish Molly O ! 
 
 1 Pretty girl. 
 
400 BOOK V 
 
 And one by one she sent for all the loved ones o'er the foam, 
 And one by one she welcomed them to her fond heart and home, 
 And last and best her arms caressed the aged head of snow 
 ' Oh, mother, we'll be happy now ! ' said Irish Molly O ! 
 
 Alas ! long years of toil and tears had chilled her young heart's 
 
 glow, 
 And grief and care had blanched her hair and stilled her pulse's 
 
 flow, 
 
 And when the spring bade wild birds sing and buds in beauty blow 
 They made your grave where willows wave, poor Irish Molly O ! 
 
 THE OULD PLAID SHAWL 
 
 NOT far from old Kinvara, in the merry month of May, 
 When birds were singing cheerily, there came across my way, 
 As if from out the sky above an angel chanced to fall, 
 A little Irish cailin in an ould plaid shawl. 
 
 She tripped along right joyously, a basket on her arm ; 
 
 And, oh ! her face, and, oh ! her grace, the soul of saint would 
 
 charm ; 
 
 Her brown hair rippled o'er her brow, but greatest charm of all 
 Was her modest blue eyes beaming 'neath her ould plaid shawl. 
 
 I courteously saluted her ' God save you, miss,' says I ; 
 ' God save you, kindly sir,' said she, and shyly passed me by ; 
 Off went my heart along with her, a captive in her thrall, 
 Imprisoned in the corner of her ould plaid shawl. 
 
 Enchanted with her beauty rare, I gazed in pure delight, 
 Till round an angle of the road she vanished from my sight ; 
 But ever since I sighing say, as I that scene recall, 
 * The grace of God about you and your ould plaid shawl.' 
 
 I've heard of highway robbers that, with pistols and with knives, 
 Make trembling travellers yield them up their money or their 
 
 lives, 
 
 But think of me that handed out my heart and head and all 
 To a simple little cailin in an ould plaid shawl ! 
 
FRANCIS A. FAHY 401 
 
 Oh ! graceful the mantillas that the signorinas wear, 
 And tasteful are the bonnets of Parisian ladies fair, 
 But never cloak or hood or robe, in palace, bow'r, or hall, 
 Clad half such witching beauty as that ould plaid shawl. 
 
 Oh ! some men sigh for riches, and some men live for fame, 
 And some on history's pages hope to win a glorious name ; 
 My aims are not ambitious, and my wishes are but small 
 You might wrap them all together in an ould plaid shawl. 
 
 I'll seek her all through Galway, and I'll seek her all through 
 
 Clare, 
 
 I'll search for tale or tidings of my traveller everywhere, 
 For peace of mind I'll never find until my own I call 
 That little Irish cailin in her ould plaid shawl. 
 
 MALACHY RYAN 
 
 A SCHOOLMASTER in County Carlow. He subsequently 
 became librarian in the Record Office, Dublin. He published 
 a volume of poems ELSIE LEE, THE WHITETHORN TREE, 
 AND OTHER POEMS in 1872. 
 
 ROSE ADAIR 
 
 'TWAS in green-leafy springtime, 
 When the birds on every tree 
 Were breakin' all their little hearts 
 
 In a merry melody ; 
 An' the young buds hung like tassels 
 An' the flowers grew everywhere 
 'Twas in green-leafy springtime 
 I met sweet Rose Adair. 
 O Rose Adair ! O Rose Adair ! 
 
 You are the radiant sun, 
 The blossomed trees, an' scented breeze, 
 An' song-birds all in one. 
 
 D D 
 
402 BOOK V 
 
 I met her sowin' mushrooms 
 
 With her white feet in the grass ; 
 Twas eve but mornin' in the smile 
 
 Of my sweet cailin deas ; 
 An' I kissed her oh, so secretly 
 
 That not a one should know 
 But the roguish stars they winked above 
 
 An' the daisies smiled below. 
 
 The Father in confession, Rose, 
 
 Won't count that love a sin 
 That with a kiss taps at the heart 
 
 An' lets an angel in ; 
 'Twas so love entered into mine 
 
 An' made his dwellin' there 
 If thafs a sin, the Lord forgive 
 
 Your beauty, Rose Adair ! 
 
 If springtime never came at all 
 
 To chase the winter's frown, 
 Her smile would coax the flowers up 
 
 An' charm the sunshine down ; 
 There's not a perfumed breeze that blows 
 
 Or bird that charms the air, 
 But stole its sweetness from the lips 
 
 Of lovely Rose Adair. 
 
 The leaves will fall in autumn, 
 
 An' the flowers all come to grief, 
 But the green love in my heart of hearts 
 
 W^ill never shed a leaf ! 
 For the sunshine of your bonny eyes 
 
 Will keep it green and fair, 
 An' your breath will be its breeze-o'-spring, 
 
 O, lovely Rose Adair. 
 
PATRICK JAMES COLE MAN 403 
 
 PATRICK JAMES COLEMAN 
 
 BORN at Ballaghadereen, County Mayo, in 1867. He matri- 
 culated at London University, and is now a journalist in 
 America. The following poem is singularly close to the soil, 
 and characteristic of certain phases of Irish feeling. 
 
 SEED-TIME 
 
 THE top o' the mornin' to you, Mick, 
 
 Isn't it fine an' dhry an' still ? 
 Just an elegant day, avic, 
 
 To stick the toleys on Tullagh hill. 
 The field is turned, an' every clod 
 
 In ridge an' furrow is fresh an' brown ; 
 So let's away, with the help o' God, 
 
 By the heel o' the evenin' we'll have them down, 
 
 As long as there's plenty o' milk to churn, 
 An' plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow, 
 
 By the winter fire we'll laugh to scorn 
 The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 
 
 There's a time to work, an' a time to talk ; 
 
 So, Patsy, my boy, your pratin' shtop ! 
 By Midsummer Day, blossom an' stalk, 
 
 We'll feast our eyes on a right good crop. 
 Oh, the purple blossoms, so full o' joy, 
 
 Burstin' up from our Irish loam, 
 They're betther than gold to the peasant, boy ; 
 
 They crown him king in his Irish home ! 
 
 As long as the cows have milk to churn, 
 
 With plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow, 
 By the winter hearth we'll laugh to scorn 
 The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 
 
 D D2 
 
404 BOOK V 
 
 in 
 
 A year ago we wor full o' hope, 
 
 For the stalks wor green by the First o' May, 
 But the brown blight fell over field an' slope, 
 
 An' the poreens rotted by Lady Day. 
 You'd dig a ridge for a creel in vain ; 
 
 But He left us still our dacint friends ; 
 If it comes again we won't complain 
 
 His will be done ! it's the besht He sends ! 
 As long as we've plenty o' milk to churn, 
 
 An' plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow, 
 By the winter fire we'll laugh to scorn 
 The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 
 
 IV 
 
 An' whin the turf's in the haggard piled, 
 
 We'll come, plase God ! with our spades and loys ; 
 It's busy ye'll be, then, Brigid, my child, 
 
 Fillin' the baskets behind the boys. 
 So shtick thim deep in Ould Ireland's clay 
 
 It's nearly dusk, an' there's work galore ; 
 It's time enough in the winter to play, 
 When the crop is safe on our cabin floor. 
 As long as the cows have milk to churn, 
 
 With plenty o' pyaties in ridge an' furrow, 
 By the winter hearth we'll laugh to scorn 
 The frown o' famine an' scowl o' sorrow. 
 
 PATRICK JOSEPH McCALL 
 
 MR. P. J. MCCALL was born in Dublin, 1861, and educated at 
 the Catholic University School, Leeson Street. His two volumes 
 of poems besides excellent translations from the Irish contain 
 much racy and original verse, chiefly descriptive of peasant life in 
 the County Wexford. There are no literary echoes in his work ; 
 it springs straight from the soil ; and though Mr. McCall does 
 not deal in tragedy or romance, he puts before us the humour, 
 
PATRICK JOSEPH McCALL 405 
 
 the gaiety, the daily toil, and the half serious, half sportive 
 love-making of the Irish peasant with refreshing fidelity and 
 absence of rhetorical sentiment. PI is two volumes of verse 
 are: IRISH NdiNiNS (Daisies), 1894; and SONGS OF ERINN, 
 1899. 
 
 OLD PEDHAR CARTHY FROM CLONMORE 
 
 IF you searched the county o' Carlow, ay, and back again, 
 
 Wicklow too, and Wexford, for that matter you might try, 
 Never the equal of Old Pedhar would you crack again' 
 
 Never such another would delight your Irish eye ! 
 Mirth, mime, and mystery, all were close combined in him, 
 
 Divelment and drollery right to the very core, 
 As many tricks and turns as a two-year-old you'd find in him 
 
 In Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Shure, whene'er the bouchals used to have a game o' ' Forty-five,' 
 
 Pedhar was the master who could teach them how to play ; 
 Bring a half-crown though you lost it, yet, as I'm alive, 
 
 You'd be a famous player to your distant dying day. 
 Scornful grew his look if they chanced to hang your king or queen ; 
 
 Better for your peace o' mind you'd never crossed his door ; 
 * You to play cards ! ' would he mutter in sarcasm keen 
 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy 1 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Politics he knew better than the men in Parliament, 
 
 And the wars in Europe for the past half-century ; 
 If you were to hear him with Cornelius Keogh in argument, 
 
 Arranging every matter that was wrong in history ! 
 Ah ! but if the talking ever travelled back to * Ninety-eight,' 
 
 Then our Pedhar's diatribes grew vehement and sore. 
 Rebel in his heart, how he hated to have long to wait ! 
 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore 1 
 
406 BOOK V 
 
 The mischief for tricks, he was never done inventing them ; 
 
 Once he yoked Dan Donohoe's best milker to the plough 
 At the Fair of Hacketstown there was no circumventing him ; 
 
 He'd clear a crowd of salachsj and you never could tell how ! 
 The Ryans and the Briens and their factions were afraid of him ; 
 
 For Pedhar's fighting kippeen could command a ready score. 
 Woe to the boys that spoke cruked, undismayed of him 
 
 Of Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 But the times grew bad, and the people talked so well and wise, 
 
 Fighting left poor Ireland, and mad mischief had its head ; 
 Pedhar, left alone, began to muse and to soliloquise, 
 
 Until the dear old fellow couldn't bear to leave the bed. 
 But when dead and buried all the neighbours felt his bitter loss 
 
 The place in Pedhar's absence such a look of sorrow wore 
 They sighed and cried in turn from great Eagle Hill to Cameross 
 
 For Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar, Old Pedhar Carthy ! 
 Old Pedhar Carthy from Clonmore ! 
 
 HERSELF AND MYSELF 
 AN OLD MAN'S SONG 
 
 'TWAS beyond at Macreddin, at Owen Doyle's weddin'. 
 
 The boys got the pair of us out for a reel. 
 Says I : ' Boys, excuse us.' Says they : * Don't refuse us.' 
 
 * I'll play nice and aisy.' says Larry O'Neill. 
 So off we went trippin' it, up an' down steppin' it 
 
 Herself and Myself on the back of the doore ; 
 Till Molly God bless her ! fell into the dresser, 
 
 An' I tumbled over a child on the floore. 
 
 1 Untidy people, tinkers, &c. 
 
PATRICK JOSEPH McCALL 407 
 
 Says Herself to Myself : * We're as good as the best o' them/ 
 Says Myself to Herself : ' Shure, we're betther than gold.' 
 
 Says Herself to Myself : ' We're as young as the rest o' them.' 
 Says Myself to Herself : ' Troth, we'll never grow old.' 
 
 As down the lane goin', I felt my heart growin' 
 
 As young as it was forty-five years ago. 
 ,'Twas here in this boreen I first kissed my stoireen 
 
 A sweet little colleen with skin like the snow. 
 I looked at my woman a song she was hummin' 
 
 As old as the hills, so I gave her a pogue \ 1 
 'Twas like our old courtin', half sarious, half sportin', 
 
 When Molly was young, an' when hoops were in vogue. 
 When she'd say to Myself : ' You can coort with the best o' them.' 
 
 . When I'd say to Herself: ' Sure, I'm betther than gold.' 
 When she'd say to Myself : * You're as wild as the rest o' them.' 
 And I'd say to Herself : ' Troth, I'm time enough old.' 
 
 LADY GILBERT (ROSA MULHOLLAND) 
 
 A POPULAR and gifted Irish poetess and novelist of the day, 
 born in Belfast about fifty years ago. She has published one 
 volume of delicate verse (VAGRANT VERSES, 1886); all her 
 other writings, which are numerous, being stories. In 1891 
 she married Mr. (afterwards Sir J. T.) Gilbert, the noted Irish 
 archaeologist. 
 
 SONG 
 
 THE silent bird is hid in the boughs, 
 
 The scythe is hid in the corn, 
 The lazy oxen wink and drowse, 
 
 The grateful sheep are shorn ; 
 Redder and redder burns the rose, 
 
 The lily was ne'er so pale, 
 Stiller and stiller the river flows 
 
 Along the path to the vale. 
 
 Pogue : kiss. 
 
408 BOOK V 
 
 A little door is hid in the boughs, 
 
 A face is hiding within ; 
 When birds are silent and oxen drowse 
 
 Why should a maiden spin ? 
 Slower and slower turns the wheel, 
 
 The face turns red and pale, 
 Brighter and brighter the looks that steal 
 
 Along the path to the vale. 
 
 SAINT BRIGID 
 
 'MiD dewy pastures girdled with blue air, 
 
 Where ruddy kine the limpid waters drink, 
 Through violet-purpled woods of green Kildare, 
 
 'Neath rainbow skies, by tinkling rivulet's brink, 
 O Brigid, young, thy tender, snow-white feet 
 
 In days of old on breezy morns and eves 
 Wandered through labyrinths of sun and shade, 
 Thy face so innocent-sweet 
 
 Shining with love that neither joys nor grieves 
 Save as the angels, meek and holy maid ! 
 
 With white fire in thy hand that burned no man, 
 
 But cleansed and warmed where'er its ray might fall, 
 Nor ever wasted low, or needed fan, 
 
 Thou walk'dst at eve among the oak-trees tall. 
 There thou didst chant thy vespers, while each star 
 
 Grew brighter listening through the leafy screen. 
 Then ceased the song-bird all his love-notes soft, 
 His music near or far, 
 
 Hushing his passion 'mid the sombre green 
 To let thy peaceful whispers float aloft. 
 
 And still from heavenly choirs thou steal'st by night 
 To tell sweet Aves in the woods unseen, 
 
 To tend the shrine -lamps with \hy flambeau white 
 And set thy tender footprints in the green. 
 
 Thus sing our birds with holy note and pure, 
 As though the loves of angels were their theme ; 
 
LADY GILBERT 409 
 
 Thus burn to throbbing flame our sacred fires 
 
 With heats that still endure ; 
 Thence hath our daffodil its golden gleam, 
 From thy dear mindfulness that never tires ! 
 
 KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 
 
 WHEN in 1885 the little volume entitled LOUISE DE LA 
 VALLIERE was given to the world, not a few lovers of modern 
 poetry perceived that here was the voice of a new and a real 
 singer. Faults it would have been doubtless easy to find, but 
 they were the faults of youth. Where, for instance, so many 
 and so various were the metres essayed, it would be strange 
 for a young writer not to fail occasionally in the striking of the 
 first chord ; the metre is sometimes not, in the first line, 
 inevitable and unmistakable, and the reader may stumble for 
 a moment before he finds it. Here and there, again, in Mrs. 
 Tynan-Hinkson's work a rhyme may be found which will not 
 find acceptance east of St. George's Channel. Having made 
 these reservations, we have in LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE not 
 only a promise that has been since fulfilled, but an achieve- 
 ment well worthy of note for its own sake. Greater experience 
 in metrical training has long since corrected such roughnesses 
 as are to be expected in an early work, and the most captious 
 critic will not find fault with the technical workmanship of 
 THE WIND IN THE TREES. And apart from this point a 
 minor one, doubtless, when compared with the great essentials 
 of poetry, inspiration, sincereness, insight, and real melody 
 Miss Tynan's subsequent work has placed her among the fore- 
 most women writers in English verse of the present day. 
 
 There are three notes immediately and distinctly discernible 
 in Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson's poetry which demand special obser- 
 vation love of country ; a religious feeling at once deep, 
 sincere, and glowing ; and an intimate appreciation of the beauty 
 and essence of external Nature. The first of these need not 
 
4io BOOK V 
 
 detain us long ; it is obvious on perusal. Mrs. Hinkson is 
 Irish in many of her subjects and in much of her style, and 
 her work is pervaded with a healthy patriotism such as can 
 hardly offend either those of another nationality or those of 
 her compatriots who differ from her upon points of present 
 interest and pressure. She loves the real Ireland as well as 
 that of romance, and in (for instance) the pathetic verses 
 entitled ' An Island Fisherman ' gives a picture of the home- 
 tragedies of the poor of to-day as faithful to truth and Nature 
 as the piece called * Waiting ' in her first published volume is 
 to the glory and glamour of an Ireland that has passed away. 
 But if this be a charm appealing especially to her compatriots, 
 in her devotional moods she represents and interprets, as few 
 others now living do, the yearnings and the mental struggles, 
 the temptations, fears, and hopes of the Christian soul, not 
 only for the Church to which she belongs, but for an audience 
 larger still, inasmuch as that which has found utterance in her 
 religious verse is concerned with the central truths of Chris- 
 tianity and its essential operation. In the ' Chapel of the 
 Grail,' the * Rock of Ages,' the * Angel of the Annunciation,' 
 this devout and reverent spirit is expressed in artistic form, and 
 the charm of language throughout enables one to understand 
 how to her at least ' there remaineth therefore a rest to the 
 people of God.' 
 
 The critics have already pointed out the special fascination 
 which St. Francis exercises upon Mrs. Hinkson's mind as 
 shown in her poetry. This influence indeed is obvious, and 
 it would have been strange had it been absent. For that 
 gentlest and most lovable figure among the saints of the 
 Mediaeval Church must necessarily make a peculiar appeal to 
 the spirit of a writer so full of reverent admiration for all the 
 creatures of God ; so imbued with a loving observation of the 
 beauties of Nature, whether exhibited on a broad and grand 
 scale, as in the great landscapes, or in closer detail in bird, 
 insect, flower, and leaf. It is in this latter sphere indeed that 
 to my mind Mrs. Hinkson rises to her highest point. She 
 loves the creatures, and therefore understands them and is able 
 
KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 411 
 
 to depict them so well. I have spoken of 'the essence of 
 external Nature ; ' what I am endeavouring to express by the 
 phrase is the life that is in Nature, and that not every one per- 
 ceives, because to see it one must have reverence and love 
 reverence for the great spiritual forces that imbue external 
 Nature, and love for the small things that are so beautiful, and 
 even glorious, when one watches them with an understanding 
 eye. I have tried to avoid the mention of Wordsworth in this 
 connection, because to my mind Mrs. Hinkson has come to 
 this inner understanding of Nature by another path than his ; 
 but of course it is an understanding of the same kind. Other 
 poets have had it ; it is a part almost, though not quite, an 
 essential part of the poetic insight, innate but trained by 
 observation. Take, for instance, the murmur and rustle of 
 that living thing, the rain ; how variously will two different 
 poets, of diverse genius, take note of it ! In his beautiful 
 verses ' 11 pleure dans mon cceur Comme il pleut sur la ville ' 
 Verlaine has the lines : 
 
 O bruit doux de la pluie 
 Par terre et sur les toils ! 
 Pour un cceur qui s'ennuie 
 O le chant de la pluie ! 
 
 The rain is already falling ; we are treating of its effect on the 
 cast-down spirit of a poet caged and confined in prison-cells. 
 We are in a city; the rain falls on roof and pavement. Compare 
 with this Mrs. Hinkson's short poem called c Drought : ' 
 
 Little voices complain, 
 
 The leaves rustle before the rain. 
 
 Only the trembling cry 
 
 Of young leaves murmuring thirstily. 
 
 Only the moan and stir 
 
 Of little hands in the boughs I hear, 
 
 Beckoning the rain to come 
 
 Out of the evening, out of the gloom. 
 
 Here the rain has not yet fallen ; its sister-creatures are 
 calling, yearning for it. The voices are the voices of the country; 
 
4 I2 BOOK V 
 
 we are in the broad free air of heaven The human touch is 
 here also, but it does not come till all the rest is realised : 
 
 And hearts that complain. 
 
 The leaves rustle before the rain. 
 
 Both passages are beautiful ; in both a few lines suffice to 
 draw the picture, a few notes to make the music and waken the 
 emotion ; but the results are quite different. 
 
 Mrs. Hinkson is at her best out of doors. She exults in 
 the beauty of Nature ; nothing is too small, too near the sod 
 for observation, for love and song. In THE WIND IN THE 
 TREES the piece called ' Leaves,' somewhat akin to that just 
 now quoted, is full of subdued expression and fine suggestion, 
 and yet it is radiant with colour. For Mrs. Hinkson has a 
 keen sense of natural colour ; naturally therefore she delights 
 in it ; colour is the music of the eye. To one who interprets 
 the leaves so well, what songs have not the flowers to sing? 
 Her own, therefore, are full of natural colour ; they are full 
 also of the perfumes of flower and field, and of the voices of 
 the birds. Of these last the short poem entitled ' Larks ' is 
 only one instance. It is the silence of Nature that is dreadful, 
 and the exact word is found by the poet, as (in 'Cruel 
 Winter ' ) 
 
 The dear song-thrush is dead, 
 
 The valley hath instead 
 Only the silence. 
 
 The silence aches all day 
 
 In hills and valleys gray . . . 
 
 I must not leave without mention the songs of pathos and 
 affection, many of them touching and sweet, which are to be 
 found scattered through Mrs. Hinkson's volumes. I could 
 wish, perhaps, that the author had exercised a little more 
 literary economy ; in so considerable an output not everything 
 can be at the same high level. Yet sometimes the fault may 
 lie with the reader or the critic. Thus, I have not spoken of 
 the Miracle Plays, because I am not quite sure of myself, hold- 
 ing as I do that the mediaeval religious drama has not been 
 
KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSOh 413 
 
 successfully revived by any writer, even the greatest. Mrs. 
 Hinkson certainly possesses the first necessary quality for such 
 work, the right devotional spirit ; but I am disposed to cavil 
 at the form (or else, perhaps, at the title). ' The play the play's 
 the thing,' and in English at all events, in this dying cen- 
 tury I doubt whether dramatic action and the dramatic spirit 
 can be rendered in lyrical measures such as Mrs. Hinkson has 
 here adopted. But this is the opinion of one who holds that 
 Calderon and Metastasio cannot be translated into the English 
 tongue without considerable loss. Every language has its 
 limitations ; yet it is sometimes well to strive against them, in 
 the hope of ultimately broadening them, even but a little. 
 Mrs. Hinkson has done gallant service in several spheres ; but 
 it will have been perceived that the present writer's preference 
 is for those delightful swift glances into Nature and Nature's 
 secrets of which THE WIND IN THE TREES is full; this at 
 least is a booklet from which I would not willingly spare a 
 page. It holds the secrets of the birds, the leaves, and the 
 flowers ; and the human voice, too, is deep and touching the 
 voice of the Irish poetess : 
 
 Oh, green and fresh your English sod 
 
 With daisies sprinkled over ; 
 But greener far were the fields I trod, 
 
 And the honeyed Irish clover 
 
 Oh, well your skylark cleaves the blue 
 
 To bid the sun good-morrow ; 
 He has not the bonny song I knew 
 
 High over an Irish furrow. 
 
 And often, often, I'm longing still, 
 
 This gay and golden weather, 
 For my father's face by an Irish hill 
 
 And he and I together. 
 
 GEORGE A. GREENE. 
 
 Born in Dublin in the early sixties, Miss Katharine Tynan was for 
 some time at school at a Dominican convent in Drogheda, which, however, 
 she left at the age of fourteen : the rest of her education was gained at 
 home, and mainly by her own energy and love of study, to which her 
 
414 BOOK V 
 
 father allowed full scope by permitting her a broad and varied course of 
 reading in accordance with her tastes. With the exception of a few visits 
 to London, Miss Tynan remained at home till her marriage in 1893 w ith 
 Mr. Henry Hinkson, ex- Scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and himself a 
 well-known writer. She is now settled in London with her husband, and 
 is engaged in constant literary work. Her poetical output is somewhat 
 considerable for the comparatively short time during which it has appeared : 
 it began in 1885 with the publication of LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE AND 
 OTHER POEMS (Kegan Paul Co.), which has been followed by 
 SHAMROCKS, 1887 ; BALLADS AND LYRICS, 1892 (same publishers) ; 
 CUCKOO SONGS (John Lane, 1894) ; MIRACLE PLAYS (idem, 1896) ; A 
 LOVER'S BREAST-KNOT (Elkin Mathews, 1897) ; and THE WIND IN THE 
 TREES (Grant Richards, 1898). Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson has also written a 
 number of prose works. 
 
 LARKS 
 
 ALL day in exquisite air 
 The song clomb an invisible stair, 
 Flight on flight, story on story, 
 Into the dazzling glory. 
 
 There was no bird, only a singing, 
 Up in the glory, climbing and ringing, 
 Like a small golden cloud at even, 
 Trembling 'twixt earth and heaven. 
 
 I saw no staircase winding, winding, 
 Up in the dazzle, sapphire and blinding, 
 Yet round by round, in exquisite air, 
 The song went up the stair. 
 
 DAFFODIL 
 
 WHO passes down the wintry street ? 
 
 Hey, ho, daffodil ! 
 A sudden flame of gold and sweet. 
 
 With sword of emerald girt so meet, 
 And golden gay from head to feet. 
 
 How are you here this wintry day ? 
 
 Hey, ho, daffodil ! 
 Your radiant fellows yet delay. 
 
KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 415 
 
 No windflower dances scarlet gay, 
 Nor crocus-flame lights up the way. 
 
 What land of cloth o' gold and green, 
 
 Hey, ho, daffodil ! 
 Cloth o' gold with the green between, 
 
 Was that you left but yestere'en 
 To light a gloomy world and mean ? 
 
 King trumpeter to Flora queen, 
 Hey, ho, daffodil ! 
 Blow, and the golden jousts begin. 
 
 SUMMER-SWEET 
 
 HONEY-SWEET, sweet as honey smell the lilies, 
 
 Little lilies of the gold in a ring ; 
 Little censers of pale gold are the lilies, 
 
 That the wind, sweet and sunny, sets a-swing. 
 
 Smell the rose, sweet of sweets, all a-blowing ! 
 
 Hear the cuckoo call in dreams, low and sweet ! 
 Like a very John-a-Dreams coming, going. 
 
 There's honey in the grass at our feet. 
 
 There's honey in the leaf and the blossom, 
 And honey in the night and the day, 
 
 And honey-sweet the heart in Love's bosom, 
 And honey sweet the words Love will say. 
 
 AUGUST WEATHER 
 
 DEAD heat and windless air, 
 
 And silence over all ; 
 Never a leaf astir, 
 
 But the ripe apples fall ; 
 Plums are purple-red, 
 
 Pears amber and brown ; 
 Thud! in the garden-bed 
 
 Ripe apples fall down. 
 
416 BOOK V 
 
 Air like a cider-press 
 
 With the bruised apples' scent 
 Low whistles express 
 
 Some sleepy bird's content ; 
 Still world and windless sky, 
 
 A mist of heat o'er all ; 
 Peace like a lullaby, 
 
 And the ripe apples fall. 
 
 AN ISLAND FISHERMAN 
 
 I GROAN as I put out 
 
 My. nets on the say, 
 To hear the little girshas shout, 
 
 Dancin' among the spray. 
 
 Ochone / the childher pass 
 
 An' lave us to our grief ; 
 The stranger took my little lass 
 
 At the fall o' the leaf. 
 
 Why would you go so fast 
 With him you never knew ? 
 
 In all the throuble that is past 
 I never frowned on you. 
 
 The light o' my old eyes ! 
 
 The comfort o' my heart ! 
 Waitin' for me your mother lies 
 
 In blessed Innishart. 
 
 Her lone grave I keep 
 
 From all the cold world wide, 
 But you in life an' death will sleep 
 
 The stranger beside. 
 
 Ochone ! my thoughts are wild : 
 
 But little blame I say ; 
 An ould man hungerin' for his child, 
 
 Fishin' the livelong day. 
 
KATHARINE TYNAN-HIAKSON 417 
 
 You will not run again, 
 
 Laughin' to see me land. 
 Oh, what was pain an' throuble then, 
 
 Holdin' your little hand? 
 
 Or when your head let fall 
 Its soft curls on my breast ? 
 
 Why do the childher grow at all 
 To love the stranger best ? 
 
 Lux IN TENEBRIS 
 
 AT night what things will stalk abroad, 
 What veiled shapes, and eyes of dread ! 
 
 With phantoms in a lonely road 
 And visions of the dead. 
 
 The kindly room when day is here, 
 At night takes ghostly terrors on ; 
 
 And every shadow hath its fear, 
 And every wind its moan. 
 
 Lord Jesus, Day-Star of the world, 
 Rise Thou and bid this dark depart 
 
 And all the east, a rose uncurled, 
 Grow golden at the heart ! 
 
 Lord, in the watches of the night, 
 
 Keep Thou my soul ! a trembling thing 
 
 As any moth that in daylight 
 Will spread a rainbow wing. 
 
 WINTER EVENING 
 
 BUT the rain is gone by, and the day's dying out in a splendour ; 
 There is flight as of many gold wings in the heart of the sky : 
 God's birds, it may be, who return from their ministry tender, 
 Flying home from the earth, like the earth-birds when darkness 
 is nigh. 
 
 E E 
 
418 BOOK V 
 
 Gold plumes and gold feathers, the wings hide the roseate faces, 
 But a glimmer of roseate feet breaks the massing of gold : 
 
 There's gold hair blowing back, and a drifting of one in clear 
 
 spaces, 
 A little child-angel whose flight is less sure and less bold 
 
 They are gone, they are flown, but their footprints have left the 
 
 sky ruddy, 
 
 And the night's coming on with a moon in a tender green sea, 
 And my heart is fled home, with a flight that is certain and steady 
 To her home, to her nest, to the place where her treasure shall 
 
 be- 
 Across the dark hills where the scarlet to purple is waning ; 
 
 For the birds will fly home, will fly home, when the night's 
 
 coming on. 
 
 But hark ! in the trees how the wind is complaining and straining, 
 For the birds that are flown it may be, or the nests that are 
 gone. 
 
 WAITING 
 
 IN a grey cave, where comes no glimpse of sky, 
 Set in the blue hill's heart full many a mile, 
 
 Having the dripping stone for canopy, 
 
 Missing the wind's laugh and the good sun's smile, 
 
 I, Fionn, with all my sleeping warriors lie. 
 
 In the great outer cave our horses are, 
 
 Carved of grey stone, with heads erect, amazed, 
 
 Purple their trappings, gold each bolt and bar, 
 
 One fore-foot poised, the quivering thin ears raised 
 
 Methinks they scent the battle from afar. 
 
 A frozen hound lies by each warrior's feet 
 
 Ah, Bran, my jewel ! Bran, my king of hounds ! 
 
 Deep-throated art thou, mighty-flanked, and fleet ; 
 Dost thou remember how with giant bounds 
 
 Didst chase the red deer in the noontide heat ? 
 
KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 419 
 
 I was a king in ages long ago, 
 
 A mighty warrior, and a seer likewise, 
 Still mine eyes look with solemn gaze of woe 
 
 From stony lids adown the centuries, 
 And in my frozen heart I know, I know. 
 
 A giant I, of a primeval race, 
 
 . These, great-limbed, bearing helm and shield and sword, 
 My good knights are, and each still, awful face 
 Will one day wake to knowledge at a word 
 O'erhead the groaning years turn round apace. 
 
 Here with the peaceful dead we keep our state ; 
 
 Some day a cry shall ring adown the lands : 
 * The hour is come, the hour grown large with fate.' 
 
 He knows who hath the centuries in His hands 
 When that shall be till then we watch and wait. 
 
 The queens that loved us, whither be they gone, 
 The sweet, large women with the hair as gold, 
 
 As though one drew long threads from out the sun ? 
 Ages ago, grown tired, and very cold, 
 
 They fell asleep beneath the daisies wan. 
 
 The waving woods are gone that once we knew, 
 
 And towns grown grey with years are in their place : 
 
 A little lake, as innocent and blue 
 
 As my queen's eyes were, lifts a baby face 
 
 Where once my palace towers were fair to view. 
 
 The fierce old gods we hailed with worshipping, 
 The blind old gods, waxed mad with sin and blood, 
 
 Laid down their godhead as an idle thing 
 At a God's feet, whose throne was but a Rood ; 
 
 His crown, wrought thorns ; His joy, long travailing. 
 
 Here in the gloom I see it all again, 
 
 As ages since in visions mystical 
 I saw the swaying crowds of fierce-eyed men, 
 
 And heard the murmurs in the judgment hall. 
 Oh, for one charge of my dark warriors then ! 
 
 E E2 
 
420 BOOK V 
 
 Nay, if He willed, His Father presently 
 Twelve star-girt legions unto Him had given. 
 
 I traced the blood-stained path to Calvary, 
 And heard far off the angels weep in heaven ; 
 
 Then the Rood's arms against an awful sky. 
 
 I saw Him when they pierced Him, hands and feet, 
 And one came by and smote Him, this new King, 
 
 So pale and harmless, on the tired face sweet ; 
 He was so lovely and so pitying, 
 
 The icy heart in me began to beat. 
 
 Then a strong cry the mountain heaved and swayed 
 That held us in its heart, the groaning world 
 
 Was reft with lightning and in ruins laid, 
 
 His Father's awful hand the red bolts hurled, 
 
 And He was dead I trembled, sore afraid. 
 
 Then I upraised myself with mighty strain 
 
 In the gloom, I heard the tumult rage without, 
 
 I saw those large dead faces glimmer plain, 
 The life just stirred within them and went out, 
 
 And I fell back, and grew to stone again. 
 
 So the years went - on earth how fleet they be ! 
 
 Here in this cave their feet are slow of pace, 
 And I grow old, and tired exceedingly, 
 
 I would the sweet earth were my dwelling-place 
 Shamrocks and little daisies wrapping me ! 
 
 There I should lie, and feel the silence sweet 
 
 As a meadow at noon, where birds sing in the trees ; 
 
 To mine ears should come the patter of little feet, 
 And baby cries, and croon of summer seas, 
 
 And the wind's laughter in the upland wheat. 
 
 Meantime o'erhead the years were full and bright, 
 With a kind sun, and gold wide fields of corn ; 
 
 The happy children sang from morn to night, 
 
 The blessed church bells rang, new arts were born, 
 
 Strong towns rose up and glimmered fair and white. 
 
KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 421 
 
 Once came a wind of conflict, fierce as hail, 
 And beat about my brows : on the eastward shore, 
 
 Where never since the Vikings' dark ships sail, 
 All day the battle raged with mighty roar ; 
 
 At night the Victor's fair dead face was pale. 
 
 Ah ! the dark years since then, the anguished cry 
 That pierced my deaf ears, made my hard eyes weep, 
 
 From Erin wrestling in her agony, 
 
 While we, her strongest, in a helpless sleep, 
 
 Lay, as the blood-stained years trailed slowly by. 
 
 And often in those years the East was drest 
 
 In phantom fires, that mocked the distant dawn, 
 
 Then blackest night her bravest and her best 
 Were led to die, while I slept dumbly on, 
 
 With the whole mountain's weight upon my breast. 
 
 Once in my time it chanced a peasant hind 
 
 Strayed to this cave. I heard, and burst my chain, 
 
 And raised my awful face stone-dead and blind, 
 Cried, ' Is it time ? ' and so fell back again. 
 
 I heard his wild cry borne adown the wind. 
 
 Some hearts wait with us. Owen Roe O'Neill, 
 The kingliest king that ever went uncrowned, 
 
 Sleeps in his panoply of gold and steel 
 Ready to wake, and in the kindly ground 
 
 A many another's death-wounds close and heal. 
 
 Great Hugh O'Neill, far off in purple Rome, 
 And Hugh O'Donnell, in their stately tombs 
 
 Lie, with their grand fair faces turned to home. 
 Some day a voice will ring adown the glooms : 
 
 1 Arise, ye Princes, for the hour is come ! ' 
 
 And these will rise, and we will wait them here, 
 
 In this blue hill-heart in fair Donegal ; 
 That hour shall sound the clash of sword and spear, 
 
 The steeds shall neigh to hear their masters' call, 
 And the hounds' cry shall echo shrill and clear. 
 
422 BOOK V 
 
 ST. FRANCIS AND THE WOLF 
 
 THIS wolf for many a day 
 
 Had scourged and trodden down 
 The folk of Agobio town ; 
 
 Old was he, lean and grey. 
 
 Dragging a mildewed bone, 
 Down from his lair he came, 
 Saw in the sunset flame 
 
 Our Father standing alone. 
 
 Dust on his threadbare gown, 
 Dust on his blessed feet, 
 Fairit from long fast and heat, 
 
 His light of life died down. 
 
 This wolf laid bare his teeth, 
 And growling low there stood ; 
 His lips were black with blood, 
 
 His eyes were fires of death. 
 
 So for a spring crouched he ; 
 But the Saint raised his head 
 ' Peace, Brother Wolf,' he said, 
 
 * God made both thee and me.' 
 
 And with the Cross signed him : 
 The wolf fell back a-stare, 
 Sat on his haunches there, 
 
 Forbidding, black and grim. 
 
 ' Come nearer, in Christ's Name,' 
 Said Francis, and, so bid, 
 Like a small dog that's chid, 
 
 The fierce beast fawning came. 
 
 Trotting against his side, 
 And licked the tender hand 
 That with soft touch and bland 
 
 Caressed his wicked hide. 
 
KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON 423 
 
 * Brother,' the Saint said then, 
 
 ' Who gave thee leave to kill ? 
 Thou hast slain of thine own will 
 Not only beasts, but men. 
 
 'And God is wroth with thee : 
 
 If thou wilt not repent, 
 
 His anger shall be sent 
 To smite thee terribly. 
 
 ' See, all men hate thy name, 
 
 And with it mothers fright 
 
 The froward child by night. 
 Great are thy sin and shame. 
 
 1 All true dogs thee pursue ; 
 
 Thou shouldst hang high in air 
 
 Like a thief and murderer, 
 Hadst thou thy lavful due. 
 
 1 Yet, seeing His hands have made 
 Even thee, thou wicked one 
 I bring no malison, 
 But blessing bring instead. 
 
 ' And I will purchase peace 
 
 Between this folk and thee 
 
 So love for hate shall be, 
 And all thy sinning cease. 
 
 * Say, wilt thou have it so ? ' 
 
 Thereat, far off, we saw 
 The beast lift up his paw, 
 His great tail wagging go. 
 
 Our Father took the paw 
 
 Into his blessed hand, 
 
 Knelt down upon the sand, 
 Facing the creature's jaw. 
 
424 BOOK V 
 
 That were a sight to see : 
 Agobio's folk trooped out ; 
 They heard not all that rout, 
 
 Neither the beast nor he. 
 
 For he was praying yet, 
 And on his illumined face 
 A shamed and loving gaze 
 
 The terrible wolf had set. 
 
 When they came through the town, 
 His hand that beast did stroke, 
 He spake unto the folk 
 
 Flocking to touch his gown. 
 
 A sweet discourse was this ; 
 
 He prayed them that they make 
 Peace, for the Lord Christ's sake, 
 
 With this poor wolf of His ; 
 
 And told them of their sins, 
 How each was deadlier far 
 Than wolves or lions are, 
 
 Or sharks with sword-like fins. 
 
 Afterwards some came near, 
 
 Took the beast's paw and shook, 
 And answered his sad look 
 
 With words of honest cheer. 
 
 Our Father, ere he went, 
 
 Bade that each one should leave 
 Some food at morn and eve 
 
 For his poor penitent. 
 
 And so, three years or more, 
 
 The wolf came morn and even 
 Yea, long forgiven and shriven, 
 
 Fed at each townsman's door ; 
 
ROSE KAVANAGH 425 
 
 And grew more grey and old, 
 
 Withal so sad and mild, 
 
 Him feared no little child 
 Sitting in the sun's gold. 
 
 The women, soft of heart, 
 
 Trusted him and were kind : 
 
 Men grew of equal mind, 
 None longer stepped apart. 
 
 The very dogs, 'twas said, 
 
 Would greet him courteously, 
 
 And pass his portion by, 
 Though they went on unfed. 
 
 But when three years were gone 
 
 He came no more, but died ; 
 
 In a cave on the hillside 
 You may count each whitening bone. 
 
 And then it came to pass 
 
 All gently of him spake, 
 
 For Francis his dear sake, 
 Whose Brother Wolf this was. 
 
 ROSE KAVANAGH 
 
 BORN at Killadroy, County Tyrone, on June 23, 1859, and 
 died of consumption on February 26, 1891. She was a con- 
 tributor of poems and stories to the Irish papers, &c., and a 
 bright future was predicted for her. Her early death caused 
 widespread regret among readers of Irish literature, and a deep 
 sense of loss to the personal friends to whom her sweet and noble 
 character had endeared her. A collected edition of her poems 
 has been published in Dublin. 
 
426 BOOK V 
 
 ST. MICHAN'S CHURCHYARD 
 
 INSIDE the city's throbbing heart 
 
 One spot I know set well apart 
 
 From life's hard highway, life's loud mart. 
 
 Each Dublin lane and street and square 
 
 Around might echo ; but in there 
 
 The sound stole soft as whispered prayer. 
 
 A little, lonely, green graveyard, 
 
 The old churchyard its solemn guard, 
 
 The gate with naught but sunbeams barred ; 
 
 While other sunbeams went and came 
 Above the stone which waits the name 
 His land must write with Freedom's flame. 1 
 
 The slender elm above that stone, 
 
 Its summer wreath of leaves had thrown 
 
 Around the heart so quiet grown. 
 
 A robin the bare boughs among, 
 Let loose his little soul in song 
 Quick liquid gushes fresh and strong ! 
 
 And quiet heart, and bird and tree, 
 Seemed linked in some strange sympathy 
 Too fine for mortal eye to see 
 
 But full of balm and soothing sweet, 
 For those who sought that calm retreat ; 
 For aching breast and weary feet. 
 
 Each crowded street and thoroughfare 
 Was echoing round it yet in there 
 The peace of Heaven was everywhere ! 
 
 1 Referring to the grave of Robert Emmet. 
 
ALICE FURLONG 427 
 
 ALICE FURLONG 
 
 Miss FURLONG'S small volume of poems, ROSES AND RUE, 
 which appeared in 1899, has attracted much recognition from 
 the leading organs of literary criticism. Her poetry has delicacy, 
 pathos, and music, and much power of drawing a vivid picture 
 in few words. The authoress was born in the Co. Dublin 
 about 1875, and has written much in prose and verse for The 
 Irish Monthly and other periodicals. 
 
 THE DREAMER 
 
 A WIND that dies on the meadows lush, 
 Trembling stars in the breathless hush ! 
 The maiden's sleeping face doth bloom 
 A sad, white lily in the gloom. 
 
 Along the limpid horizon borne 
 The first gold breathing of the morn ! 
 A lovely dawn of dreams doth creep 
 Athwart the darkness of her sleep. 
 
 In the dim shadow of the eaves 
 A quiet stir of lifted leaves ! 
 As in the old, beloved days, 
 She wandereth by happy ways. 
 
 With half-awakened twitterings, 
 
 The young birds preen their folded wings ! 
 
 She giveth a forget-me-not 
 
 To him who long ago forgot. 
 
 Athwart the meadowy, dewy-sweet, 
 A wind comes wandering on light feet ! 
 For her the wind is from the south, 
 His kiss is kind upon her mouth. 
 
 In the bird's house of emerald 
 The sun is weaving webs of gold ! 
 He never coldly went apart ! 
 She never broke her passionate heart ! 
 
428 BOOK V 
 
 Pipeth clear from the orchard close 
 A thrush in the bowers of white and rose ! 
 She waketh praying : ' God is good, 
 With visions for my solitude.' 
 
 For full delight of birds and flowers 
 The long day spins its golden hours. 
 She serves the household destinies ; 
 The dream is happy in her. eyes. 
 
 JANE BARLOW 
 
 Miss JANE BARLOW'S admirable sketches of peasant-life in 
 Ireland have in a few years gained for her a well-deserved repu- 
 tation among the Irish writers in prose of the present genera- 
 tion ; it may be doubted indeed whether any one has to the 
 same extent sounded the depths of Irish character in the 
 country districts and touched so many chords of sympathy, 
 humour, and pathos. Of her work in verse, with which I have 
 here to do, a portion, and that perhaps the most significant, 
 falls into the same category. BOGLAND STUDIES (among 
 which * Terence Macran ' may be included) are indeed, save 
 for the metrical form, just another volume of the IRISH IDYLLS 
 which have charmed and delighted so many readers. It is not 
 merely the peasant dialect that is faithfully and picturesquely 
 reproduced, but the working of the rural mind and the emo- 
 tions of the heart, fully and sympathetically understood ; so 
 much so that in the eight studies thus classed together it 
 has become inevitable that in each case the narrator should 
 be the peasant himself or herself. It is because the author 
 has so completely succeeded in identifying herself with her 
 characters that the language employed by them as means of 
 expression is so veritably and vividly Irish, natural, and not 
 put on. Thus the flashes of wit, the neat turns of phrase, the 
 quick and apt similes, the quaint and picturesque form and 
 colour of language, strike the reader not only as characteristic, 
 
JANE BARLOW 429 
 
 unmistakable Irish sayings, exactly such as are to be caught 
 flying in every village, but they arise naturally out of the 
 thought. One recognises that at that juncture the peasant 
 would have said either what he is made to say, or something 
 very like it, and bearing the same individual semblance. 
 Hence while such passages are eminently quotable, they lose 
 somewhat by quotation apart from their context. It is because 
 the individual and the environment have between them created 
 the psychological moment that the peasant's quaint philosophy 
 breaks out so aptly in such passages as 
 
 For it's aisier risin' a quarrel than sthrikin' a match on a wall ; 
 or 
 
 So thinks I to meself ; but sure, musha, wan's thoughts is like beads off a 
 
 thread, 
 Slippin' each after each in a hurry : an' so I kep' considherin' on ; 
 
 or 
 
 Thin the bugle rang out Och, I've ne'er heard the like, yet wan aisy 
 
 can tell 
 They'd ha' lep' all the locked gates of Heaven to ride with that music 
 
 to Hell ; 
 
 or again 
 
 'T is the same as if God an' the Divil tuk turns to be ownin' the earth. 
 
 It would be hypercritical to examine the metre too closely; 
 the narrative comes rushing quickly, with sudden irregular 
 gusts, as one feels it would naturally come. 
 
 For my present purpose, that of selection, this unity and 
 continuity has one inconvenience ; the stories in BOGLAND 
 STUDIES are too long for one of them to be quoted here in its 
 entirety, and being in fact * short stories ' they are too ably 
 written to permit of abbreviation, and extracts would be quite 
 unrepresentative of Miss Barlow's excellence in this line. I 
 can only hope that what I have said will cause readers to turn to 
 them with something of that zest which those who know her 
 prose writings do not need to have the critic's help in awaken- 
 ing. In TH' OULD MASTER we have a tragedy of the sea told 
 
430 BOOK V 
 
 from the peasant's standpoint on land, the real tragedy being in 
 the household of the kind old landlord during his long bereave- 
 ment and before his long-absent son returns to die in the bay 
 at home, for of this last cniel blow Fate, less cruel than would 
 at first appear, spares him the knowledge. Yet the shadow 
 deepens upon the land, for the new owner of the estate will be 
 a stranger having no hold upon the affections of the peasantry, 
 the expression of which forms the lighter side of the picture. 
 The ruling class appears in a far less favourable light in * Past 
 Praying for ; or, The Souper's Widow,' where the crime of the 
 dead ' souper ' lay in accepting, on condition of attending at 
 Sunday service, the relief distributed by the parson - accepting 
 it not for himself, for he died leaving it untouched, but for 
 his family, perishing around him in the dread years of famine. 
 In 'Walled Out' and in 'Last Time at M'Gurk's ' we have 
 two excellent studies of peasant philosophy ; in ' Terence 
 Macran ' a delightful and at the same time pathetic picture of 
 one of the old hedge-schools of Ireland. But the most 
 dramatic of these stories is that entitled ' By the Bog-hole.' 
 The hero and heroine, next-door neighbours in the same boreen, 
 are children together, Jimmy's special care as a boy being to 
 see that Nelly does not fall into the bog- hole, 
 
 So ugly and black, 
 Wid its sides cut wall-sthraight wid the spade, an' the wather like midnight 
 
 below, 
 Lyin' far out of reach. 
 
 They grow up together, but just as Jimmy becomes aware of 
 what is stirring in his heart a handsome, gaudy young soldier 
 steps round the end of the turf-stack, ' and himself was just 
 Felix Magrath comin' home to his father's on leave.' This is 
 the first breath of the ill-wind of Fate. Felix is pleasant, 
 plausible, full of stirring stories of strange lands ' where the 
 curiousist things ye could think do be plenty as turf-sods in 
 stacks,' and of course Nell listens to him, * small blame to 
 her ; ' and equally of course Jimmy thinks of provoking him to 
 a quarrel, being cursed by all the torments of jealousy. But, 
 
JANE BARLOW 431 
 
 though he believes his superior strength would give him the 
 victory, Jimmy puts the temptation from him, and determines 
 to sacrifice his own happiness to Nelly's. And at this very 
 moment Felix is bidding farewell to her, for it turns out he has 
 a wife at the Curragh ; and in the brief scene that follows he 
 takes a step back, forgetting the bog-hole is near at hand. 
 When Jimmy comes up, he is only in time to save Nelly from 
 flinging herself into the black waters after her false lover, and 
 when she faints, and recovers consciousness only to go out of 
 her mind, it is clear enough to the villagers now arriving on the 
 scene that Jimmy has murdered his rival before his sweet- 
 heart's eyes : a conclusion supported by the girl's ravings. 
 How he rises to the height of this last fierce trial I leave the 
 reader to ascertain for himself. 
 
 Another portion of Miss Barlow's work falls into a different 
 category, and though not so obviously Irish in subject is 
 excellent in quality, and treats of a subject which probably 
 finds its best expression in Celtic lands that of fairy lore. 
 This is a branch of study which has of late years attracted the 
 attention of all lovers of literature, as distinguished from 
 literary form. Together with its kindred sciences of mythology 
 and folklore, it provides us with the nearest glimpses now 
 obtainable of the primitive imagination of man, upon which 
 almost all imaginative literature, even the greatest, is primarily 
 founded. We need not cannot be faithless to or forgetful of 
 1 the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome/ 
 the light wherewith Dante illumined the darkness of ages, the 
 
 * spacious times of great Elizabeth,' the triumphal march-music 
 of French and German literature ; yet often from the crambe 
 repetita of classical learning, from its meticulous criticism, from 
 the stifling atmosphere of over-culture, from the mists and 
 mire of decadence, one turns with relief to the broad skies and 
 the fresh breezes of a simpler age and a less sophisticated 
 humanity, in whose root-thoughts are the germs of later and 
 more gorgeous imaginings. So Miss Barlow turns from the 
 
 * Batrachomyomachia ' to * The End of Elfmtown,' and gives us a 
 delightful glimpse of fairyland, of the troubles which descended 
 
432 BOOK V 
 
 on the race of the elves, of the passing of Oberon, and the 
 twilight of the lesser gods. 
 
 GEORGE A. GREENE. 
 
 Miss Jane Barlow, born in Clontarf, County Dublin, is the eldest 
 daughter of the Rev. J. W. Barlow, Vice-Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 a well-known writer of philosophical and historical works. She has 
 spent most of her life at Raheny in the same county, and has published in 
 verse: BOGLAND STUDIES (Fisher Unwin, 1891 ; enlarged edition, Hodder 
 & Stoughton, 1893) THE BATTLE OF THE FROGS AND MICE a metrical 
 version of the ' Batrachomyomachia ' (Methuen, 1894); THE END OF 
 ELFINTOWN (Macmillan, 1894) ; besides scattered poems in various 
 periodicals, among which may be mentioned TERENCE MACRAN : A HEDGE- 
 SCHOOL STUDY, a story in verse in the style and metre of BOGLAND 
 STUDIES, originally published in The Journal of Education for May, 1894, 
 and since reprinted in ESSAYS AND MOCK ESSAYS (Arnold). Miss Barlow's 
 prose works are more numerous, and include : IRISH IDYLLS (Hodder 
 & Stoughton, 1892) ; KERRIGAN'S QUALITY (same publishers, 1894) ; 
 STRANGERS AT LISCONNEL a second series of Irish Idylls (same 
 publishers, 1895) '> MAUREEN'S FAIRING and MRS. MARTIN'S COMPANY, 
 both in the 'Iris Library ' (Dent, 1895 and 1896); A CREEL OF IRISH 
 STORIES (Methuen, 1897) ; and FROM THE EAST UNTO THE WEST (same 
 publishers, 1898). Miss Barlow is a scholar and a great reader, preferring 
 books that have become classics to mere novelties, and makes music her 
 chief recreation. 
 
 MISTHER DENIS'S RETURN 
 FROM 'TH' OULD MASTER' 
 
 AN' the thought of us each was the boat ; och, however'd she stand 
 it at all, 
 
 If she'd started an hour or two back, an' been caught in the thick 
 o' that squall ? 
 
 Sure, it's lost she was, barrin' by luck it so chanced she'd run under 
 the lee 
 
 O' Point Bertragh or Irish Lonane ; an' 'twas liker the crathurs 
 'udbe 
 
 Crossin' yonder the open, wid never a shelter, but waves far an' 
 wide 
 
 Rowlin' one on the other till ye'd seem at the feet of a mad moun- 
 tain-side. 
 
JANE BARLOW 433 
 
 An' the best we could hope was they'd seen that the weathered be 
 
 turnin' out quare, 
 An' might, happen, ha' settled they wouldn't come over, but bide 
 
 where they were. 
 Yet, begorrah ! 'twould be the quare weather entirely, as some of 
 
 us said, 
 That 'ud put Misther Denis off aught that he'd fairly tuk into his 
 
 head. 
 Thin Tim Duigan sez : * Arrah, lads, whist ! afther sailin' thro' 
 
 oceans o' say 
 Don't tell me he's naught better to do than get dhrowned in our 
 
 dhrop of a bay.' 
 An' the words were scarce out of his mouth, whin hard by, thro' a 
 
 dhrift o' the haze, 
 The ould boat we beheld sthrivin' on in the storm och, the yell we 
 
 did raise ! 
 An' it's little we yelled for, bedad ! for next instant there under 
 
 our eyes, 
 Not a couple o' perch from the pier-end, th' ould baste she must 
 
 take an' capsize. 
 
 Och ! small blame to thim all if we'd never seen sight of a one o' 
 
 thim more, 
 Wid the waves thumpin' thuds where they fell, like the butt-ends 
 
 o' beams on a door ; 
 An' the black hollows whirlin' between, an' the dhrift flyin' over 
 
 thim thick, 
 'S if the Divil had melted down Hell, an' was stirrin' it up wid a 
 
 stick. 
 But it happint the wave that they met wid was flounderin' 
 
 sthraight to the strand, 
 An' just swep' thim up nate on its way, till it set thim down safe 
 
 where the sand 
 Isn't wet twice a twelvemonth, no hurt on thim all, on'y dhrippin' 
 
 an' dazed. 
 And one come to his feet nigh me door, where that mornin' me 
 
 heifer had grazed, 
 An', bedad ! 'twas himself, Misther Denis, stood blinkin' and shakin' 
 
 the wet 
 
 F F 
 
434 BOOK V 
 
 From his hair : ' Hullo, Connor ! ' sez he, ' is it you, man ? ' He'd 
 
 never forget 
 One he'd known. But I'd hardly got hould of his hand, an' was 
 
 wishin' him joy, 
 Whin, worse luck, he looked round an' he spied Widdy Sullivan's 
 
 imp of a boy 
 That a wave had tuk off of his feet, an' was floatin' away from the 
 
 beach, 
 An' he screechin' an' sthretchin' his arms to be saved, but no help 
 
 was in reach. 
 An' as soon as the young master he seen it, he caught his hand 
 
 out o' me own : 
 ' Now, stana clear, man,' sez he ; ' would ye have me be lavin' the 
 
 lad there to dhrown ? ' 
 An' wid that he throd knee-deep in foam-swirls. Ochone ! but he 
 
 gev us the slip, 
 Runnin' sheer down the black throat o' Death, an' he just afther 
 
 'scapin' its grip ; 
 For the wild says come flappin' an' boomin' an' smotherin' o'er 
 
 him, an' back 
 In the lap o' their ragin' they swep' him as light as a wisp o' brown 
 
 wrack. 
 An' they poundin' the rocks like sledge-hammers, an' clatterin' the 
 
 shingle like chains ; 
 Ne'er the live sowl they'd let from their hould till they'd choked 
 
 him or bet out his brains, 
 Sure an' certin. And in swung a wave wid its welthers o' wather 
 
 that lept 
 Wid the roar of a lion as it come, an' hissed low like a snake as it 
 
 crept 
 To its edge, where it tossed thim, the both o' them. Och ! an' the 
 
 little spalpeen 
 Misther Denis had gript be the collar, he jumped up the first 
 
 thing we seen, 
 While young master lay still not a stir he was stunned wid a 
 
 crack on the head 
 Just a flutter o' life at his heart but it's kilt he was, kilt on us 
 
 dead. 
 
JANE BARLOW 435 
 
 THE FLITTING OF THE FAIRIES 
 
 From THE END OF ELFINTOWN 
 
 THEN Oberon spake the word of might 
 That set the enchanted cars in sight ; 
 But lore I lack to tell aright 
 
 Where these had waited hidden. 
 Perchance the clear airs round us rolled 
 In secret cells did them enfold, 
 Like evening dew that none behold 
 
 Till to the sward 'tis slidden. 
 
 And who can say what wizardise 
 
 Had fashioned them in marvellous wise, 
 
 And given them power to stoop and rise 
 
 More high than thought hath travelled ? 
 Somewhat of cloud their frames consist, 
 But more of meteor's luminous mist. 
 All girt with strands of seven-hued twist 
 
 From rainbow's verge unravelled. 
 
 'T is said, and I believe it well, 
 That whoso mounts their magic selle, 
 Goes, if he list, invisible 
 
 Beneath the broadest noonlight ; 
 That virtue comes of Faery-fern, 
 Lone-lived where hill-slopes starward turn 
 Thro' frore night hours that bid it burn 
 
 Flame-fronded in the moonlight ; 
 
 For this holds true too true, alas ! 
 The sky that eve was clear as glass, 
 Yet no man saw the Faeries pass 
 
 Where azure pathways glisten ; 
 And true it is too true, ay me 
 That nevermore on lawn or lea 
 Shall mortal man a Faery see, 
 
 Though long he look and listen. 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 BOOK V 
 
 Only the twilit woods among 
 
 A wild-winged breeze hath sometimes flung 
 
 Dim echoes borne from strains soft-sung 
 
 Beyond sky-reaches hollow ; 
 Still further, fainter up the height, 
 Receding past the deep-zoned night 
 Far cnant of Fays who lead that flight, 
 
 Faint call of Fays who follow : 
 
 (Fays following.'} Red-rose mists o'erdrift 
 
 Moth-moon's glimmering white, 
 Lit by sheen-silled west 
 Barred with fiery bar ; 
 Fleeting, following swift, 
 Whither across the night 
 Seek we bourne of rest ? 
 
 (Fays leading.} Afar. 
 
 (Fays following.} Vailing crest on crest 
 
 Down the shadowy height, 
 Earth with shores and seas 
 Dropt, a dwindling gleam. 
 Dusk, and bowery nest, 
 Dawn, and dells dew-bright, 
 What shall bide of these? 
 
 (Fays leading.} A dream. 
 
 (Fays following} Fled, ah ! fled, our sight. 
 Yea, but thrills of fire 
 Throbbed adown yon deep, 
 Faint and very far 
 Who shall rede aright ? 
 Say, what wafts us nigher, 
 Beckoning up the steep ? 
 
 (Fays leading} A star. 
 
 (Fays following} List, a star ! a star ! 
 
 Oh, our goal of light ! 
 
 Yet the winged shades sweep, 
 
 Yet the void looms vast. 
 
JANE BARLOW 437 
 
 Weary our wild dreams are : 
 When shall cease our flight 
 Soft on shores of sleep ? 
 (Fays leading.} At last. 
 
 DORA SIGERSON (MRS. CLEMENT SHORTER) 
 
 THAT divine discontent with the colourless realisms and the 
 banalities of life which overcomes at uncertain periods the 
 soul of every poet, has been much with Miss Sigerson ; but 
 it exhibits itself more in her earlier and less mature than in her 
 later and more objective poems. It is not the joy bells of 
 Nature, but its funeral sounds that strike first upon her listen- 
 ing ear. Her earliest volume is tinged with a profound 
 melancholy a melancholy which to some extent runs through 
 her later ones also, though in them it does not obtrude nor 
 convey the same feeling of recurrent depression. She weighs 
 life in her balances, and finds it wanting. The very Hill of 
 Fame, upon which life's fortunate ones are crowned, raises in 
 her only a shudder for is it not built upon the bones of 
 the dead ? The shadows of the unfathomed mysteries of life 
 and death hang heavily over all. 
 
 White rose must die, all in the youth and beauty of the year. 
 
 That is the recurrent burden of many of her songs, the pre- 
 vailing note of her earlier music. Life as it unfolds itself is 
 cruelty and disillusion. No Prince Charming can ever recover 
 for her her fairy-land. Everything must end in death, and the 
 shadow feared of man is not to be got rid of. 
 
 So for the luxury of the flesh, wrap it in fur of fox, that it be warm, 
 
 In the bear's coat, sheltering its nakedness from storm ; 
 
 Give wine for its hot veins, fame for its throne, and laughter for its lips, 
 
 All ends in one eclipse. 
 
 Sunshine or snows, 
 
 We gain a grave, and afterwards God knows I 
 
438 BOOK V 
 
 The barren and meaningless conventionalities of life 
 disgust her. They help to make existence less endurable than 
 it might be if dealt with in a more rational manner. Under 
 the constant fret of petty conventionalities * the world becomes 
 a weariness, life's current choked with straws,' and she longs 
 for a man's freedom to leave it all behind, and come face to 
 face with Nature ' when the sky is black with thunder and the 
 sea is white with foam.' But the actualities of life tie her 
 down, fetter her, disappoint her, nor can she claim the personal 
 freedom of action that is a man's birthright. 
 
 Alas ! to be a woman, and a nomad's heart in me. 
 
 Of the poet, of the dreamer to whom his dream is the one 
 reality of earth, whose bubble is blown only to be burst, and 
 who yet continues to dream because he can do naught else, 
 she sings with much of the insight of a kindred nature. 
 
 Alone among his kind he stands alone, 
 
 Torn by the passions of his own sad heart, 
 Stoned by continual wreckage of his dr earns , 
 He in the crowd for ever is apart. 
 
 Is not this the very language of De Musset in his glorious 
 address to his fellow poet Lamartine ? 
 
 Desir, crainte, colere, inquietude, ennui, 
 Tout passe et disparait, tout est fantome en lui. 
 Son miserable coeur est fait de telle sorte 
 Qtfilfaut incessamment qu'une mine en sorte. 
 
 This feeling of depression however is suffused with, and to 
 some extent counteracted by, a strong religious faith and a 
 belief in the soul's immortality. In this respect she has the 
 closest affinities with her friends Katharine Tynan and Miss 
 Furlong, and one of her most powerful poems is that in which, 
 in her last volume, she describes the disastrous influence of 
 an Agnostic husband upon the heart of a believing girl fresh 
 from her convent. 
 
 In her second and third volumes Miss Sigerson (now 
 Mrs. Clement Shorter) has struck out into new paths, and 
 
DORA S1GERSON 439 
 
 largely sought for her inspiration outside of her own feelings 
 and experience. She has turned herself with signal success to 
 ballad-poetry, and in many of her pieces, especially in her 
 second volume, she has sought inspiration from Irish motives 
 and dealt with Irish superstitions. Her very absence from 
 Ireland has made her a phenomenon which we may often 
 witness more Irish than if she had never left it, and we can 
 overhear in more than one poem the cry of the Connacht 
 fiddler : 
 
 U\n ri)o ftAojne 
 
 As a ballad-writer Mrs. Shorter has been successful, chiefly 
 because she is unconventional. Almost all English ballads 
 more or less consciously imitate those splendid folk-tales in 
 verse that are the glory of the Lowlands of Scotland ; but the 
 tricks and turns of speech and thought that are in them so 
 delightful, because they are so natural, become at the present 
 moment affectation or worse, and no skill can atone for a 
 conscious unreality of style or expression. Mrs. Shorter's 
 merit is simplicity combined with directness, and the ballads 
 in her second volume are not mere tales in verse, but have 
 almost all of them an underlying motif, and exemplify truths 
 of deep psychical import. In her later ballads the mere story 
 or tale itself seems to have attracted her to versification, which, 
 however skilfully done, does not, I think, always possess the 
 interest of her earlier work, in which the tale evidently counted 
 for less than the eternal truth or feeling which it exemplified. 
 DOUGLAS HYDE (AN CRAOIBHIN). 
 
 Mrs. Clement Shorter is the eldest daughter of Dr. George Sigerson, 
 F. R.U.I, (q.v.), and was born in Dublin. Her marriage with Mr. 
 Clement Shorter, then editor of The Illustrated London News % took place 
 in 1895. Her mother, Mrs. Hester Sigerson, was author of a successful 
 novel, A RUINED RACE, and of poems which have appeared in various 
 anthologies. Mrs. Shorter's books are : VERSES, by Dora Sigerson, 1893; 
 THE FAIRY CHANGELING, by Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Clement Shorter), 
 1898 ; BALLADS AND POEMS, by Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Clement Shorter), 
 1899. 
 
440 BOOK V 
 
 CEAN Duv DEELISH 
 
 CEAN DUV DEELISH, beside the sea 
 I stand and stretch my hands to thee 
 
 Across the world. 
 The riderless horses race to shore 
 With thundering hoofs and shuddering, hoar, 
 
 Blown manes uncurled. 
 
 Cean duv deelish, I cry to thee 
 Beyond the world, beneath the sea, 
 
 Thou being dead. 
 
 Where hast thou hidden from the beat 
 Of crushing hoofs and tearing feet 
 
 Thy dear black head ? 
 
 Cean duv deelish, 'tis hard to pray 
 With breaking heart from day to day, 
 
 And no reply ; 
 
 When the passionate challenge of sky is cast 
 In the teeth of the sea and an angry blast 
 
 Goes by. 
 
 God bless the woman, whoever she be, 
 From the tossing waves will recover thee 
 
 And lashing wind. 
 
 Who will take thee out of the wind and storm, 
 Dry thy wet face on her bosom warm 
 
 And lips so kind ? 
 
 I not to know ! It is hard to pray, 
 
 But I shall for this woman from day to day. 
 
 * Comfort my dead, 
 
 The sport of the winds and the play of the sea. 
 I loved thee too well for this thing to be, 
 
 O dear black head ! 
 
 THE WIND ON THE HILLS 
 
 Go not to the hills of Erin 
 When the night winds are about ; 
 
 Put up your bar and shutter, 
 And so keep the danger out. 
 
DORA SIGERSON 441 
 
 For the good-folk whirl within it, 
 
 And they pull you by the hand, 
 And they push you on the shoulder, 
 
 Till you move to their command. 
 
 And lo ! you have forgotten 
 
 What you have known of tears, 
 And you will not remember 
 
 That the world goes full of years ; 
 
 A year there is a lifetime, 
 
 And a second but a day ; 
 And an older world will meet you 
 
 Each morn you come away. 
 
 Your wife grows old with weeping, 
 
 And your children one by one 
 Grow grey with nights of watching, 
 
 Before your dance is done. 
 
 And it will chance some morning 
 
 You will come home no more ; 
 Your wife sees but a withered leaf 
 
 In the wind about the door. 
 
 And your children will inherit 
 
 The unrest of the wind ; 
 They shall seek some face elusive, 
 
 And some land they never find. 
 
 When the wind is loud, they sighing 
 
 Go with hearts unsatisfied, 
 For some joy beyond remembrance, 
 
 For some memory denied. 
 
 And all your children's children, 
 
 They cannot sleep or rest, 
 When the wind is out in Erin 
 
 And the sun is in the West. 
 
442 BOOK V 
 
 A ROSE WILL FADE 
 
 You were always a dreamer, Rose red Rose, 
 As you swung on your perfumed spray, 
 
 Swinging, and all the world was true, 
 
 Swaying, what did it trouble you ? 
 A rose will fade in a day. 
 
 Why did you smile to his face, red Rose, 
 
 As he whistled across your way ? 
 And all the world went mad for you, 
 All the world it knelt to woo. 
 
 A rose will bloom in a day. 
 
 I gather your petals, Rose red Rose, 
 
 The petals he threw away. 
 And all the world derided you ; 
 Ah ! the world, how well it knew 
 
 A rose will fade in a day ! 
 
 THE ONE FORGOTTEN 
 
 There is a belief in some parts of Ireland that the dead are allowed 
 to return to earth on November 2 (All Souls' Night), and the peasantry 
 leave food and fire for their comfort, and set a chair by the hearth for their 
 resting before they themselves retire to bed. 
 
 A SPIRIT speeding down on All Souls' Eve 
 
 From the wide gates of that mysterious shore 
 Where sleep the dead, sung softly and yet sweet. 
 
 ' So gay a wind was never heard before, 5 
 The old man said, and listened by the fire ; 
 
 And, ' 'Tis the souls that pass us on their way,' 
 The young maids whispered, clinging side by side 
 
 So left their glowing nuts awhile to pray. 
 
 Still the pale spirit, singing through the night, 
 Came to this window, looking from the dark 
 
 Into the room ; then passing to the door 
 Where crouched the whining dog, afraid to bark, 
 
DORA SIGERSON 443 
 
 Tapped gently without answer, pressed the latch, 
 Pushed softly open, and then tapped once more. 
 
 The maidens cried, when seeking for the ring, 
 * How strange a wind is blowing on the door ! ' 
 
 And said the old man, crouching to the fire : 
 
 ' Draw close your chairs, for colder falls the night ; 
 Push fast the door, and pull the curtains to, 
 
 For it is dreary in the moon's pale light.' 
 And then his daughter's daughter with her hand 
 
 Passed over salt and clay to touch the ring, 
 Said low : ' The old need fire, but ah ! the young 
 
 Have that within their hearts to flame and sting.' 
 
 And then the spirit, moving from her place, 
 
 Touched there a shoulder, whispered in each ear, 
 Bent by the old man, nodding in his chair, 
 
 But no one heeded her, or seemed to hear. 
 Then crew the black cock, and so, weeping sore, 
 
 She went alone into the night again ; 
 And said the greybeard, reaching for his glass, 
 
 ' How sad a wind blows on the window-pane ! ' 
 
 And then from dreaming the long dreams of age 
 
 He woke, remembering, and let fall a tear : 
 ' Alas ! I have forgot and have you gone ? 
 
 I set no chair to welcome you, my dear.' 
 And said the maidens, laughing in their play : 
 
 ' How he goes groaning, wrinkle-faced and hoar. 
 He is so old, and angry with his age 
 
 Hush ! hear the banshee sobbing past the door.' 
 
 ALL' SOULS' NIGHT 
 
 MOTHER, mother, I swept the hearth, I set his chair and the 
 
 white board spread, 
 
 1 prayed for his coming to our kind Lady when Death's sad doors 
 
 would let out the dead ; 
 A strange wind rattled the window-pane, and down the lane a dog 
 
 howled on ; 
 I called his name, and the candle flame burnt dim, pressed a hand 
 
 the door-latch upon. 
 
444 BOOK V 
 
 Deelish ! Deelish ! my woe for ever that I could not sever coward 
 
 flesh from fear. 
 I called his name, and the pale Ghost came ; but I was afraid to 
 
 meet my dear. 
 
 mother, mother, in tears I checked the sad hours past of the 
 
 year that's o'er, 
 Till by God's grace I might see his face and hear the sound of his 
 
 voice once more ; 
 The chair I set from the cold and wet, he took when he came from 
 
 unknown skies 
 Of the land of the dead, on my bent brown head I felt the reproach 
 
 of his saddened eyes ; 
 
 1 closed my lids on my heart's desire, crouched by the fire, my 
 
 voice was dumb : 
 At my clean-swept hearth he had no mirth, and at my table he 
 
 broke no crumb. 
 Deelish ! Deelish ! my woe for ever that I could not sever coward 
 
 flesh from fear. 
 His chair put aside when the young cock cried, and I was afraid 
 
 to meet my dear. 
 
 A BALLAD OF MARJORIE 
 
 ' WHAT ails you that you look so pale, 
 
 O fisher of the sea?' 
 ' 'Tis for a mournful tale I own, 
 
 Fair maiden Marjorie.' 
 
 * What is the dreary tale to tell, 
 
 toiler of the sea ? ' 
 
 ' I cast my net into the waves, 
 Sweet maiden Marjorie. 
 
 ' I cast my net into the tide 
 Before I made for home : 
 Too heavy for my hands to raise, 
 
 1 drew it through the foam.' 
 
DORA SIGERSON 445 
 
 What saw you that you look so pale, 
 
 Sad searcher of the sea ? ' 
 A dead man's body from the deep 
 
 My haul had brought to me ! ' 
 
 ' And was he young, and was he fair ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, cruel to behold ! 
 In his white face the joy of life 
 
 Not yet was grown a-cold.' 
 
 ' Oh, pale you are, and full of prayer 
 
 For one who sails the sea.' 
 Because the dead looked up and spoke, 
 Poor maiden Marjorie. 5 
 
 'What said he, that you seem so sad, 
 
 O fisher of the sea ? ' 
 (Alack ! I know it was my love, 
 
 Who fain would speak to me !) 
 
 ' He said : " Beware a woman's mouth 
 
 A rose that bears a thorn." ' 
 1 Ah, me ! these lips shall smile no more 
 
 That gave my lover scorn.' 
 
 ' He said : " Beware a woman's eyes ; 
 They pierce you with their death." ' 
 
 * Then falling tears shall make them blind 
 
 That robbed my dear of breath.' 
 
 ' He said : " Beware a woman's hair 
 
 A serpent's coil of gold." ' 
 ' Then will I shear the cruel locks 
 
 That crushed him in their fold.' 
 
 ' He said : " Beware a woman's heart 
 As you would shun the reef." ' 
 
 * So let it break within my breast, 
 
 And perish of my grief.' 
 
446 BOOK V 
 
 1 He raised his hands ; a woman's name 
 
 Thrice bitterly he cried. 
 My net had parted with the strain ; 
 
 He vanished in the tide.' 
 
 ' A woman's name ! What name but mine, 
 
 O fisher of the sea ? ' 
 'A woman's name, but not your name, 
 
 Poor maiden Marjorie.' 
 
 STEPHEN LUCIUS GWYNN 
 
 BORN 1865 in the County Donegal, a son of the Rev. John 
 Gwynn, Dean of Raphoe, and now Regius Professor of Divinity 
 in Dublin University. By the mother's side Mr, Gwynn is a 
 grandson of Smith O'Brien. He was educated at St. Columba's 
 College and at Oxford. Mr. Gwynn's poems have appeared in 
 various periodicals, chiefly in The Spectator. He has published 
 one novel, THE REPENTANCE OF A PRIVATE SECRETARY (1898), 
 and an admirable book on touring in the North of Ireland, 
 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN ANTRIM AND DONEGAL (1899). 
 
 OUT IN THE DARK 
 
 OH, up the brae, and up and up, beyont the fairy thorn, 
 
 It's there they hae my baby laid, that died when he was born. 
 
 Afore the priest could christen him to save his soul, he died ; 
 
 It never lived at all, they said 'twas livin' in my side. 
 
 For many a day an' many a night, an' weary night and day, 
 
 I kent him livin' at my heart, I carena what they say. 
 
 For many a day an' many a night I wearied o' unrest, 
 
 But now I'm sore to hae my wean back hidden in my breast. 
 
 He'll sure be thinkin' long for me, an' wearyin' his lone 
 
 Up in thon corner by the whins wi' neither cross nor stone ; 
 
 Ay, tho' I'd died wi' him itself, they wouldna let us be 
 
 The corner o' a field for him, the holy ground for me ; 
 
 The poor, wee, helpless, Christless wean Och ! Mary, Mother mild, 
 
 Sure, ye were unbaptised yourseF, have pity on a child. 
 
STEPHEN LUCIUS GWYNN 447 
 
 Th' are many a wean that lies wi' him, and none that got a name, 
 
 Th' are many a wife, hard put till it, was glad that dead they came ; 
 
 Ay, many a man that scarcely minds a child o' his lies there ; 
 
 But, och ! it's cruel hard to quit the first you'd ever bear. 
 
 The graves are all that tiny that they'd hardly raise a mound, 
 
 And couples o' a Sunday do be coortin' on thon ground, 
 
 An' th' are none that thinks upon them ; but my heart'll be there 
 
 still, 
 
 On the sod among the bracken an' the whins upon the hill. 
 I'd be feared to come o' night there, for the hill is fairy ground, 
 But th' are, maybe, more nor fairies dancin' in the fairy round 
 Och, an' if I only thought it ! sure, I'd let them do their worst, 
 An' I'd go to see my baby, tho' I be to be accursed. 
 But I'll never reach my wean now, neither here nor in the sod, 
 An' I'm betther wi' the Christians an' the souls that's saved for 
 
 God; 
 
 Och, to feel his fingers on me an' to clasp him when he smiled ! 
 Sure, ye'd think there'd be one heaven for the mother an' the child. 
 
 MATER SEVERA 
 
 WHERE the huge Atlantic swings heavy water eastward, 
 Ireland, square to meet it, shoulders off the seas ; 
 
 Wild are all her coasts with stress of cliff and billow, 
 On her northern moorland is little sheltered ease. 
 
 Well is with the salmon, ranger of her rivers : 
 Well is with the mackerel shoaling in each bay, 
 
 Dear is all the land to the lonely snipe and curlew : 
 Ay, but for its manfolk ! a bitter lot have they. 
 
 Thankless is the soil : men trench, and delve, and labour 
 Black and spongy peat amid barren knowes of stone : 
 
 Then to win a living overseas they travel, 
 
 And their women gather, if God pleases, what was sown. 
 
 Harvesters, a-homing from the golden tilth of England, 
 Where they sweat to cope with increase of teeming years, 
 
 Find too oft returning, sick with others' plenty, 
 
 Sunless autumn dank upon green and spindling ears. 
 
448 BOOK V 
 
 Or a tainted south wind brings upon the root-crop 
 Stench of rotting fibre and green leaf turning black : 
 
 Famine, never distant, stalks nearer now and nearer, 
 Bids them rake like crows amid mussel-beds and wrack. 
 
 Bleak and grey to man is the countenance of Nature ; 
 
 Bleak her soil below him, bleak her sky above ; 
 Wherefore, then, by man is her rare smile so cherished? 
 
 Paid her niggard bounty with so lavish love ? 
 
 Not the slopes of Rhine with such yearning are remembered ; 
 
 Not your Kentish orchards, not your Devon lanes. 
 'Tis as though her sons for that ungentle mother 
 
 Knew a mother's tenderness, felt a mother's pains. 
 
 Many an outward-bound, as the ship heads under Tory, 
 Clings with anguished eyes to the barren Fanad shore. 
 
 Many a homeward-bound, as they lift the frowning Foreland, 
 Pants to leap the league to his desolate Gweedore. 
 
 There about the ways God's air is free and spacious : 
 Warm are chimney-corners there, warm the kindly heart. 
 
 There the soul of man takes root, and through its travail 
 Grips the rocky anchorage till the life-strings part. 
 
 FRANCES WYNNE 
 
 THE daughter of a Dublin clergyman and author of a small 
 volume of poems, entitled WHISPER ! (1890), marked by an 
 impulsive tenderness and a natural grace of style. Her 
 powers both in prose and in poetry were developing with much 
 promise when her early death occurred in 1894. She had 
 married in 1892 her cousin the Rev. Henry Wynne. 
 
 A LESSON IN GEOGRAPHY 
 
 AWAY from the town, in the safe retreat 
 Of a rare old garden, sunny and sweet, 
 Four little happy children played 
 In and out of the light and shade, 
 
FRANCES WYNNE 449 
 
 Through a long summer's blissful prime, 
 
 Once on a time. 
 
 Between the garden borders neat 
 
 The gravel-walks stretched warm and wide. 
 
 The diligent brown-coated bees 
 
 Were ever astir 
 
 Among the roses and lavender 
 
 And the great dark pansies, yellow-eyed, 
 
 And the faint sweet-peas. 
 
 But the children on their tireless feet 
 
 Flitted about in the pleasant heat 
 
 Like the butterflies, 
 
 Nor even cared to stray outside 
 
 Their Paradise. 
 
 Round the old garden was a wall ; 
 
 Snapdragons crowded along the ledge, 
 
 Crimson and tall, 
 
 And in every niche and crevice small 
 
 Tiny mosses uncurled. 
 
 And though the children would often try, 
 
 And even stand on tip-toe to look, 
 
 They could hardly see over the top at all. 
 
 But there was one corner not quite so high 
 
 And above it, against the farthest edge 
 
 Of the beautiful sky 
 
 (The part that was golden and green and red 
 
 In the evenings, when they were going to bed) 
 
 A row of poplars shook and shook ; 
 
 And the children said 
 
 The poplars must be the end of the world. 
 
 On one of those happy summer days 
 
 When the garden borders were all ablaze, 
 
 And the children for once felt too hot to play, 
 
 Though all their lessons were done, 
 
 But lay 
 
 On the grass and watched a delicate haze 
 
 Quiver across the brooding blue 
 
 G G 
 
450 BOOK V 
 
 Up to the sun 
 
 Something happened strange and new. 
 
 For a beggar pushed open the garden door 
 
 And stood in the flooding sunshine bright 
 
 Full in the wondering children's sight, 
 
 A pale-faced woman, young and footsore, 
 
 With a baby boy on her arm. 
 
 Her ragged dress was all powdered grey 
 
 With the dust of the road. 
 
 She fixed a long bewildered gaze 
 
 On the quaint old garden gay, 
 
 Then, with a sudden smile and a nod, 
 
 She pointed in rapt delight 
 
 To the place where, cool and shimmering white, 
 
 The lilies shone 
 
 Touched the baby and said, ' Ah ! plaze, 
 
 If it wudn't do them flowers no harm, 
 
 Childhren, will yiz give him wan 
 
 For the love o' God ? ' 
 
 The children started, an awe-struck band, 
 
 At the stranger pair. 
 
 Then the youngest ran, and with one bold twist 
 
 Of his firm little wrist 
 
 He wrenched a thick lily stem in two, 
 
 And put it, with all its blossoms fair, 
 
 In the beggar baby's hand. 
 
 ' Ah ! acushla,' the woman said, ' there's few 
 
 In this hard world like you. 
 
 I've a long, long way to thravel yet, 
 
 Beyond them high threes over there, 
 
 But I'll not forget 
 
 To pray for you and yours everywhere, 
 
 Never fear. 
 
 Good evenin' an' God love ye, dear.' 
 
 'She's gone,' said Cissy ; 'how queer she spoke !' 
 Whispered Dickie : ' O Tom, you've broke 
 The best lily : whatever shall you do 
 
FRANCES WYNNE 451 
 
 When gardener sees the empty space 
 
 There where it grew, 
 
 And father has to be told ? ' 
 
 * It was for the love of God, you see, 
 I did it,' said Tom : ' so maybe He 
 Won't let them scold.' 
 
 ' We know now,' said Will, 
 
 * There's world the other side of that hill.' 
 
 "MOIRA O'NEILL' 
 
 THE poems of ' Moira O'Neill ' have mostly made their first 
 appearance in Blackivood and The Spectator, and have quite 
 recently appeared in a small volume published by Blackwood 
 & Sons. The authoress has also published two prose stories 
 THE ELF-ERRANT and AN EASTER VACATION. Her poetry is 
 Irish of the Irish tender, wistful, hovering on the borderland 
 between tears and laughter, and as musical as an old Gaelic 
 melody. It springs straight from life, a genuine growth of the 
 Antrim glens. 
 
 CORRYMEELA 
 
 OVER here in England I'm helpin' wi' the hay, 
 An' I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong day ; 
 Weary on the English hay, an' sorra take the wheat ! 
 Och ! Corrymeela ari the blue sky over it. 
 
 There's a deep dumb river flowin' by beyont the heavy trees, 
 This livin' air is moithered wi' the hummin' o' the bees ; 
 I wisht I'd hear the Claddagh burn go runnin' through the heat 
 Past Corrymeela wf the blue sky over it. 
 
 The people that's in England is richer nor the Jews, 
 There's not the smallest young gossoon but thravels in his shoes ! 
 I'd give the pipe between me teeth to see a barefut child, fe 
 Och ! Corrymeela an 1 the low south wind. 
 
 Here's hands so full o' money an' hearts so full o' care, 
 By the luck o' love ! I'd still go light for all 1 did go bare. 
 
 G G 2 
 
452 BOOK V 
 
 1 God save ye, colleen dhas,' I said : the girl she thought me wild ! 
 Far Corrymeela, art the low south wind. 
 
 D'ye mind me now, the song at night is mortial hard to raise, 
 The girls are heavy goin' here, the boys are ill to plase ; 
 When ones't I'm out this workin' hive, 'tis I'll be back again 
 Aye, Corrymeela, in the same soft rain. 
 
 The puff o' smoke from one ould roof before an English Town ! 
 For a shaugh wid Andy Feelan here I'd give a silver crown, 
 For a curl o' hair like Mollie's ye'll ask the like in vain, 
 Sweet Corrymeeia, ari the same soft rain. 
 
 JOHNEEN 
 
 SURE, he's five months, an' he's two foot long, 
 
 Baby Johneen ; 
 Watch yerself now, for he's terrible sthrong, 
 
 Baby Johneen. 
 
 An' his fists 'ill he up if ye make any slips, 
 He has finger-ends like the daisy-tips, 
 But he'll have ye attend to the words of his lips, 
 
 Will Johneen. 
 
 There's nobody can rightly tell the colour of his eyes, 
 
 This Johneen ; 
 For they're partly o' the earth an' still they're partly o' the skies, 
 
 Like Johneen. 
 
 So far as he's thravelled he's been laughin' all the way, 
 For the little soul is quare an' wise, the little heart is gay ; 
 An' he likes the merry daffodils he thinks they'd do to play 
 
 With Johneen. 
 
 He'll sail a boat yet, if he only has his luck, 
 
 Young Johneen ; 
 For he takes to the wather like any little duck, 
 
 Boy Johneen ; 
 
 Sure, them are the hands now to pull on a rope, 
 An' nate feet for walkin the deck on a slope, 
 But the ship she must wait a wee while yet, I hope, 
 
 For Johneen. 
 
MOIRA aNEILL^ 453 
 
 For we couldn't do wantin' him, not just yet 
 Och, Johneen, 
 
 'Tis you that are the daisy, an' you that are the pet, 
 Wee Johneen. 
 
 Here's to your health, an : we'll dhrink it to-night, 
 
 Sldinte gal, avic machree / live an' do right ! 
 
 Sldinte gal avoumeen ! may your days be bright, 
 Johneen ! 
 
 LOOKIN' BACK 
 
 WATHERS o' Moyle an' the white gulls flyin', 
 Since I was near ye what have I seen ? 
 
 Deep great seas, an' a sthrong wind sighin 
 Night and day where the waves are green. 
 
 Struth na Moile, the wind goes sighin' 
 Over a waste o' wathers green. 
 
 Sternish an' Trostan, dark wi' heather 
 
 High are the Rockies, airy-blue ; 
 Sure, ye have snows in the winter weather, 
 
 Here they're lyin' the long year through. 
 Snows are fair in the summer weather, 
 
 Och, an' the shadows between are blue ! 
 
 Lone Glen Dun an' the wild glen-flowers, 
 Little ye know if the prairie is sweet. 
 
 Roses for miles, an' redder than ours, 
 Spring here undher the horses' feet 
 
 Aye, an' the black-eyed gold sun-flowers, 
 Not as the glen-flowers small an' sweet. 
 
 Wathers o' Moyle, I hear ye callin' 
 Clearer for half o' the world between, 
 
 Antrim hills an' the wet rain fallin' 
 
 Whiles ye are nearer than snow tops keen : 
 
 Dreams o' the night an' a night wind callin', 
 
 What is the half o' the world between ? 
 
454 BOOK V 
 
 DOUGLAS HYDE 
 
 DR. HYDE'S best work as an Irish poet has been done either 
 in the Gaelic language or in translations from modern Gaelic, 
 in which he has rendered with wonderful accuracy the simpli- 
 city and tenderness of the peasant bards of the West, together 
 with the beautiful metrical structure of their verses. He has 
 devoted his life to the collection and publication of Gaelic 
 songs and folk-tales, and to the organisation of a movement for 
 the preservation of the ancient language. There is probably 
 no contemporary name in Irish literature which is better known 
 (on purely literary grounds) to the Irish people, and which has 
 become more endeared to them than that of Douglas Hyde. 
 
 Douglas Hyde, LL.D., M.R.I. A., was born in County Sligo in 1860, 
 and is a descendant of the Castle Hyde family of Cork. After a brilliant 
 career in Trinity College, Dublin, he settled down to Gaelic studies. 
 He has published collections of folk-tales (LEABHAR SGEULUIGHACHTA, 
 1889 ; Cois NA TEINEADH ; OR, BESIDE THE FIRE, 1890) and of poetry 
 (LovE-SoNGS OF CONNACHT, 1893) ; and in 1899 produced a LITERARY 
 HISTORY OF IRELAND which may be reckoned as the first attempt to 
 write a comprehensive and connected history of Gaelic literature. 
 
 MY LOVE OH ! SHE is MY LOVE 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 SHE casts a spell oh ! casts a spell, 
 Which haunts me more than I can tell, 
 Dearer, because she makes me ill, 
 Than who would will to make me well. 
 
 She is my store oh ! she my store^ 
 Whose grey eye wounded me so sore, 
 Who will not place in mine her palm, 
 Who will not calm me any more. 
 
 She is my pet oh ! she my pet, 
 Whom I can never more forget, 
 Who would not lose by me one moan, 
 Nor stone upon my cairn set. 
 
DOUGLAS HYDE 455 
 
 She is my roon J oh ! she my roon, 
 Who tells me nothing, leaves me soon ; 
 Who would not lose by me one sigh, 
 Were death and I within one room. 
 
 She is my dear oh ! she my dear, 
 Who cares not whether I be here, 
 Who would not weep when 1 am dead, 
 Who makes me shed the silent tear. 
 
 Hard my case oh ! hard my case. 
 How have I lived so long a space ? 
 She does not trust me any more, 
 But I adore her silent face. 
 
 She is my choice oh ! she my choice, 
 Who never made me to rejoice, 
 Who caused my heart to ache so oft, 
 Who put no softness in her voice. 
 
 Great my grief oh ! great my grief, 
 Neglected, scorned beyond belief, 
 By her who looks at me askance, 
 By her who grants me no relief. 
 
 She's my desire oh ! my desire, 
 More glorious than the bright sun's fire ; 
 Who were than wind-blown ice more cold, 
 Had I the boldness to sit by her 
 
 She it is who stole my heart, 
 But left a void and aching smart ; 
 And if she soften not her eye, 
 Then life and I shall shortly part. 
 
 1 R6in : secret treasure, love. 
 
456 BOOK V 
 
 RINGLETED YOUTH OF MY LOVE 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 RINGLETED youth of my love, 
 
 With thy locks bound loosely behind thee, 
 You passed by the road above, 
 
 But you never came in to find me. 
 Where were the harm for you 
 
 If you came for a little to see me ? 
 Your kiss is a wakening dew 
 
 Were I ever so ill or so dreamy. 
 
 If I had golden store 
 
 I would make a nice little boreen l 
 To lead straight up to his door 
 
 The door of the house of my storeen 2 
 Hoping to God not to miss 
 
 The sound of his footfall in it ; 
 I have waited so long for his kiss 
 
 That for days I have slept not a minute. 
 
 I thought, O my love ! you were so 
 
 As the moon is, or sun on a fountain, 
 And I thought after that you were snow 
 
 The cold snow on top of the mountain 
 And I thought after that you were more 
 
 Like God's lamp shining to find me, 
 Or the bright star of knowledge before, 
 
 And the star of knowledge behind me. 
 
 You promised me high-heeled shoes, 
 
 And satin and silk, my storeen, 
 And to follow me, never to lose, 
 
 Though the ocean were round us roaring ; 
 Like a bush in a gap in a wall 
 
 I am now left lonely without thee, 
 And this house I grow dead of, is all 
 
 That I see around or about me. 
 
 1 Path. * Little treasure. 
 
DOUGLAS HYDE 457 
 
 MY GRIEF ON THE SEA 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 MY grief on the sea, 
 
 How the waves of it roll ! 
 
 For they heave between me 
 And the love of my soul ! 
 
 Abandoned, forsaken, 
 To grief and to care, 
 
 Will the sea ever waken 
 Relief from despair ? 
 
 My grief and my trouble ! 
 
 Would he and I were 
 In the province of Leinster, 
 
 Or county of Clare ! 
 
 Were I and my darling 
 Oh, heart-bitter wound ! 
 
 On board of the ship 
 For America bound ! 
 
 On a green bed of rushes 
 
 All last night I lay, 
 And I flung it abroad 
 
 With the heat of the day. 
 
 And my love came behind me- 
 He came from the South ; 
 
 His breast to my bosom, 
 His mouth to my mouth. 
 
 LITTLE CHILD, I CALL THEE 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 LITTLE child, I call thee fair, 
 Clad in hair of golden hue, 
 
 Every lock in ringlets falling 
 Down, to almost kiss the dew. 
 
458 BOOK V 
 
 Slow grey eye and languid mien, 
 
 Brows as thin as stroke of quill, 
 Cheeks of white with scarlet through them, 
 
 Och ! it's through them I am ill. 
 
 Luscious mouth, delicious breath, 
 Chalk-white teeth, and very small, 
 
 Lovely nose and little chin, 
 
 White neck, thin she is swan-like all. 
 
 Pure white hand and shapely ringer, 
 
 Limbs that linger like a song ; 
 Music speaks in every motion 
 
 Of my sea-mew warm and young. 
 
 Rounded breasts and lime-white bosom, 
 
 Like a blossom touched of none, 
 Stately form and slender waist, 
 
 Far more graceful than the swan. 
 
 Alas for me ! I would I were 
 
 With her of the soft-fingered palm, 
 
 In Waterford to steal a kiss, 
 Or by the Liss whose airs are balm. 
 
 THE ADDRESS OF DEATH TO TOMAS DE ROISTE 
 
 FROM THE IRISH 
 
 I AM the Death who am come to you 
 
 Adam I smote and Eve I slew ; 
 
 All have died or shall die by me 
 
 Who have been or who shall be, 
 
 Until the meeting on that great hill, 
 
 Where the world must gather for good, for ill, 
 
 And judgment will fall upon every one 
 
 For the things he has thought and things he has done. 
 
 I am active as the mind, 
 
 And swifter than the rush of wind 
 
 That lifts the sea-gull off the lake, 
 
 And faster than goat in a mountain brake, 
 
 Swifter than the sounding tide, 
 
 Or the plunge of the bark with its long black side 
 
DOUGLAS HYDE 459 
 
 That furrows the wave when the cold sea wind 
 
 Rings in its whistling sails behind. 
 
 Swifter am I than the bird on the bough 
 
 Or the fish with the current that darts below ; 
 
 Swifter than the heavens high, 
 
 Or the cold clear moon in the star-bright sky, 
 
 Or the grey gull o'er the water, 
 
 Or the eagle that stoops when it scents the slaughter. 
 
 I am swifter than the pour 
 
 Of heavy waves on ocean shore, 
 
 Swifter than the doubling race 
 
 Of the timid hare with the hounds in chase. 
 
 I mount upon the back of kings 
 
 Standing by their pleasant things, 
 
 By the banqueting-board where the lamps are bright, 
 
 Or the lonely couch in the lonely night 
 
 I am a messenger tried and true ; 
 
 Wherever they travel, I travel too. 
 
 From the land of the End I have tidings wan 
 
 I love no woman, I like no man, 
 
 Nor high, nor low, nor young, nor old : 
 
 I snatch the child from its mother's fold, 
 
 I tear the strong man from his wife, 
 
 And I come to the nurse for the infant's life ; 
 
 I take from the month-old child the father, 
 
 The widow's son to myself I gather, 
 
 With her who was married yesternight, 
 
 And the wretch that wails for his doleful plight ; 
 
 I seize the hero of mighty deed, 
 
 And pull the rider from off his steed, 
 
 The messenger going his rapid road, 
 
 And the lord of the house from his proud abode, 
 
 And the poor man gleaning his pittance of corn. 
 
 And the white-necked maiden nobly born, 
 
 And the withered woman old and bare, 
 
 And the handsome youth so strong and fair, 
 
 From the hunt or the dance or the feast I bear. 
 
460 BOOK V 
 
 T. W. ROLLESTON 
 
 BORN 1857 in the King's County. Educated at St. Columba's 
 College, near Dublin, and Trinity College, Dublin. Mr. 
 Rolleston is author of some prose works (THE TEACHING OF 
 EPICTETUS, 1886 ; A LIFE OF LESSING, 1889) and of essays and 
 translations in German (UEBER WORDSWORTH UND WALT 
 WHITMAN, 1883; GRASHALME, von Walt Whitman, ueberset/t 
 von Karl Knortz und T. W. Rolleston, 1889). His 
 poems have chiefly appeared in The. Spectator, The Academy, 
 and in two small volumes published by the Rhymers' Club. 
 
 THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOIS 
 
 FROM THE IRISH OF ENOCH O'GILLAN 
 
 IN a quiet water'd land, a land of roses, 
 
 Stands Saint Kieran's city fair : 
 And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations 
 
 Slumber there. 
 
 There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest 
 
 Of the clan of Conn, 
 Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham 
 
 And the sacred knot thereon. 
 
 There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara, 
 
 There the sons of Cairbre sleep 
 Battle-banners of the Gael, that in Kieran's plain of crosses 
 
 Now their final hosting keep. 
 
 And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia, 
 
 And right many a lord of Breagh ; 
 Deep the sod above Clan Creide and Clan Conaill, 
 
 Kind in hall and fierce in fray. 
 
 Many and many a son of Conn, the Hundred-Fighter, 
 
 In the red earth lies at rest ; 
 Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers, 
 
 Many a swan-white breast. 
 
T. W. ROLLESTON 461 
 
 THE LAMENT OF MAEV LEITH-DHERG, 
 
 FOR CUCHOKB : SON OF MOGHCORB, KING OF IRELAND 
 
 From an extremely ancient Irish poem in the BOOK OF LEINSTER, fol. 24. 
 See O'Curry's MANUSCRIPT MATERIALS OF IRISH HISTORY, p. 480. 
 This Maev is not the warrior-goddess of Connacht, but a Queen of Ireland 
 in times approaching the historic, about A.D. 20. Cucorb (' Chariot - 
 Hound ') was slain on Mount Leinster on the borders of Wexford. 
 
 RAISE the Cromlech high ! 
 
 MacMoghcorb is slain, 
 And other men's renown 
 
 Has leave to live again. 
 
 Cold at last he lies 
 
 Neath the burial-stone ; 
 All the blood he shed 
 
 Could not save his own. 
 
 Stately-strong he went, 
 
 Through his nobles all 
 When we paced together 
 
 Up the banquet-hall. 
 
 Dazzling white as lime 
 
 Was his body fair, 
 Cherry-red his cheeks, 
 
 Raven-black his hair. 
 
 Razor-sharp his spear, 
 
 And the shield he bore, 
 High as champion's head 
 
 His arm was like an oar. 
 
 Never aught but truth 
 
 Spake my noble king ; 
 Valour all his trust 
 
 In all his warfaring. 
 
 As the forked pole 
 
 Holds the roof-tree's weight, 
 So my hero's arm 
 
 Held the battle straight. 
 
462 BOOK V 
 
 Terror went before him, 
 
 Death behind his back ; 
 Well the wolves of Erinn 
 
 Knew his chariot's track. 
 
 Seven bloody battles 
 
 He broke upon his foes ; 
 
 In each a hundred heroes 
 Fell beneath his blows. 
 
 Once he fought at Fossud, 
 Thrice at Ath-finn-Fail ; 
 
 'Twas my king that conquered 
 At bloody Ath-an-Scail. 
 
 At the boundary Stream 
 Fought the Royal Hound, 
 
 And for Bernas battle 
 
 Stands his name renowned. 
 
 Here he fought with Leinster 
 
 Last of all his frays 
 On the Hill of Cucorb's Fate 
 
 High his Cromlech raise. 
 
 SONG OF MAELDUIN. 
 
 THERE are veils that lift, there are bars that fall, 
 There are lights that beckon, and winds that call- 
 Good-bye ! 
 
 There are hurrying feet, and we dare not wait, 
 For the hour is on us the hour of Fate, 
 The circling hour of the flaming gate 
 
 Good-bye good-bye good-bye ! 
 
 Fair, fair they shine through the burning zone 
 The rainbow gleams of a world unknown ; 
 
 Good-bye ! 
 
 And oh ! to follow, to seek, to dare, 
 When, step by step, in the evening air 
 Floats down to meet us the cloudy stair ! 
 
 Good-bye good-bye good-bye ! 
 
T. IV. ROLLESTON 463 
 
 The cloudy stair of the Brig o' Dread 
 
 Is the dizzy path that our feet must tread 
 
 Good-bye ! 
 
 O children of Time O Nights and Days, 
 That gather and wonder and stand at gaze, 
 And wheeling stars in your lonely ways, 
 
 Good-bye good-bye good-bye ! 
 
 The music calls and the gates unclose, 
 Onward and onward the wild way goes 
 
 Good-bye ! 
 
 We die in the bliss of a great new birth, 
 O fading phantoms of pain and mirth, 
 O fading loves of the old green earth 
 
 Good-bye good-bye good-bye ! 
 
 THOMAS BOYD 
 
 A YOUNG Irish poet of remarkable power and promise. He is 
 a native of County Louth, and at present resides in London. 
 His very striking poem ' To the Leanan Sidhe ' shows a genius 
 closely akin to that of George Barley and eminently Celtic in 
 character. 
 
 To THE LEANAN SIDHE l 
 WHERE is thy lovely perilous abode ? 
 
 In what strange phantom-land 
 Glimmer the fairy turrets whereto rode 
 The ill-starred poet band ? 
 
 Say, in the Isle of Youth hast thou thy home, 
 
 The sweetest singer there, 
 Stealing on winged steed across the foam 
 
 Thorough the moonlit air? 
 
 Or, where the mists of bluebell float beneath 
 
 The red stems of the pine, 
 And sunbeams strike thro' shadow, dost thou breathe 
 
 The word that makes him thine ? 
 
 The Fairy Bride.' Pronounced Lenawn Shee. 
 
464 BOOK V 
 
 Or by the gloomy peaks of Erigal, 
 
 Haunted by storm and cloud, 
 Wing past, and to thy lover there let fall 
 
 His singing-robe and shroud ? 
 
 Or, is thy palace entered thro' some cliff 
 
 When radiant tides are full, 
 And round thy lover's wandering, starlit skiff, 
 
 Coil in luxurious lull ? 
 
 And would he, entering on the brimming flood, 
 
 See caverns vast in height, 
 And diamond columns, crowned with leaf and bud, 
 
 Glow in long lanes of light, 
 
 And there, the pearl of that great glittering shell 
 
 Trembling, behold thee lone, 
 Now weaving in slow dance an awful spell, 
 
 Now still upon thy throne ? 
 
 Thy beauty ! ah, the eyes that pierce him thro' 
 
 Then melt as in a dream ; 
 The voice that sings the mysteries of the blue 
 
 And all that Be and Seem ! 
 
 Thy lovely motions answering to the rhyme 
 
 That ancient Nature sings, 
 That keeps the stars in cadence for all time, 
 
 And echoes thro' all things ! 
 
 Whether he sees thee thus, or in his dreams, 
 
 Thy light makes all lights dim ; 
 An aching solitude from henceforth seems 
 
 The world of men to him. 
 
 Thy luring song, above the sensuous roar, 
 
 He follows with delight, 
 Shutting behind him Life's last gloomy door, 
 
 And fares into the Night. 
 
THOMAS BO YD 465 
 
 THE KING'S SON 
 
 WHO rideth thro' the driving rain 
 
 At such a headlong speed ? 
 Naked and pale he rides amain 
 
 Upon a naked steed. 
 
 Nor hollow nor height his going bars, 
 His wet steed shines like silk ; 
 
 His head is golden to the stars, 
 And his limbs are white as milk. 
 
 But lo, he dwindles as a light 
 
 That lifts from a black mere ! 
 And as the fair youth wanes from sight 
 The steed grows mightier. 
 
 What wizard by the holy tree 
 
 Mutters unto the sky, 
 Where Macha's flame-tongued horses flee 
 
 On hoofs of thunder by ? 
 
 Ah, 'tis not holy so to ban 
 
 The youth of kingly seed ; 
 Ah, woe, the wasting of a man 
 
 That changes to a steed ! 
 
 Nightly upon the Plain of Kings 
 
 When Macha's day is nigh 
 He gallops ; and the dark wind brings 
 
 His lonely human cry. 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON 
 
 IF I were asked to say what distinguishes the little school of 
 contemporary Irish poets, I would say they believe, with a 
 singular fervour of belief, in a spiritual life, and express this 
 belief in their poetry. Contemporary English poets are 
 
 H H 
 
4 66 BOOK V 
 
 interested in the glory of the world, like Mr. Rudyard Kipling ; 
 or in the order of the world, like Mr. William Watson ; or in the 
 passion of the world, like Mr. John Davidson ; or in the pleasure 
 of the world, like Mr. Arthur Symons. Mr. Francis Thompson, 
 who has fallen under the shadow of Mr. Coventry Patmore, 
 the poet of an older time and in protest against that time, is 
 alone preoccupied with a spiritual life ; and even he, except at 
 rare moments, has less living fervour of belief than pleasure in 
 the gleaming and scented and coloured symbols that are the 
 footsteps where the belief of others has trodden. Ireland, 
 which has always believed in a spiritual life, is creating in 
 English a poetry which, whatever be its merits, is as full of 
 spiritual ardour as the poetry that praised in Gaelic * the Ever- 
 Living Living Ones,' and ' the Country of the Two Mists,' and 
 f the Country of the Young,' and * the Country of the Living 
 Heart.' 
 
 ' A. E.' has written an ecstatic pantheistic poetry which 
 reveals in all things a kind of scented flame consuming them 
 from within. Miss Hopper, an unequal and immature poet, 
 whose best verses are delicate and distinguished, has no clear 
 vision of spiritual things, but makes material things as frail 
 and fragile as if they were already ashes, that we stirred 
 in some mid-world of dreams, as ' the gossips ' in her poem 
 'stir their lives' red ashes.' Mrs. Hinkson, uninteresting at 
 her worst, as only uncritical and unspeculative writers are un- 
 interesting, has sometimes expressed an impassioned and 
 instinctive Catholicism in poems that are, as I believe, as 
 perfect as they are beautiful, while Mr. Lionel Johnson has in 
 his poetry completed the trinity of the spiritual virtues by 
 adding Stoicism to Ecstasy and Asceticism. He has renounced 
 the world and built up a twilight world instead, where all the 
 colours are like the colours in the rainbow that is cast by 
 the moon, and all the people as far from modern tumults as 
 the people upon fading and dropping tapestries. He has so 
 little interest in our pains and pleasures, and is so wrapped up 
 in his own world, that one comes from his books wearied and 
 exalted, as though one had posed for some noble action in a 
 
LIONEL JOHNSON 467 
 
 strange tableau vivcint that cast its painful stillness upon the 
 mind instead of the body. He might have cried with Axel, 
 ' As for living, our servants will do that for us.' As Axel chose 
 to die, he has chosen to live among his books and between 
 two memories the religious tradition of the Church of Rome 
 and the political tradition of Ireland. From these he gazes 
 upon the future, and whether he write of Sertorius or of 
 Lucretius, or of Parnell or of ' Ireland's dead,' or of '98, or 
 of St. Columba or of Leo XIII., it is always with the same 
 cold or scornful ecstasy. He has made a world full of altar 
 lights and golden vestures, and murmured Latin and incense 
 clouds, and autumn winds and dead leaves, where one wanders 
 remembering martyrdoms and courtesies that the world has 
 forgotten. 
 
 His ecstasy is the ecstasy of combat, not of submission 
 to the Divine will ; and even when he remembers that * the 
 old Saints prevail,' he sees the ' one ancient Priest ' who alone 
 offers the Sacrifice, and remembers the loneliness of the 
 Saints. Had he not this ecstasy of combat, he would be 
 the poet of those peaceful and unhappy souls, who, in the 
 symbolism of a living Irish visionary, are compelled to inhabit 
 when they die a shadowy island Paradise in the West, where 
 the moon always shines, and a mist is always on the face of 
 the moon, and a music of many sighs is always in the air, 
 because they renounced the joy of the world without accepting 
 the joy of God. 
 
 W. B. YEATS 
 
 Lionel Johnson was born about 1867, and comes of a Sligo family. He 
 was educated at WinchesteY and Oxford, but was early attracted to Irish 
 studies and ideas. He has published a volume of verse, POEMS, 1895, ><a& we ^ 
 as a prose book on THE ART OF THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 WAYS OF WAR 
 
 A TERRIBLE and splendid trust 
 
 Heartens the host of Innisfail : 
 Their dream is of the swift sword-thrust, 
 
 A lightning glory of the Gael. 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 BOOK V 
 
 Croagh Patrick is the place of prayers, 
 
 And Tara the assembling-place : 
 But each sweet wind of Ireland bears 
 
 The trump of battle on its race. 
 
 From Dursey Isle to Donegal, 
 
 From Howth to Achill, the glad noise 
 
 Rings : and the heirs of glory fall, 
 Or victory crowns their fighting joys. 
 
 A dream ! a dream ! an ancient dream ! 
 
 Yet, ere peace come to Innisfail, 
 Some weapons on some field must gleam, 
 
 Some burning glory fire the Gael. 
 
 That field may lie beneath the sun, 
 
 Fair for the treading of an host : 
 That field in realms of thought be won, 
 
 And armed minds do their uttermost : 
 
 Some way to faithful Innisfail 
 
 Shall come the majesty and awe 
 Of martial truth, that must prevail 
 
 To lay on all the eternal law. 
 
 TE MARTYRUM CANDIDATUS 
 
 AH, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ ! 
 
 White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God ! 
 They for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed 
 
 All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod ! 
 These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night, 
 
 Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide : 
 They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the sight, 
 
 They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified. 
 
 Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go : 
 
 White Horsemen, who ride on white horses oh, fair to see ! 
 
 They ride where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow, 
 White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain : for ever He ! 
 
LIONEL JOHNSON 469 
 
 THE DARK ANGEL 
 
 DARK Angel, with thine aching lust 
 To rid the world of penitence : 
 
 Malicious Angel, who still dost 
 My soul such subtile violence ! 
 
 Because of thee, no thought, no thing, 
 
 Abides for me undesecrate : 
 Dark Angel, ever on the wing, 
 
 Who never reachest me too late ! 
 
 When music sounds, then changest thou 
 
 Its silvery to a sultry fire ; 
 Nor will thine envious heart allow 
 
 Delight untortured by desire. 
 
 Through thee, the gracious Muses turn 
 
 To Furies, O mine Enemy ! 
 And all the things of beauty burn 
 
 With flames of evil ecstasy. 
 
 Because of thee, the land of dreams 
 Becomes a gathering-place of fears ; 
 
 Until tormented slumber seems 
 One vehemence of useless tears. 
 
 When sunlight glows upon the flowers, 
 Or ripples down the dancing sea, 
 
 Thou with thy troop of passionate powers 
 Beleaguerest, bewilderest me. 
 
 Within the breath of autumn woods, 
 
 Within the winter silences, 
 Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods, 
 
 O Master of impieties ! 
 
 The ardour of red flame is thine, 
 And thine the steely soul of ice ; 
 
 Thou poisonest the fair design 
 Of Nature with unfair device. 
 
470 BOOK V 
 
 Apples of ashes, golden bright ; 
 Waters of bitterness, how sweet ! 
 
 banquet of a foul delight, 
 Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete ! 
 
 Thou art the whisper in the gloom, 
 The hinting tone, the haunting laugh ; 
 
 Thou art the adorner of my tomb, 
 The minstrel of mine epitaph. 
 
 1 fight thee, in the Holy Name ! 
 
 Yet what thou dost is what God saith. 
 Tempter ! should I escape thy flame, 
 Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death 
 
 The second Death, that never dies, 
 That cannot die, when time is dead ; 
 
 Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries, 
 Eternally uncomforted. 
 
 Dark Angel, with thine aching lust ! 
 
 Of two defeats, of two despairs : 
 Less dread, a change to drifting dust, 
 
 Than thine eternity of cares. 
 
 Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so, 
 
 Dark Angel ! triumph over me : 
 Lonely unto the Lone I go ; 
 
 Divine, to the Divinity. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF A DREAM 
 
 SADLY the dead leaves rustle in the whistling wind, 
 
 Around the weather-worn, grey church, low down the vale ; 
 The Saints in golden vesture shake before the gale ; 
 
 The glorious windows shake, where still they dwell enshrined ; 
 
 Old Saints, by long dead, shrivelled hands long since designed ; 
 There still, although the world autumnal be, and pale, 
 Still in their golden vesture the old saints prevail ; 
 
 Alone with Christ, desolate else, left by mankind. 
 
 Only one ancient Priest offers the sacrifice, 
 Murmuring holy Latin immemorial ; 
 
LIONEL JOHNSON 471 
 
 Swaying with tremulous hands the old censer full of spice, 
 In grey, sweet, incense clouds ; blue, sweet clouds mystical ; 
 
 To him in place of men, for he is old, suffice 
 Melancholy remembrances and vesperal. 
 
 THE AGE OF A DREAM 
 
 IMAGERIES of dreams reveal a gracious age ; 
 
 Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn. 
 
 The courtesy of Saints, their gentleness and scorn, 
 Lights on an earth more fair than shone from Plato's page ; 
 The courtesy of knights, fair calm and sacred rage ; 
 
 The courtesy of love, sorrow for love's sake borne. 
 
 Vanished, those high conceits ! Desolate and forlorn, 
 We hunger against hope for that lost heritage. 
 
 Gone now, the carven work ! Ruined, the golden shrine ! 
 No more the glorious organs pour their voice divine ; 
 
 No more rich frankincense drifts through the Holy Place ; 
 Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls, 
 Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls ! 
 
 Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace. 
 
 NORA HOPPER 
 
 MODERN poetry grows weary of using over and over again the 
 personages and stories and metaphors that have come to us 
 through Greece and Rome, or from Wales and Brittany 
 through the Middle Ages, and has found new life in the Norse 
 and German legends. The Irish legends, in popular tradition 
 and in old Gaelic literature, are more numerous and as beauti- 
 ful, and alone among great European legends have the beauty 
 and wonder of altogether new things. May one not say, then, 
 without saying anything improbable, that they will have a pre- 
 dominant influence in the coming century, and 'that their 
 influence will pass through many countries ? 
 
472 BOOK V 
 
 The latest of a little group of contemporary writers, who 
 have begun to found their work upon them, as the Trouveres 
 founded theirs upon the legends of Arthur and his knights, is 
 Miss Nora Hopper, whose two books, though they have many 
 of the faults of youth, have at their best an extraordinary 
 delicacy and charm. I got BALLADS IN PROSE when it came 
 out, two or three years ago, and it haunted me as few new 
 books have ever haunted me, for it spoke in strange wayward 
 stories and birdlike little verses of things and of persons I 
 remembered or had dreamed of ; it did not speak with the too 
 emphatic manner that sometimes mars the more powerful 
 stories Miss Fiona Macleod has told of like things and persons, 
 but softly more murmuring than speaking. Even now, when 
 the first enchantment is gone and I see faults I was blind to, 
 I cannot go by certain brown bogs covered with white tufts of 
 bog-cotton places where the world seems to become faint 
 and fragile without remembering the verses her Daluan a 
 kind of Irish Pan sings among the bogs ; and when once I 
 remember them, they run in my head for hours 
 
 All the way to Tir na n'Og are many roads that run, 
 
 But the darkest road is trodden by the King of Ireland's son. 
 
 The world wears on to sundown, and love is lost and won, 
 
 But he recks not of loss or gain, the King of Ireland's son. 
 
 He follows on for ever, when all your chase is done, 
 
 He follows after shadows the King of Ireland's son. 
 
 One does not know why he sings it, or why he dies on 
 November Eve, or why the men cry over him ' Daluan is 
 dead dead ! Daluan is dead ! ' and the women, ' Da Mort 
 is king,' for ' Duluan ' is but Monday and * Da Mort ' is but 
 Tuesday ; nor does one well know why any of her best stories, 
 'Bahalaun and I,' 'The Gifts of Aodh and Una,' 'The 
 Four Kings,' or 'Aonan-nan Righ,' shaped itself into the 
 strange, drifting, dreamy thing it is, and one is content not to 
 know. They delight us by their mystery, as ornament full of 
 lines, too deeply interwoven to weary us with a discoverable 
 secret, delights us with its mystery ; and as ornament is full of 
 
NORA HOPPER 473 
 
 strange beasts and trees and flowers, that were once the sym- 
 bols of great religions, and are now mixing one with another, 
 and changing into new shapes, this book is full of old beliefs 
 and stories, mixing and changing in an enchanted dream. 
 Their very mystery, that has left them so little to please the 
 mortal passionate part of us, which delights in the broad noon- 
 light .men need if they would merely act and live, has given 
 them that melancholy which is almost wisdom. 
 
 A great part of QUICKEN BOUGHS was probably written 
 before BALLADS IN PROSE ; for, though it is all verse, it has few 
 verses of the same precise and delicate music as those scattered 
 among the stories in the earlier book. But * Phyllis and 
 Damon ' is perfect in its kind, while ' The Dark Man ' gives 
 beautiful words to that desire of spiritual beauty and happiness 
 which runs through so much modern true poetry. It is 
 founded upon the belief, common in Ireland, that certain 
 persons are, as it is called, ' away ' or more with the fairies 
 than with us, and that * dark ' or blind people can see what 
 we cannot. 
 
 W. B. YEATS. 
 
 Miss Hopper's volumes are : BALLADS IN PROSE, QUICKEN BOUGHS, and 
 
 SONGS OF THE MORNING. 
 
 THE FAIRY FIDDLER 
 
 'Tis I go riddling, fiddling, 
 
 By weedy ways forlorn : 
 I make the blackbird's music 
 
 Ere in his breast 'tis born ; 
 The sleeping larks I waken 
 
 'Twixt the midnight and the morn. 
 
 No man alive has seen me, 
 
 But women hear me play 
 Sometimes at door or window, 
 
 Fiddling the souls away 
 The child's soul and the colleen's 
 
 Out of the covering clay. 
 
474 BOOK V 
 
 None of my fairy kinsmen 
 
 Make music with me now : 
 Alone the raths I wander, 
 
 Or ride the whitethorn bough ; 
 But the wild swans they know me, 
 
 And the horse that draws the plough. 
 
 THE DARK MAN 
 
 ROSE o' THE WORLD, she came to my bed 
 And changed the dreams of my heart and head ; 
 For joy of mine she left grief of hers, 
 And garlanded me with a crown of furze. 
 
 Rose o' the World, they go out and in, 
 And watch me dream and my mother spin : 
 And they pity the tears on my sleeping face 
 While my soul's away in a fairy place. 
 
 Rose o' the World, they have words galore, 
 And wide's the swing of my mother's door : 
 And soft they speak of my darkened eyes 
 But what do they know, who are all so wise ? 
 
 Rose o' the World, the pain you give 
 Is worth all days that a man may live 
 Worth all shy prayers that the colleens say 
 On the night that darkens the wedding-day. 
 
 Rose o' the World, what man would wed 
 When he might dream of your face instead ? 
 Might go to his grave with the blessed pain 
 Of hungering after your face again ? 
 
 Rose o' the World, they may talk their fill, 
 For dreams are good, and my life stands still 
 While their lives' red ashes the gossips stir ; 
 But my fiddle knows and I talk to her. 
 
NORA HOPPER 475 
 
 PHYLLIS AND DAMON 
 
 PHYLLIS and Damon met one day . 
 
 (Heigho !) 
 
 Phyllis was sad, and Damon grey, 
 Tired with treading a separate way. 
 
 Damon sighed for his broken flute : 
 
 (Heigho !) 
 
 Phyllis went with a noiseless foot 
 Under the olives stript of fruit. 
 
 Met they, parted they, all unsaid ? 
 
 (Heigho !) 
 
 Ah ! but a ghost's lips are not red ; 
 Damon was old and Phyllis dead. 
 
 (Heigho !) 
 
 ALTHEA GYLES 
 
 Miss ALTHEA GYLES may come to be one of the most impor- 
 tant of the little group of Irish poets who ^eek to express 
 indirectly through myths and symbols, or directly in little 
 lyrics full of prayers and lamentations, the desire of the soul 
 for spiritual beauty and happiness. She has done, besides the 
 lyric I quote, which is charming in form and substance, a small 
 number of poems full of original symbolism and spiritual 
 ardour, though as yet lacking in rhythmical subtlety. Her 
 drawings and book-covers, in which precise symbolism never 
 interferes with beauty of design, are as yet her most satisfactory 
 expression of herself. 
 
 W. B. YEATS. 
 SYMPATHY 
 
 THE colour gladdens all your heart ; 
 
 You call it Heaven, dear, but I 
 Now Hope and I are far apart 
 
 Call it the sky. 
 
476 BOOK V 
 
 I know that Natures tears have wet 
 The world with sympathy ; but you, 
 
 Who know not any sorrow yet, 
 Call it the dew. 
 
 WILLIAM LARMINIE 
 
 IT is difficult in an anthology to do justice to poetry whose 
 charm does not lie so much in the beauty of exceptional 
 passages as in a continuous elevation of thought. I believe Mr. 
 Larminie's verse, now almost unknown, will find many readers, 
 and that his two longest poems * Fand ' and ' Moytura ' 
 will be permanently remembered. It is difficult to understand 
 why this writer, who has many and great gifts as an imaginative 
 poet, should have been so coldly received. With the general 
 public the irregular form and the unusual metres may explain 
 the neglect, for the Gaelic assonance has in much of his verse been 
 substituted for rhyme. But the few who perseve r ed beyond 
 the first pages, long enough to allow the cadences to become 
 familiar, have found a growing charm such as we experience on 
 a misty morning when we go out and feel the sun's rays 
 slowly warming and pervading the world with clear cool light. 
 I confess this austere poetry at its best holds my imagination 
 almost as much as that of any contemporary writer. It is not 
 always beautiful in expression, though it is full of dignity. The 
 poet certainly does not ' look upon fine phrases like a lover.' 
 He is much more concerned with the substance of his thought 
 than with the expression. He leads us into his own spirit by 
 ways which are often rugged ; but at the end, as we close the 
 pages, we are on a mountain-top and the stars are very near. 
 He is a mystic, but his mysticism is never incoherent and 
 is always profoundly philosophical ; and those who perhaps 
 would look in poetry for other verbal effects of sound and 
 colour may at least read for this with interest and pleasure the 
 dramatic poem ' Moytura.' Here the battle fought between 
 
WILLIAM LARMINIE 477 
 
 the De Danann gods and the Fohmors becomes the eternal 
 war between light and darkness, and the Celtic legend is 
 interwoven with wonderful skill into more universal hopes and 
 traditions. For sustained imaginative power this poem is not 
 surpassed by anything in modern Irish poetry, and I cannot 
 read it without an excitement of the spirit. Mr. Larminie's 
 method of treatment of Irish traditions is indeed very different 
 from that of other contemporary artists who have handled them. 
 He has experimented in a style of his own which is sometimes 
 disagreeable, but often has a novel charm, and suggests that, 
 used by a more skilful artist in words, the assonance might 
 very well replace rhyme. Even where Mr. Larminie fails most 
 to express himself with charm, a spiritual depth and originality 
 in his thought is evident : and I might describe him as a poet 
 by saying that the spirit is indeed kingly, but without the 
 purple robe which should be the outer token of his lofty rank 
 
 A. E. 
 
 Mr. William Larminie was a native of Mayo, and lived most of his 
 life near Dublin. His early and lamented death took place in 1899. His 
 publications are GLANLUA AND OTHER POEMS, 1889 ; WEST IRISH 
 FOLK TALES AND ROMANCES, 1893 5 FAND AND OTHER POEMS, 1892. 
 
 THE SPEECH OF EMER 
 
 This fragment is from ' Fand. 1 Cuhoolin has been lured from his home by 
 the wiles of the goddess Fand ; his wife Emer c.iscovers him, and pleads with 
 him as follows : 
 
 HEED her not, O Cuhoolin, husband mine ; 
 
 Delusive is the bliss she offers thee 
 
 Bliss that will to torment turn, 
 
 Like one bright colour for ever before thine eyes, 
 
 Since of mortal race thou art. 
 
 Man is the shadow of a changing world ; 
 
 As the image of a tree 
 
 By the breeze swayed to and fro 
 
 On the grass, so changeth he ; 
 
 Night and day are in his breast ; 
 
478 BOOK V 
 
 Winter and summer, all the change 
 
 Of light and darkness and the seasons marching ; 
 
 Flowers that bud and fade, 
 
 Tides that rise and fall. 
 
 Even with the waxing and the waning moon 
 
 His being beats in tune ; 
 
 The air that is his life 
 
 Inhales he with alternate heaving breath ; 
 
 Joyous to him is effort, sweet is rest ; 
 
 Life he hath and death. 
 
 Then seek not thou too soon that permanence 
 
 Of changeless joy that suits unchanging gods, 
 
 In whom no tides of being ebb and flow. 
 
 Out of the flux and reflux of the world 
 
 Slowly man's soul doth gather to itself, 
 
 Atom by atom, the hard elements 
 
 Firm, incorruptible, indestructible 
 
 Whereof, when all his being is compact, 
 
 No more it wastes nor hungers, but endures 
 
 Needing not any food of changing things, 
 
 But fit among like-natured gods to live, 
 
 Amongst whom, entering too soon, he perishes, 
 
 Unable to endure their fervid gaze. 
 
 Though now thy young, heroic soul 
 
 Be mate for her immortal might, 
 
 Yet think : thy being is still but as a lake 
 
 That, by the help of friendly streams unfed, 
 
 Full soon the sun drinks up. 
 
 Wait till thou hast sea-depths 
 
 Till all the tides of life and deed, 
 
 Of action and of meditation, 
 
 Of service unto others and their love, 
 
 Shall pour into the caverns of thy being 
 
 The might of their unconquerable floods. 
 
 Then canst thou bear the glow of eyes divine. 
 
 And like the sea beneath the sun at noon 
 
 Shalt shine in splendour inexhaustible. 
 
WILLIAM LARMINIE 479 
 
 Therefore be no more tempted by her lures 
 
 Not that way lies thine immortality : 
 
 But thou shalt find it in the ways of men, 
 
 Where many a task remains for thee to do, 
 
 And shall remain for many after thee, 
 
 Till all the storm-winds of the world be bound. 
 
 EPILOGUE TO FAND 
 
 Is there one desires to hear 
 If within the shores of Eire 
 Eyes may still behold the scene 
 Fair from Fand's enticements ? 
 
 Let him seek the southern hills 
 And those lakes of loveliest water 
 Where the richest blooms of spring 
 Burn to reddest autumn : 
 And the clearest echo sings 
 Notes a goddess taught her. 
 
 Ah ! 'twas very long ago, 
 
 And the words are now denied her : 
 
 But the purple hillsides know 
 
 Still the tones delightsome, 
 
 And their breasts, impassioned, glow 
 
 As were Fand beside them. 
 
 And though many an isle be fair, 
 Fairer still is Inisfallen, 
 Since the hour Cuhoolin lay 
 In the bower enchanted. 
 See ! the ash that waves to-day, 
 Fand its grandsire planted. 
 
 When from wave to mountain-top 
 All delight thy sense bewilders, 
 Thou shalt own the wonder wrought 
 Once by her skilled fingers, 
 Still, though many an age be gone, 
 Round Killarney lingers. 
 
480 BOOK V 
 
 CONSOLATION 
 
 YES, let us speak, with lips confirming 
 The inner pledge that eyes reveal- 
 Bright eyes that death shall dim for ever, 
 And lips that silence soon shall seal. 
 
 Yes, let us make our claim recorded 
 Against the powers of earth and sky, 
 
 And that cold boon their laws award us 
 Just once to live and once to die. 
 
 Thou sayest that fate is frosty nothing, 
 But love the flame of souls that are : 
 
 * Two spirits approach, and at their touching, 
 Behold ! an everlasting star.' 
 
 High thoughts, O love : well, let us speak them ! 
 
 Yet bravely face at least this fate : 
 To know the dreams of us that dream them 
 
 On blind, unknowing things await. 
 
 If years from winter's chill recover, 
 
 If fields are green and rivers run, 
 If thou and I behold each other, 
 
 Hangs it not all on yonder sun ? 
 
 So while that mighty lord is gracious 
 With prodigal beams to flood the skies, 
 
 Let us be glad that he can spare us 
 The light to kindle lovers' eyes. 
 
 And die assured, should life's new wonder 
 
 In any world our slumbers break, 
 These the first words that each will utter : 
 
 * Beloved, art thou too awake ? ' 
 
WILLIAM LARM1NIE 481 
 
 THE SWORD OF TETHRA 
 
 From MOYTURA 
 
 The sword of Tethra one of the Kings of the Fohmors is captured by the 
 sun-god Lu. This sword is Death. 
 
 The Sword: I am the breath of Tethra, voice of Tethra, 
 The tongue of an utterance harsh : 
 I am the beat of the heart 
 Of the inmost darkness, that sends 
 Night to the world's far ends. 
 
 I am the raven of Tethra, mate of Tethra, slave of Tethra : 
 My joy is the storm 
 
 That strews the ground with the fruit 
 Half-living, bleeding, and bruised 
 From life's tree shaken. 
 I desire the flame of battle ; 
 I desire gore-spouting wounds ; 
 Flanks that are gashed, trunks that are headless 
 Heads that are trunkless in piles and in mounds ; 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Do you seek to bind me, ye gods, 
 
 And the deeds of me only beginning ? 
 
 Shall I gloat over triumphs achieved 
 
 When the greatest remains for the winning ? 
 
 Ye boast of this world ye have made, 
 
 This corpse-built world ? 
 
 Show me an atom thereof 
 
 That hath not suffered and struggled, 
 
 And yielded its life to Tethra ? 
 
 The rocks they are built of the mould, 
 
 And the mould of the herb that was green, 
 
 And the beast from the herb, 
 
 And man from the beast, 
 
 And downward in hurried confusion, 
 
 Through shapes that are loathsome, 
 
 Beast, man, worm, pellmell, 
 
 What does it matter to me ? 
 
 I I 
 
4*2 BOOK V 
 
 All that have lived go back to the mould, 
 To stiffen through ages of pain 
 In the rock-rigid realms of death. 
 
 Ah, ah ! 
 
 Loose me, ye gods ! 
 
 I stifle. I faint in your hands : 
 
 Your presence benumbs me : 
 
 An effluence from you exhales, 
 
 Life deadly to death, 
 
 The poison whereof overcomes me, 
 
 And it is not my doom to perish ; 
 
 Gods ye have slain that were brave and mighty, 
 
 But Tethra ye never shall slay. 
 
 Lu We will not loose thee till thou be subdued 
 Thy venom quenched a little ; till thy song 
 In milder music sheathe its jagged edge, 
 And choose a smoother speech that shall not rend. 
 
 The Sword : Ah, ah ! I gash ! Alas, alas ! 
 That even of me should soft things be averred ; 
 I am the song unheard, 
 
 Shall ofttimes lure men's falt'ring souls away ; 
 Soft as from summer's eve the tender light 
 Stolen by northern night, 
 My gentle call they gladly shall obey : 
 From them regretful tears shall flow not, 
 But eyes shine bright with hope to see the land they 
 
 know not. 
 Loose me ! loose me ! 
 
 STANDISH JAMES O'GRADY 
 
 MR. STANDISH O'GRADY was born in 1846 at Castletown 
 Berehaven, and was educated in Tipperary and at Trinity 
 College, Dublin, where he won a classical scholarship, and took 
 his degree in 1868. He was called to the Bar, and practised 
 that profession for a time, but ultimately devoted himself to 
 
STAN DISH JAMES O'GRADY 483 
 
 literature and journalism. He is now owner and editor of the 
 Kilkenny Moderator and of the All-Ireland Review, the latter 
 being the only literary weekly published in Ireland. His 
 HISTORY OF IRELAND : MYTHICAL PERIOD appeared in 1878, 
 and though totally unrecognised at the time, except by one or 
 two English journals such as The Spectator, it proved to be one 
 of the epoch-making books of modern Irish literature, re-creating 
 as it did for English readers the heroic character of Cuchullin, 
 and revealing a buried world of legendary splendour and 
 romance. Something of the same kind Mr. O'Grady has done 
 in the sphere not of legend but of authentic history in his 
 FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE, 1897, a tale of Elizabethan Ireland. 
 Other important works of Mr. O'Grady's (who must not be 
 confounded with the distinguished Irish scholar Mr. Standish 
 Hayes O'Grady) are FINN AND HIS COMPANIONS, 1892 ; THE 
 COMING OF CUCULAIN, 1894 ; and ULRICK THE READY, 1896. 
 Besides having done imperishable work for Irish imaginative 
 literature in prose, Mr. O'Grady is understood to have burned 
 a pile of poetry. These waifs have escaped destruction, and 
 appear to have in them much of the bardic afflatus which fills 
 the mythical and Elizabethan romances of the same author. 
 
 LOUGH BRAY 
 
 Now Memory, false, spendthrift Memory, 
 
 Disloyal treasure-keeper of the soul, 
 This vision change shall never wring from thee 
 
 Nor wasteful years effacing as they roll. 
 O steel-blue lake, high cradled in the hills ! 
 
 O sad waves, filled with little sobs and cries ! 
 White glistening shingle, hiss of mountain rills, 
 
 And granite-hearted walls blotting the skies, 
 Shine, sob, gleam, gloom for ever ! Oh, in me 
 
 Be what you are in Nature a recess 
 To sadness dedicate and mystery, 
 
 Withdrawn, afar, in the soul's wilderness. 
 Still let my thoughts, leaving the worldly roar 
 Like pilgrims, wander on thy haunted shore. 
 
 I I 2 
 
484 BOOK V 
 
 I GIVE MY HEART TO THEE 
 i 
 
 I GIVE my heart to thee, O mother-land 
 I, if none else, recall the sacred womb. 
 I, if none else, behold the loving eyes 
 Bent ever on thy myriad progeny 
 Who care not nor regard thee as they' go, 
 
 tender, sorrowing, weeping, hoping land ! 
 
 1 give my heart to thee, O mother-land. 
 
 II 
 
 I give my heart to thee, O father-land, 
 Fast-anchored on thine own eternal soul, 
 Rising with cloudy mountains to the skies. 
 
 proud, strong land, unstooping, stern of rule, 
 Me rule as ever ; let me feel thy might : 
 
 Let me go forth with thee now and for aye. 
 
 1 give my heart to thee, O father-land. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I give my heart to thee, heroic land 
 To thee or in thy morning when the Sun 
 Flashed on thy giant limbs thy lurid noon 
 Or in thy depth of night, fierce-thoughted one 
 Wrestling with phantoms of thy own wild soul, 
 Or, stone-still, silent, waiting for the dawn, 
 I give my heart to thee, heroic land. 
 
 IV 
 
 l' give my heart to thee, ideal land, 
 Far-soaring sister of the starry throng. 
 
 fleet of wing, what journeyings are thine, 
 What goal, what god attracts thee ? What unseen 
 Glory reflected makes thy face a flame ? 
 
 Leave me not ; where thou goest, let me go. 
 
 1 give my heart to thee, ideal land. 
 
A. E: 485 
 
 <A. E.' 
 
 SOME dozen years ago a little body of young men hired a room 
 in Dublin, and began to read papers to one another on the 
 Vedas and the Upanishads and the Neo-Platonists, and on 
 modem mystics and spiritualists. They had no scholarship, 
 and they spoke and wrote badly, but they discussed great 
 problems ardently and simply and unconventionally, as men 
 perhaps discussed great problems in the mediaeval Universities. 
 When they were scattered by their different trades and pro- 
 fessions, others took up the discussions where they dropped 
 them, moving the meetings, for the most part, from back 
 street to back street ; and now two writers of genius 
 'A. E.' and 'John Eglinton' seem to have found among 
 them, without perhaps agreeing with them in ever) thing, that 
 simplicity of mind and that belief in high things, less common 
 in Dublin than elsewhere in Ireland, for whose lack imagination 
 perishes. ' John Eglinton ' in Two ESSAYS ON THE REMNANT 
 and in the essays he has published in the little monthly maga- 
 zine they print and bind themselves, analyses the spiritual 
 elements that are transforming and dissolving the. modern 
 world ; while ' A. E.,' in HOMEWARD : SONGS BY THE WAY 
 and in THE EARTH BREATH, repeats over again the revela- 
 tion of a spiritual world that has been the revelation of mystics 
 in all ages, but with a richness of colour and a subtlety of 
 rhythm that are of our age. Plotinus wrote : ' In the particular 
 acts of human life it is not the interior soul and the true man, 
 but the exterior shadow of the man alone, which laments and 
 weeps, performing his part on the earth, as in a more ample 
 and extended scene, in which many shadows of souls and 
 phantom forms appear ; ' and so these poems cry out that ' for 
 every deep filled with stars ' there ' are stars and deeps within,' 
 and that * our thought ' is but ' the echo of a deeper being/ 
 and that ' we kiss because God once for beauty sought amid a 
 world of dreams,' and that we rise by 'the symbol charioted' 
 ' through loved things ' to ' lore's own ways.' They are full 
 
486 BOOK V 
 
 of the sadness that has fallen upon all mystics, when they have 
 first come to understand that there is an invisible beauty from 
 which they are divided by visible things. How can one be 
 interested in the rising and in the setting of the sun, and in 
 the work men do under the sun, when the mistress that one 
 loves is hidden behind the gates of death, and it may be 
 behind a thousand gates beside gate beyond gate ? 
 
 What of all the will to do ? 
 
 It has vanished long ago, 
 For a dream -shaft pierced it through 
 
 From the Unknown Archer's bow. 
 
 What of all the soul to think ? 
 
 Some one offered it a cup 
 Filled with a diviner drink ; 
 
 And the flame has burned it up. 
 
 What of all the hope to climb ? 
 
 Only in the self we grope 
 To the misty end of time : 
 
 Truth has put an end to hope. 
 
 It is this invisible beauty that makes the planets * break in 
 woods and flowers and streams ' and ' shake ' the winds from 
 them ' as the leaves from off the rose,' and that ' kindles ' all 
 souls and lures them * through the gates of birth and death,' 
 and in whose heart we will all rest when * the shepherd of the 
 ages draws his misty hordes away through the glimmering 
 deeps to silence' and to 'the awful fold.' But this invisible 
 beauty kindles evil as well as good, for its shadow is ' the fount 
 of shadowy beauty ' that pours out those things * the heart,' the 
 merely mortal part of us, ' would be,' and ' chases ' them in 
 'endless flight.' All emotions are double, for either we choose 
 'the shadowy beauty,' and our soul weeps, or the invisible 
 beauty that is ' our high ancestral self,' and the body weeps. 
 
 These poems, the most delicate and subtle that any Irish- 
 man of our time has written, seem to me all the more interest- 
 ing because their writer has not come from any of our seats of 
 literature and scholarship, but from among sectaries and 
 
<A. E: 487 
 
 visionaries whose ardour of belief and simplicity of mind have 
 been his encouragement and his inspiration. 
 
 W. B. YEATS. 
 
 'A. E.' is the nom de plume of Mr. George W. Russell. He was born 
 in Lurgan, 1867, and is author of two small volumes of verse : HOME- 
 WARD: SONGS BY THE WAY, 1894 (reissued with additional poems in 
 America, 1896) and THE EARTH BREATH, 1897. 
 
 SACRIFICE 
 
 THOSE delicate wanderers 
 
 The wind, the star, the cloud 
 Ever before mine eyes, 
 
 As to an altar bowed, 
 Light and dew-laden airs 
 Offer in sacrifice. 
 
 The offerings arise : 
 
 Hazes of rainbow light, 
 Pure crystal, blue, and gold, 
 
 Through dreamland take their flight ; 
 And 'mid the sacrifice 
 God moveth as of old. 
 
 In miracles of fire 
 
 He symbols forth His days ; 
 In gleams of crystal light 
 
 Reveals what pure pathways 
 Lead to the soul's desire, 
 The silence of the height. 
 
 DANA 1 
 
 I AM the tender voice calling * Away,' 
 Whispering between the beatings of the heart, 
 And inaccessible in dewy eyes 
 I dwell, and all unkissed on lovely lips, 
 Lingering between white breasts inviolate, 
 And fleeting ever from the passionate touch 
 I shine afar, till men may not divine 
 
 Dana is the ' Mater Deorum ' of the Celtic mythology. 
 
488 BOOK V 
 
 Whether it is the stars or the beloved 
 
 They follow with rapt spirit. And I weave 
 
 My spells at evening, folding with dim caress, 
 
 Aerial arms, and twilight-dropping hair, 
 
 The lonely wanderer by shore or wood, 
 
 Till filled with some vast tenderness he yields, 
 
 Feeling in dreams for the dear mother heart 
 
 He knew ere he forsook the starry way, 
 
 And clings there pillowed far above the smoke 
 
 And the dim murmur from the duns of men ; 
 
 I can enchant the trees and rocks, and fill 
 
 The dumb brown lips of earth with mystery, 
 
 Make them reveal or hide the god. I breathe 
 
 A deeper pity than all love, myself 
 
 Mother of all, but without hands to heal, 
 
 Too vast and vague they know me not ! But yet 
 
 I am the heartbreak over fallen things, 
 
 The sudden gentleness that stays the blow ; 
 
 And I am in the kiss that warriors give 
 
 Pausing in battle, and in the tears that fall 
 
 Over the vanquished foe ; and in the highest 
 
 Among the Danann gods I am the last 
 
 Council of mercy in their hearts, where they 
 
 Mete justice from a thousand starry thrones. 
 
 SYMBOLISM 
 
 Now when the giant in us wakes and broods, 
 Filled with home-yearnings, drowsily he flings 
 
 From his deep heart high dreams and mystic moods, 
 Mixed with the memory of the loved earth-things ; 
 
 Clothing the vast with a familiar face, 
 
 Reaching his right hand forth to greet the starry race. 
 
 Wondrously near and clear the great warm fires 
 Stare from the blue ; so shows the cottage light 
 
 To the field labourer whose heart desires 
 
 The old folk by the nook, the welcome bright 
 
 From the housewife long parted from at dawn 
 
 So the star villages in God's great depths withdrawn. 
 
1 A. E? 489 
 
 
 
 Nearer to Thee, not by delusion led, 
 
 Though there no house-fires burn nor bright eyes gaze ; 
 Y7e rise, but by the symbol charioted, 
 
 Through loved things rising up to Love's own ways ; 
 By these the soul unto the vast has wings, 
 And sets the seal celestial on all mortal things. 
 
 JANUS 
 
 IMAGE of beauty, when I gaze on thee, 
 Trembling I waken to a mystery ; 
 How through one door we go to life or death, 
 By spirit kindled or the sensual breath. 
 
 Image of beauty, when my way I go, 
 No single joy or sorrow do I know ; 
 Elate for freedom leaps the starry power, 
 The life which passes mourns its wasted hour. 
 
 And, ah ! to think how thin the veil that lies 
 Between the pain of hell and paradise ! 
 Where the cool grass my aching head embowers, 
 God sings the lovely carol of the flowers. 
 
 CONNLA'S WELL l 
 
 A CABIN on the mountain-side hid in a grassy nook, 
 With door and window open wide, where friendly stars may look, 
 The rabbit shy can patter in, the winds may enter free 
 Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy. 
 
 And when the sun sets dimmed in eve, and purple fills the air, 
 I think the sacred hazel-tree is dropping berries there, 
 From starry fruitage waved aloft where Connla's well o'erflows ; 
 For, sure, the immortal waters run through every wind that blows. 
 
 1 ' Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan, son of Ler, out of the 
 Land of Promise, went to Connla's Well, which is under sea, to behold it. 
 That is a well at which are the hazels of wisdom and inspirations, that is, 
 the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit and 
 their blossom and their foliage break forth, and then fall upon the well in 
 the same shower, which raises upon the water a royal surge of purple.' 
 THE VOYAGE OF BRAN, p 214. 
 
490 BOOK V 
 
 I think, when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembling dew, 
 How every high and lonely thought that thrills my spirit through 
 Is but a shining berry dropped down through the purple air, 
 And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere. 
 
 OUR THRONES DECAY 
 
 I SAID my pleasure shall not move \ 
 
 It is not fixed in things apart ; 
 Seeking not love but yet to love 
 
 I put my trust in mine own heart. 
 
 I knew the fountain of the deep 
 
 Wells up with living joy, unfed ; 
 Such joys the lonely heart may keep, 
 
 And love grow rich with love unwed. 
 
 Still flows the ancient fount sublime 
 
 But ah ! for my heart, shed tears, shed tears ! 
 Not it, but love, has scorn of time 
 It turns to dust beneath the years. 
 
 THE THREE COUNSELLORS 
 
 IT was the fairy of the place, 
 
 Moving within a little light, 
 Who touched with dim and shadowy grace 
 
 The conflict at its fever height. 
 
 
 It seemed to whisper ' Quietness,' 
 
 Then quietly itself was gone : 
 Yet echoes of its mute caress 
 
 Were with me as the years went on. 
 
 It was the warrior within 
 
 Who called : * Awake ! prepare for fight ! 
 Yet lose not memory in the din ; 
 
 Make of thy gentleness thy might ; 
 
 ' Make of thy silence words to shake 
 The long-enthroned kings of earth : 
 
 Make of thy will the force to break 
 Their towers of wantonness and mirth.' 
 
<A. E> 
 
 It was the wise all-seeing soul 
 
 Who counselled neither war nor peace : 
 * Only be thou thyself that goal 
 
 In which the wars of Time shall cease. 
 
 INHERITANCE 
 
 As flow the rivers to the sea 
 
 Adown from rocky hill or plain, 
 A thousand ages toiled for thee 
 
 And gave thee harvest of their gain ; 
 And weary myriads of yore 
 Dug out for thee earth's buried lore. 
 
 The shadowy toilers for thee fought, 
 
 In chaos of primeval day, 
 Blind battles with they knew not what ; 
 
 And each before he passed away 
 Gave clear articulate cries of woe : 
 Your pain is theirs of long ago. 
 
 And all the old heart-sweetness sung, 
 The joyous life of man and maid 
 
 In forests when the earth was young, 
 
 In rumours round your childhood strayed : 
 
 The careless sweetness of your mind 
 
 Comes from the buried years behind. 
 
 And not alone unto your birth 
 
 Their gifts the weeping ages bore, 
 
 The old descents of God on earth 
 
 Have dowered thee with celestial lore : 
 
 So, wise, and filled with sad and gay, 
 
 You pass into the further day. 
 
 THE MEMORY OF EARTH 
 
 IN the wet dusk silver sweet, 
 
 Down the violet-scented ways, 
 As I moved with quiet feet 
 
 I was met by mighty days. 
 
 491 
 
492 BOOK V 
 
 On the hedge the hanging dew 
 
 Glassed the eve and stars and skies ; 
 
 While I gazed a madness grew 
 Into thundered battle-cries. 
 
 Where the hawthorn glimmered white, 
 Flashed the spear and fell the stroke- 
 
 Ah, what faces pale and bright 
 Where the dazzling battle broke ! 
 
 There a hero-hearted queen 
 With young beauty lit the van : 
 
 Gone ! the darkness flowed between 
 All the ancient wars of man. 
 
 While I paced the valley's gloom, 
 Where the rabbits pattered near, 
 
 Shone a temple and a tomb 
 With the legend carven clear : 
 
 ' Time put by a myriad fates 
 
 That her day might dawn in glory ; 
 
 Death made wide a million gates 
 So to close her tragic story! 
 
 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 
 
 FEW poets have revised and retouched their work more than 
 Mr. Yeats, and this may perhaps be one cause of the singular 
 unity of the impression which it leaves upon the mind. In 
 the final edition of his poems, where much is altered and much 
 early work struck out altogether, one sees naturally but little 
 sign of the immature and experimental stages which every 
 poet must go through. He appears to have struck the rock, 
 and the water flowed ; we do not see it led with pain and toil 
 from distant sources, through miry channels, and by feeble 
 streamlets into its true bed. Nor is this merely because 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 493 
 
 Mr. Yeats has pruned away his early work so remorselessly. 
 His first printed poem was THE ISLAND OF STATUES, which 
 appeared in The Dublin University Review in the summer 
 of 1885, when the writer was just nineteen years old. It is a 
 drama of magic and enchantment, full of weird and picturesque 
 effects, and, though a little weak in its handling of long metres, 
 containing some of the most musical and beautiful verse Mr. 
 Yeats has ever written. Act II. Sc. 3 opens thus : 
 
 ' THE ISLAND. Flowers of manifold colour are knee-deep 
 before a gate of brass, above which, in a citron-tinctured sky, 
 glimmer a few stars. At intervals come mournful blasts from 
 the horns among the flowers.' 
 
 Then follows the exquisite lyric included in his last volume 
 under the title of ' The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoe : ' 
 
 ' What do you weave so fair and bright ? ' 
 * The cloak I weave of sorrow.' 
 
 Lines like these are also quite in the spirit of Mr. Yeats's 
 later work : 
 
 A foolish word thou gavest me ! 
 
 For each within himself hath all 
 
 The world, within his folded heart 
 
 His temple and his banquet hall. 
 
 And these : 
 
 Hear thou, O daughter of the days, 
 
 ****** 
 Thou shalt outlive thine amorous happy time, 
 And dead as are the lovers of old rime 
 Shall be the hunter-lover of thy youth. 
 Yet ever more, through all thy days of ruth, 
 Shall grow thy beauty and thy dreamless truth. 
 As a hurt leopard fills with ceaseless moan 
 And aimless wanderings the woodlands lone, 
 Thy soul shall be ; though pitiless and bright 
 It is, yet it shall fail thee day and night 
 Beneath the burden of the infinite, 
 In those far years, O daughter of the days. 
 
494 BOOK V 
 
 In lines such as the following there is perhaps a reminiscence 
 
 of Shelley: 
 
 Sad lady, cease ! 
 I rose, I rose 
 
 From the dim wood's foundation 
 I rose, I rose 
 
 Where in white exultation 
 The long lily blows. . . . 
 
 But on the whole it may be said that Mr. Yeats's note was 
 from the very beginning both singularly strong and singularly 
 original. His published works, at any rate, tell no story of any 
 period of discipleship. It is remarkable that his passion for 
 Ferguson's poetry, which he gave expression to in his first 
 published prose work, and which brought a powerful and 
 enduring influence into his literary development, never 
 coloured his style and manner of expression in the slightest 
 degree. 
 
 The influence in question was that of the ancient Celtic 
 literature and mythology, which Mr. Yeats has apprehended in a 
 deeper and more intimate sense than even Ferguson. That great 
 writer may count as the earliest of those who have contributed 
 to what I think can fairly be described as the supreme task of 
 Irish literature in the present day the task of leading that lite- 
 rature to strike its roots into the Gaelic past, and not into the 
 mighty tradition of England. Ferguson did this by re-telling 
 in noble verse the old Gaelic myths and heroic tales. But he 
 still remains a man of the nineteenth century, telling us about 
 gods and heroes of the prime. With Mr. Yeats, however, the 
 gods and heroes are no longer far-off they are here among us, 
 * forms more real than living man.' They are even so melted 
 into the imagination of the poet that they emerge from it not 
 as ' symbols ' of ideas (as the phrases of modern mysticism 
 have it), but the very ideas themselves. Niam and Caolte and 
 Cleena of the Wave are no mere symbols, no devices of the 
 intellect to represent the unintelligible they have an intensity 
 of spiritual life comparable only to that which, in effect, beings 
 of the same order possess in ancient Irish myth. 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 495 
 
 It is fortunate indeed that Irish mythology, in attracting 
 Mr. Yeats's imagination, laid hold of something which 
 mythology had never found before a great artist to absorb 
 and interpret it. This is a new thing in Irish literature. The 
 Gaelic bards and sagamen had the creative touch and musical 
 utterance, but next to no sense of the profound rhythms of life 
 and thought. Moore was an accomplished mechanician of verse, 
 but could rarely produce anything outside his regular stock of 
 tunes. Ferguson had the ' grand manner,' but not always the 
 sustained and arduous intensity of poetic passion informing 
 every vibrating line ; and Mangan, who had this intensity at 
 times, fell like many Irish poets of high natural endowment 
 too easily into the trivial and commonplace both in thought 
 and diction. Mr. Yeats, however, with a certain reservation 
 which I shall refer to later, is an artist pur sang. Though he 
 has deemed much of his work not worth republishing, I do not 
 think he has ever written one feeble or worthless passage one 
 that is not alive with the life of the imagination, and that does 
 not re-echo in some degree the music at the heart of things. He 
 has in this way set a shining example to Irish writers of this 
 and following generations he has set the standard of achieve- 
 ment at a height that the strongest may only attain, as Mr. 
 Yeats attained it, by strenuous, unflinching toil and an ear ever 
 open to the whisper of perfection. 
 
 But what of the substance, the matter, conveyed to us by 
 all this beautiful art ? This is not an indifferent question. It 
 cannot be answered by saying that Mr. Yeats's verse lives 
 and shines and sings, and is sufficiently criticised when we 
 show that it does so. Art is to help us to live not to live 
 well or ill, but simply to live. If, however, it induces bewildered 
 or unnatural or unwholesome moods, it is not helping us towards 
 life but towards death. On the other hand, life is more vast 
 and varied than any one individual or any one epoch can 
 know. The poet may be a pioneer on its dim frontiers, as well 
 as a cultivator of its rich fields of traditional and familiar toil. 
 Mr. Yeats's work is for the most part done on the frontier of 
 life. He has followed up doubtful gleams, interpreted mysteries, 
 
496 BOOK V 
 
 made himself a philosophy of dreams. The reader, however, 
 who bestows upon Mr. Yeats's poetry the attention it deserves, 
 will perceive that his mind is no mere Eolian harp answering 
 to the faint breathings of a wind from another world. Behind 
 Mr. Yeats's ' wizard song ' a keen, questioning, co-ordinating 
 intellect is at work like Baudelaire he tills his plot of ground 
 * avec le fer de la raison.' It is ill translating the philosophy 
 of a poet, which he reveals poetically, into scientific language ; but 
 it may perhaps be said, without overstraining the attempt to 
 formalise and define, that Mr. Yeats like the Oriental mystics 
 who formulated their creed, and the Celtic mystics who did 
 not, regards the outer world as a creation of spiritual activity 
 bids us cultivate the inward life, the inward vision, as the sure 
 path to truth and peace. The profound and beautiful poem 
 named * The Two Trees,' which is included in the selection 
 here given, seems to me to contain as much of his scheme of 
 thought as can be put into form so compressed. The idea is 
 of course in itself neither new nor rare ; but what is rare is 
 Mr. Yeats's firm grasp of it, his rich and subtle illustration of 
 it, the new and beautiful vesture of imagination he has found 
 for it. 
 
 Mr. Yeats has still, it may be hoped, a long literary career 
 before him, and many new fields of work to enter upon. But 
 it may be observed that the ground he has already covered 
 is not wanting in extent and variety. Poems like ' Father 
 Gilligan ' or < The Old Pensioner ' or the ' Fiddler of Dooney ' 
 show a command of simple objective emotion which may yet 
 be developed in work of what is called a more ' popular ' charac- 
 ter than Mr. Yeats has so far done. Some love-poems, more- 
 over, such as ' When you are Old ' or ' The Cloths of Heaven,' 
 have for all their rare and spiritual grace a strain of human 
 passion more intense than that of many lyrists who have won 
 fame by singing of nothing but love. Whether these qualities 
 will ever yield work of great tragic power is a question that the 
 future must decide. Mr. Yeats's dramatic experiments appear 
 to testify to some impulse in this direction. His first published 
 work and his second were both in dramatic form, and his 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 497 
 
 COUNTESS CATHLEEN and the LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE are 
 not only dramas, but have attained the natural end of a dra'ma 
 that of being acted. Yet I do not know that Mr. Yeats's 
 dramatic work forms, so far, an exception to the general rule that 
 good drama can only be written by poets both gifted with the 
 dramatic imagination and intimately familiar with the stage. 
 In dramatic composition Mr. Yeats appears to be moving 
 about in worlds not realised. There are, no doubt, dramatists 
 of the 'literary' school, who seem to ignore the fact that in 
 assuming dramatic form a poem also assumes certain stringent 
 laws and responsibilities foreign to other forms of poetry. I 
 grant that if d'Annunzio, for instance, is a dramatist, so is 
 Mr. Yeats ; and I grant also that a sort of pageant accom- 
 panied by recitative may be a legitimate and interesting form 
 of art, so long as it is kept strictly within its own conventions. 
 Yet I cannot but think that Mr. Yeats's dramatic enterprises 
 are a step in the wrong direction, or>ather I should say a step 
 for which a certain training and discipline are needed that his 
 talent has not hitherto undergone. 
 
 This is one reservation I have to make in my admiration 
 for a poet whom I consider the first of living writers in the 
 English language. Another, and a much slighter one, concerns 
 itself with his occasional use of terms which are purely symbolic 
 and not vitalised by the imagination. Probably Mr. Yeats has 
 caught this habit from his study of Blake Blake, who might 
 have left volumes of immortal verse had not his intellect 
 mastered his imagination and led him into limitless deserts of 
 dry symbolism. Mr. Yeats's imagination, as I have already 
 said, is usually supreme in these matters ; it burns up the 
 symbol, and a winged creature soars singing from the flame. 
 But the mystic in him is sometimes, especially in his later work, 
 found adoring the mere stigmata of mysticism ; and then one 
 thinks with dismay that a finer and stronger genius than 
 Blake's may some day lose itself in that dreary waste inhabited 
 by Los and Ore and Enitharmion. 
 
 But these forebodings soon vanish when one hears again 
 the * lake water lapping ' on the shores of Innisfree, or the mur- 
 
 K K 
 
498 BOOK V 
 
 muring of the bell-branch which Mr. Yeats has taken from the 
 hand of nameless singers who moved the heart of Ireland a 
 thousand years ago 
 
 It charmed away the merchant from his guile, 
 And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle, 
 And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle, 
 
 For all who heard it dreamed a little while. 
 
 T. W. ROLLESTON. 
 
 W. B. Yeats was born in Dublin, June 13, 1866 ; the eldest son of 
 J. B. Yeats, R.H.A., a well-known Irish artist. He was educated chiefly 
 at the High School, Harcourt Street, Dublin, but spent much, of his early 
 life in the County Sligo, where his grandparents lived. The scenery of the 
 Rosses has entered deeply into his poetry, as those who know that region 
 will readily perceive. In 1885 he published THE ISLAND OF STATUES, a 
 romantic drama, in The Dublin University Revie^l>. MOSADA, a short 
 dramatic piece, was published in the same year as a brochure by Sealy 
 Bryers and Walker, Dublin. The WANDERINGS OF OISIN AND OTHER 
 POEMS appeared in 1888 and the COUNTESS CATHLEEN in 1892. His 
 collected poems have appeared in two editions, the latest in 1899, and the 
 latter year saw also the publication of the WIND AMONG THE REEDS. 
 The CELTIC TWILIGHT and the SECRET ROSE are volumes of prose tales 
 and sketches. Mr. Yeats took a prominent part in the foundation of the 
 Irish Literary Societies of Dublin and of London, under the auspices of the 
 former of which his COUNTESS CATHLEEN was acted in 1899, a t the 
 Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin, in connection with the enterprise known 
 as the Irish Literary Theatre. In 1892 Mr. Yeats collaborated with Mr. 
 E. J. Ellis in bringing out a sumptuous edition of the works of William 
 Blake, with a memoir and an exposition of Blake's philosophy (Quaritch). 
 
 THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE 
 
 THE host is riding from Knocknarea 
 And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare ; 
 Caolte tossing his burning hair, 
 
 And Niamh calling : Away, come away : 
 
 Empty your heart of its mortal dream. 
 
 The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, 
 Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, 
 
 Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 499 
 
 Our arnts are waving, our lips are apart ; 
 
 And if any gaze on our rushing band, 
 
 We come between him and the deed of his hand 
 We come between him and the hope of his heart. 
 The host is rushing 'twixt night and day, 
 
 And where is there hope or deed as fair ? 
 
 Caolte tossing his burning hair, 
 And Niamh calling : Away, come away. 
 
 MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN BEAUTY 
 
 WHEN my arms wrap you round, I press 
 
 My heart upon the loveliness 
 
 That has long faded from the world ; 
 
 The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled 
 
 In shadowy pools, when armies fled ; 
 
 The love-tales wove with silken thread 
 
 By dreaming ladies upon cloth 
 
 That has made fat the murderous moth ; 
 
 The roses that of old time were 
 
 Woven by ladies in their hair ; 
 
 The dew-cold lilies ladies bore 
 
 Through many a sacred corridor, 
 
 Where such grey clouds of incense rose 
 
 That only the gods' eyes did not close : 
 
 For that pale breast and lingering hand 
 
 Come from a more dream-heavy land 
 
 A more dream-heavy hour than this. 
 
 And when you sigh from kiss to kiss 
 
 I hear white Beauty sighing, too, 
 
 For hours when all must fade like dew, 
 
 But flame on flame, deep under deep, 
 
 Throne over throne, where in half-sleep 
 
 Their swords upon their iron knees 
 
 Brood her high lonely mysteries. 
 
 KK2 
 
500 BOOK V 
 
 THE ROSE OF THE WORLD 
 
 WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream ? 
 For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, 
 Mournful that no new wonder may betide, 
 
 Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam. 
 And Usna's children died. 
 
 We and the labouring world are passing by : 
 Amid men's souls, that waver and give place, 
 Like the pale waters in their wintry race, 
 
 Under the passing stars, foam of the sky 
 Lives on this lonely face. 
 
 Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode : 
 Before you were, or any hearts to beat, 
 Weary and kind one lingered by His seat \ 
 
 He made the world to be a grassy road 
 Before her wandering feet. 
 
 THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE 
 
 I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
 And a small cabin built there, of clay and wattles made ; 
 
 Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, 
 And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 
 
 And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping 
 
 slow, 
 Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket 
 
 sings 
 
 There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
 And evening full of the linnet's wings. 
 
 I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
 
 I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore ; 
 
 While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 
 I hear it in the deep heart's core. 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 501 
 
 WHEN YOU ARE OLD 
 
 WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, 
 And nodding by the fire, take down this book, 
 And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 
 
 Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep ; 
 
 How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
 And loved your beauty with love false or true ! 
 But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 
 
 And loved the sorrows of your changing face. 
 
 And bending down beside the glowing bars 
 Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled 
 And paced upon the mountains overhead, 
 
 And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. 
 
 A DREAM OF A BLESSED SPIRIT 
 
 ALL the heavy days are over ; 
 
 Leave the body's coloured pride 
 Underneath the grass and clover, 
 
 With the feet laid side by side. 
 
 One with her are mirth and duty ; 
 
 Bear the gold-embroidered dress, 
 For she needs not her sad beauty, 
 
 To the scented oaken press. 
 
 Hers the kiss of Mother Mary, 
 The long hair is on her face ; 
 
 Still she goes with footsteps wary, 
 Full of earth's old timid grace : 
 
 With white feet of angels seven 
 Her white feet go glimmering ; 
 
 And above the deep of heaven, 
 Flame on flame and wing on wing. 
 
502 BOOK V 
 
 THE LAMENTATION OF THE OLD PENSIONER 
 
 I had a chair at every hearth, 
 When no one turned to see, 
 
 With Look at that old fellow there 
 And who may he be ? ' 
 
 And therefore do I wander now, 
 And the fret lies on me. 
 
 The roadside trees keep murmuring- 
 Ah ! wherefore murmur ye, 
 
 As in the old days long gone by, 
 Green oak and poplar tree ? 
 
 The well-known faces are all gone, 
 And the fret lies on me. 
 
 THE Two TREES 
 
 BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, 
 
 The holy tree is growing there ; 
 From joy the holy branches start, 
 
 And all the trembling flowers they bear. 
 The changing colours of its fruit 
 
 Have dowered the stars with merry light 
 The surety of its hidden root 
 
 Has planted quiet in the night ; 
 The shaking of its leafy head 
 
 Has given the waves their melody, 
 And made my lips and music wed, 
 
 Murmuring a wizard song for thee. 
 There, through bewildered branches, go 
 
 Winged Loves borne on in gentle strife, 
 Tossing and tossing to and fro 
 
 The flaming circle of our life. 
 When looking on their shaken hair, 
 
 And dreaming how they dance and dart, 
 Thine eyes grow full of tender care : 
 
 Beloved, gaze in thine own heart. 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 503 
 
 Gaze no more in the bitter glass 
 
 The demons, with their subtle guile, 
 Lift up before us when they pass, 
 
 Or only gaze a little while ; 
 For there a fatal image grows, 
 
 With broken boughs and blackened leaves, 
 And roots half hidden under snows 
 
 Driven by a storm that ever grieves. 
 For all things turn to barrenness 
 
 In the dim glass the demons hold 
 The glass of outer weariness, 
 
 Made when God slept in times of old. 
 There, through the broken branches, go 
 
 The ravens of unresting thought ; 
 Peering and flying to and fro, 
 
 To see men's souls bartered and bought. 
 When they are heard upon the wind, 
 
 And when they shake their wings, alas ! 
 Thy tender eyes grow all unkind : 
 
 Gaze no more in the bitter glass. 
 
 THE ISLAND OF SLEEP 
 From THE WANDERINGS OF OisfN 
 
 FLED foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky 
 
 smoke, 
 High as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the 
 
 tide ; 
 And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance 
 
 broke ; 
 
 The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and 
 sighed. 
 
 I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan 
 Lomair, 
 
 And never a song sang Niam, and over my finger-tips 
 Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair 
 
 And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips. 
 
504 BOOK V 
 
 Were we days long or hours long in riding, when rolled in a grisly 
 
 peace, 
 
 An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak ? 
 And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not ; for whiter than new- 
 washed fleece 
 
 Fled foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky 
 smoke. 
 
 And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge the sea's edge barren 
 
 and grey, 
 
 Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, 
 Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten 
 
 away 
 
 Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the 
 seas. 
 
 But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling 
 
 bark; 
 Dropping a murmurous dropping old silence and that one 
 
 sound ; 
 
 For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark ; 
 Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground. 
 
 And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night, 
 For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world 
 
 and the sun, 
 Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the 
 
 light, 
 
 And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world 
 was one. 
 
 Till the horse gave a whinny ; for, cumbrous with stems of the 
 
 hazel and oak, 
 A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass 
 
 lay, 
 
 Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk, 
 Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the 
 way. 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 505 
 
 And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and 
 
 blade ; 
 And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years 
 
 old 
 
 Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid, 
 And more comely than man can make them with bronze and 
 silver and gold. 
 
 And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore 
 
 men ; 
 The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws 
 
 of birds, 
 And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the 
 
 mural glen, 
 
 The breathing came from those bodies, long-warless, grown 
 whiter than curds. 
 
 The wood was so spacious above them that He who had stars for 
 
 His flocks 
 
 Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew- 
 cumbered skies ; 
 So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in 
 
 their locks, 
 Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes. 
 
 And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and 
 
 came, 
 
 Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow-place wide ; 
 And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft 
 
 star-flame, 
 Lay loose in a place of shadow ; we drew the reins by his side. 
 
 Golden the nails of his bird-claws, flung loosely along the dim 
 
 ground ; 
 In one was a branch soft-shining, with bells more many than 
 
 sighs, 
 
 In midst of an old man's bosom ; owls ruffling and pacing around 
 Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes. 
 
506 BOOK V 
 
 And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers ; no, neither in 
 
 house of a cann 
 In a realm where the handsome are many, or in glamours by 
 
 demons flung, 
 Are faces alive with such beauty made known to the salt eye of 
 
 man, 
 
 Yet weary with passions that faded when the seven-fold seas 
 were young. 
 
 And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forbear, far sung by the 
 
 Sennachies. 
 I saw how those slumberers, grown weary, there camping in 
 
 grasses deep, 
 
 Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wander- 
 ing seas, 
 
 Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of un- 
 human sleep 
 
 Snatching the horn of Niam, I blew a lingering note ; r 
 
 Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the 
 
 stirring of flies. 
 He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his 
 
 throat, 
 Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes. 
 
 I cried, ' Come out of the shadow, cann of the ails of gold ! 
 
 And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your 
 
 hands, 
 
 That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old. 
 Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy ; he comes from the Fenian 
 lands. 3 
 
 Hah open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their 
 
 dreams ; 
 
 His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came ; 
 Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a 
 
 sound in faint streams 
 
 Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like 
 flame. 
 
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 507 
 
 Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of 
 
 earth, 
 The moil of my centuries filled me ; and gone like a sea-covered 
 
 stone 
 Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories 
 
 of the whole of my mirth, 
 
 And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the 
 bone. 
 
 In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low ; 
 And the pearl-pale Niam lay by me, her brow on the midst of 
 
 my breast ; 
 And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan 
 
 flow ; 
 
 Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our 
 rest. 
 
 And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot 
 How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on 
 
 fallen lie rolled ; 
 How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds ot the heron's 
 
 plot ; 
 
 And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for 
 Conhor of old. 
 
 And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot 
 That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of 
 
 ozier and hide ; 
 How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spear-head's burning 
 
 spot; 
 How the slow blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide. 
 
 But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their 
 
 throngs, 
 Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter 
 
 tales ; 
 Came by me the canns of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter 
 
 and songs, 
 
 Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the 
 tempest with sails. 
 
508 BOOK V 
 
 Came Blanid, MacNessa, tall Fergus, who feastward of old time 
 
 slunk, 
 Cook Barach, the traitor ; and warward, the spittle on his beard 
 
 never dry, 
 
 Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk 
 Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye. 
 
 And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams, 
 And Crania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone. 
 
 So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with 
 
 creatures of dreams, 
 In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone. 
 
BOOK VI 
 
 SIR AUBREY DE VERE 
 
 SIR AUBREY DE VERE, among whose schoolfellows at 
 Harrow were Byron and Sir Robert Peel, was, like his friend 
 Wordsworth, from childhood a lover of the mountains and the 
 woods, and the Rotha was for him a stream of inspiration 
 more sweet than Castaly. An Irishman by birth, his natural 
 sympathies found expression in the fine series of sonnets 
 described by Wordsworth as ' the most perfect of our age '- 
 dealing with events in Irish history and scenes of Irish land- 
 scape ; while to the country of his earlier ancestors he paid a 
 noble poetic tribute in MARY TUDOR, a drama worthy comparison 
 with the Histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
 In the delineation of Queen Mary we possess a portrait the 
 most arresting that the modern drama has to offer a portrait at 
 once human and royal, at once tragic and convincing. 'The 
 author of MARY TUDOR,' says Mr. De Vere, * used to affirm that 
 most of the modern historians had mistaken a part, and that 
 the smaller part, of the sad Queen's character for the whole of 
 it.' Presented by Sir Aubrey de Vere, the contrasted figures 
 of the lonely Mary, distraught indeed, but no impossible 
 Fury, and of the gentle-hearted Jane Grey, innocent victim of 
 an unkind destiny, must take their place in the gallery of 
 English Queens painted by the masters. Since no room can 
 be found for selections from the De Vere dramas, a single 
 passage from MARY TUDOR may rightly be given here. Lady 
 
510 BOOK VI 
 
 Jane, a few moments before her execution, takes her last 
 farewell of her weeping mother. 
 
 What shall I give thee ? they have left me little 
 
 What slight memorial through soft tears to gaze on ? 
 
 This bridal ring the symbol of past joy ? 
 
 I cannot part with it ; upon this ringer 
 
 It must go down into the grave Perchance 
 
 After long years some curious hand may find it, 
 
 Bright, like our better hopes, amid the dust, 
 
 And piously, with a low sigh, replace it. 
 
 Here, take this veil, and wear it for my sake. 
 
 And take this winding-sheet to him, and this 
 
 Small handkerchief, so wetted with my tears, 
 
 To wipe the death- damp from his brow. This kiss 
 
 And this my last print on his lips, and bid him 
 
 Think of me to the last, and wait my spirit. 
 
 Farewell, my mother ! Farewell, dear, dear mother ! 
 
 These terrible moments I must pass in prayer 
 
 For the dying for the dead ! Farewell ! farewell ! 
 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere in this play and it is no slight dramatic 
 achievement enlists our sympathies for Jane Grey, yet gives us 
 to feel that with Mary we visit higher heights and lower depths 
 of tragedy. Both in MARY TUDOR and Mr. Aubrey de Vere's 
 ALEXANDER THE GREAT the weight of a great subject is fully 
 sustained, the action is spaciously planned, the verse moves 
 with stately grace. But our age has set its face against the 
 drama, and it may perhaps be counted fortunate that in a 
 literary form so popular as the sonnet the De Veres have 
 graven for themselves a lasting memorial. There are sonnets 
 by father and by son that anthologies centuries hence will 
 reproduce. Sonnets like Sir Aubrey's entitled ' The Shannon,' 
 or 'Spanish Point,' or 'The Rock of Cashel,' or Mr. De Vere's 
 * Sorrow ' or ' The Sun God,' must remain among our 
 permanent poetical treasures. 
 
 W. MACNEILE DIXON. 
 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere, Bart., born 1788, was the eldest son of Sir Vere 
 Hunt, of Curragh Chase, County Limerick, Iteland. His father afterwards 
 took the name of De Vere as a descendant of De Vere, fifteenth Earl of 
 
Sffi AUBREY DE VERE 511 
 
 Oxford. He published JULIAM THE APOSTATE, a drama, 1822 ; THE DUKE 
 OF MERCIA, an historical drama, and THE LAMENTATIONS OF IRELAND, 
 1823 ; THE SONG OF FAITH, DEVOUT EXERCISES AND SONNETS, 1842. 
 MARY TUDOR, an historical drama (written 1844), was published after the 
 author's death, and without his final revision, in 1847. He died in 1846. 
 
 GOUGANE BARRA 
 
 NOT beauty which men gaze on with a smile, 
 Not grace that wins, no charm of form or love, 
 Dwelt with that scene. Sternly upon my view 
 And slowly as the shrouding clouds awhile 
 Disclosed the beetling crag and lonely isle 
 
 From their dim lake the ghostly mountains grew, 
 Lit by one slanting ray. An eagle flew 
 From out the gloomy gulf of the defile, 
 Like some bad spirit from Hades. To the shore 
 Dark waters rolled, slow-heaving, with dull moan ; 
 The foam-flakes hanging from each livid stone 
 Like froth on deathful lips ; pale mosses o'er 
 The shattered cell crept, as an orphan lone 
 Clasps his cold mother's breast when life is gone. 
 
 LIBERTY OF THE PRESS 
 
 SOME laws there are too sacred for the hand 
 Of man to approach : recorded in the blood 
 Of patriots, before which, as the Rood 
 
 Of faith, devotional we take our stand ; 
 
 Time-hallowed laws ! Magnificently planned 
 When Freedom was the nurse of public good, 
 And Power paternal : laws that have withstood 
 
 All storms, unshaken bulwarks of the land ! 
 
 Free will, frank speech, an undissembling mind, 
 Without which Freedom dies and laws are vain, 
 On such we found our rights, to such we cling ; 
 
 In them shall power his surest safeguard find. 
 Tread them not down in passion or disdain ; 
 Make man a reptile, he will turn and sting. 
 
512 BOOK VI 
 
 THE ROCK OF CA*SHEL 
 
 ROYAL and saintly Cashel ! I would gaze 
 
 Upon the wreck of thy departed powers 
 
 Not in the dewy light of matin hours, 
 Nor the meridian pomp of summer's blaze, 
 But at the close of dim autumnal days, 
 
 When the sun's parting glance, through slanting showers, 
 
 Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers 
 Such awful gleams as brighten o'er Decay's 
 Prophetic cheek. At such a time methinks 
 
 There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles 
 A melancholy moral ; such as sinks 
 
 On the lone traveller's heart amid the piles 
 Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand, 
 Or Thebes half buried in the desert sand. 
 
 THE SHANNON 
 
 RIVER of billows, to whose mighty hear 
 The tide-wave rushes of the Atlantic Sea ; 
 River of quiet depths, by cultured lea, 
 Romantic wood or city's crowded mart ; 
 River of old poetic founts, which start 
 From their lone mountain-cradles, wild and free, 
 Nursed with the fawns, lulled by the woodlark's glee, 
 And cushat's hymeneal song apart ; 
 River of chieftains, whose baronial halls, 
 
 Like veteran warders, watch each wave-worn steep, 
 Portumna's towers, Bunratty's royal walls, 
 
 Carrick's stern rock, the Geraldine's grey keep- 
 River of dark mementoes ! must I close 
 My lips with Limerick's wrong, with Aughrim's woes ? 
 
 SPANISH POINT 
 
 THE waters O the waters ! wild and glooming, 
 Beneath the stormy pall that shrouds the sky, 
 
 On, through the deep'ning mist more darkly looming, 
 Plumed with the pallid foam funereally, 
 
5//? AUBREY DE VERE 513 
 
 Onward, like death, they come, the rocks entombing ! 
 
 Nor thunder-knell is needful from on high ; 
 Nor sound of signal gun, momently booming 
 
 O'er the disastrous deep ; nor seaman's cry ! 
 And yet, if aught were wanting, manifold 
 
 Mementoes haunt those reefs ; how that proud Host 
 Of Spain and Rome so smitten were of old, 
 
 By God's decree, along this fatal coast, 
 And over all their purple and their gold, 
 Mitre and helm and harp, the avenging waters rolled ! 
 
 JOHN KELLS INGRAM 
 
 DR. INGRAM was born in 1823, in the County Donegal, and 
 educated at Newry School, and in Trinity College, Dublin. 
 He became an Fellow of Trinity in 1846, and is an Honorary 
 LL.D. of Glasgow University. He has held in Trinity 
 College the offices of Professor of Greek, Professor of English 
 Literature, Senior Lecturer and Vice- Provost, and he has been 
 President of the Royal Irish Academy and a Commissioner 
 for the Publication of the Ancient Laws and Institutions of 
 Ireland. Owing to advancing age he laid down all these 
 offices in 1899, but left behind him an enduring record of 
 work well done for the interests of Irish intellect and scholar- 
 ship. His principal published works relate to political economy 
 ( * Work and the Workman ' an address to the Trades Union 
 Congress in 1880 and the articles on Political Economy ' and' 
 1 Slavery ' in the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, ninth edition). 
 The famous lyric, written in Dr. Ingram's student days, 
 'The Memory of the Dead' (see Book III., * Poets of The 
 Nation ' ) was for the first time formally acknowledged when 
 Dr. Ingram published a volume of poems in 1900 ; but its 
 authorship has long been an open secret. The quatrain, 
 printed in the following selection, * Each nation master at its 
 own fireside,' may perhaps be taken as representing his later 
 
 L L 
 
5H BOOK VI 
 
 views on the Irish National Question. Carlyle in his Irish 
 tour of 1849 notes that Ingram's opinions had already under- 
 gone a change. 
 
 The best of Dr. Ingram's sonnets, in his volume SONNETS 
 AND OTHER POEMS, belong to a sequence, and cannot, as a 
 rule, be taken out of their context without loss. Noble in 
 thought and expression, they seem to carry with them the air 
 of great literature, and they make us regret that their author 
 has given us so little verse, and that little so late. 
 
 SONNET 
 
 On reading the Sonnet by R. C. D., entitled ' InJMemoriam G. P. C.,' 
 in l Mac mi I Ian' s Magazine? 
 
 in Macmillan 's Magazine for April 1881 there appeared a sonnet by Arch- 
 bishop Trench on the death of Sir George Pomeroy Colley on Majuba Hill. 
 The following sonnet, signed ' J. K. I./ appeared in The Academy of April 2 : 
 
 YES ! mourn the soul, of high and pure intent, 
 
 Humane as valiant, in disastrous fight 
 
 Laid low on far Majuba's bloody height ! 
 
 Yet not his death alone must we lament, 
 
 But more such spirit on evil mission sent 
 
 To back our broken faith with armed might 
 
 And the unanswered plea of wounded Right 
 
 Strike dumb by warfare's brute arbitrament. 
 
 And while these deeds are done in England's name, 
 
 Religion, unregardful, keeps her cell : 
 
 The tuneful note that wails the dead we hear ; 
 
 Where are the sacred thunders that should swell 
 
 To shame such foul oppression, and proclaim 
 
 Eternal justice in the nation's ear? 
 
 SOCIAL HEREDITY 
 
 MAN is no mushroom growth of yesterday. 
 His roots strike deep into the hallow'd mould 
 Of the dead centuries ; ordinances old 
 Govern us, whether gladly we obey 
 
JOHN KELLS INGRAM 515 
 
 Or vainly struggle to resist their sway : 
 Our thoughts by ancient thinkers are controll'd, 
 And many a word in which our thoughts are told 
 Was coined long since in regions far away. 
 The strong-soul'd nations, destin'd to be great, 
 Honour their sires and reverence the Past ; 
 They cherish and improve their heritage. 
 The weak, in blind self-trust or headlong rage, 
 The olden times' transmitted treasure cast 
 Behind them, and bemoan their loss too late. 
 
 NATIONALITY 
 
 Each nation master at its own fireside 
 The claim is just, and so one day 'twill be ; 
 But a wise race the time of fruit will bide, 
 Nor pluck th' unripen'd apple from the tree. 
 
 WILLIAM ALEXANDER 
 
 THREE pieces are here given as specimens of the stately verse 
 of the Protestant Primate of Ireland, whose eloquence, learning, 
 and character have made his name one of the most cherished 
 and honoured in the whole history of his Church. Though 
 perhaps rarely characterised by the concentrated force of the 
 poetry which springs from a native gift, assiduously cultivated, 
 nevertheless the cultivated imagination of the Primate, his 
 feeling for the glory of Nature, his rich but never overloaded 
 rhetoric, and the occasional strains of a wistful pathos which 
 reveal a sensitive human spirit all these qualities make his 
 poetic contribution to Irish literature one of high worth and 
 distinction. 
 
 Dr. Alexander was born at Deny, 1824, and educated at Tunbridge 
 and Oxford. He received the degree of D.D. and D.C.I., from that 
 University. In 1850, when rector of Termonamongan, in the diocese of 
 Derry, he was married to Miss Cecil PVances Humphreys, who was 
 destined to aid in winning distinction for her new name. After holding 
 
 L L 2 
 
516 BOOK VI 
 
 cures at Upper Fahan and at Strabane he became, in 1867, Bishop of 
 Derry and Raphoe, and in 1897 was called to the Primacy of All Ireland. 
 His poetical publications are THE DEATH OF JACOB, 1858 ; SPECIMENS, 
 POETICAL AND CRITICAL, 1867 ; LYRICS OF LIFE AND LIGHT (by W. 
 A. and others), 1878 ; ST. AUGUSTINE'S HOLIDAY, 1886. 
 
 AMONG THE SAND-HILLS 
 FROM the ocean half a rood 
 
 To the sand-hills long and low 
 
 Ever and anon I go ; 
 Hide from me the gleaming flood, 
 
 Only listen to its flow. 
 
 To those billowy curls of sand 
 
 Little of delight is lent 
 
 As it were a yellow tent, 
 Here and there by some wild hand 
 
 Pitch'd, and overgrown with bent ; 
 
 Some few buds like golden beads 
 
 Cut in stars on leaves that shine 
 
 Greenly, and a fragrance fine 
 Of the ocean's delicate weeds, 
 
 Of his fresh and foamy wine. 
 
 But the place is music-haunted. 
 
 Let there blow what wind soever 
 
 Now, as by a stately river, 
 A monotonous requiem's chanted ; 
 
 Now you hear great pine woods shiver. 
 
 Frequent when the tides are low 
 Creep for hours sweet sleepy hums. 
 But when in the spring tide comes, 
 
 Then the silver trumpets blow 
 And the waters beat like drums. 
 
 And the Atlantic's roll full often, 
 
 Muffled by the sand-hills round, 
 
 Seems a mighty city's sound, 
 Which the night-wind serves to soften 
 
 By the waker's pillow drown'd. 
 
WILLIAM ALEXANDER 5 1 7 
 
 Seems a salvo state or battles 
 
 Through the purple mountain gaps 
 
 Heard by peasants ; or perhaps 
 Seems a wheel that rolls or rattles ; 
 
 Seems an eagle's wing that flaps ; 
 
 Seems a peal of thunder, caught 
 
 By the mountain pines and tuned 
 
 To a marvellous gentle sound ; 
 Wailings where despair is not 
 
 Hearts self-hushing some heart- wound. 
 
 Still what winds there blow soever, 
 
 Wet or shine, by sun or star, 
 
 When white horses plunge afar, 
 When the palsied froth-lines shiver, 
 
 \Vhen the waters quiet are ; 
 
 On the sand-hills where waves boom, 
 
 Or, with ripples scarce at all, 
 
 Tumble not so much as crawl, 
 Ever do we know of whom 
 
 Cometh up the rise and fall. 
 
 Need is none to see the ships, 
 
 None to mark the mid-sea jet 
 
 Softening into violet, 
 While those old pre-Adamite lips 
 
 To those boundary heaps are set. 
 
 Ah ! we see not the great foam 
 
 That beyond us strangely rolls, 
 
 Whose white-winged ships are ouls 
 Sailing from the port called Home, 
 
 When the signal-bell Death tolls. 
 
 And we catch not the broad shimmer, 
 
 Catch not yet the hue divine 
 
 Of the purpling hyaline ; 
 Of the heaving and the glimmer 
 
 Life's sands cheat our straining eyne 
 
ci8 BOOK VI 
 
 But by wondrous sounds not shut 
 From those sand-hills, we may be 
 Sure that a diviner sea 
 
 Than earth's keels have ever cut 
 Floweth from eternity. 
 
 INSCRIPTION 
 
 ON THE STATUE ERECTED TO CAPTAIN BOYD IN 
 ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN 
 
 OH ! in the quiet haven, safe for aye, 
 If lost to us in port one stormy day, 
 Borne with a public pomp by just decree, 
 Heroic sailor ! from that fatal sea, 
 A city vows this marble unto thee. 
 And here, in this calm place, where never din 
 Of earth's great waterfloods shall enter in, 
 Where to our human hearts two thoughts are given- 
 One Christ's self-sacrifice, the other Heaven 
 Here is it meet for grief and love to grave 
 The Christ-taught bravery that died to save, 
 The life not lost, but found beneath the wave. 
 
 VERY FAR AWAY 
 
 ONE touch there is of magic white, 
 Surpassing southern mountain's snow, 
 
 That to far sails the dying light 
 
 Lends, where the dark ships onward go 
 
 Upon the golden highway broad 
 
 That leads up to the isles of God. 
 
 One touch of light more magic yet, 
 Of rarer snow 'neath moon or star, 
 
 Where, with her graceful sails all set, 
 Some happy vessel seen afar, 
 
 As if in an enchanted sleep 
 
 Steers o'er the tremulous stretching deep. 
 
WILLIAM ALEXANDER 519 
 
 O ship ! O sail ! far must ye be 
 Ere gleams like that upon ye light. 
 
 O'er golden spaces of the sea, 
 
 From mysteries of the lucent night, 
 
 Such touch comes never to the boat 
 
 Wherein across the waves we float. 
 
 O gleams more magic and divine, 
 Life's whitest sail ye still refuse, 
 
 And flying on before us shine 
 
 Upon some distant bark ye choose. 
 
 By night or day, across the spray, 
 
 That sail is very far away. 
 
 CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER 
 
 MRS. ALEXANDER'S hymns and religious verse have made her 
 name as a poetess very widely known. Her poems on secular 
 themes have perhaps been less heard of, but they show, 
 together with a certain weakness in constructive power, much 
 force and picturesqueness of diction and touches of keen 
 pathos. Her poetic development has evidently been much 
 influenced by her husband's work, but she occasionally 
 commanded an accent of passion rendered with a penetrating 
 simplicity which was all her own. Her poem on the leaguer 
 of Derry is a fine example of her mastery of language and 
 rhythm. 
 
 Cecil Frances Humphreys was born in Dublin about 1825 ; a daughter 
 of Major John Humphreys, a Norfolk man by birth, who became a land- 
 owner in Tyrone and in Wicklow. She came early under the religious 
 influence of Dr. Hook, Dean of Chichester, and subsequently of Keble, 
 who edited her HYMNS FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. She married William 
 Alexander then rector of Termonamongan - in 1850, and died in 1895. 
 Her poems have been collected and edited by her husband (POEMS, by 
 C. F. Alexander, 1896). 
 
520 BOOK VI 
 
 THE SIEGE OF DERRY 
 
 ' O MY daughter ! lead me forth to the bastion on the north, 
 Let me see the water running from the green hills of Tyrone, 
 
 Where the woods of Mountjoy quiver above the changeful river, 
 And the silver trout lie hidden in the pools that I have known. 
 
 ' There I wooed your mother, dear ! in the days that are so near 
 To the old man who lies dying in this sore-beleaguered place ; 
 
 For time's long years may sever, but love that liveth ever, 
 Calls back the early rapture lights again the angel face. 
 
 ' Ah, well ! she lieth still on our wall-engirdled hill, 
 
 Our own Cathedral holds her till God shall call His dead ; 
 
 And the Psalter's swell and wailing, and the cannon's loud assailing, 
 And the preacher's voice and blessing, pass unheeded o'er her 
 head. 
 
 1 'Twas the Lord who gave the word when His people drew the 
 sword 
 
 For the freedom of the present, for the future that awaits. 
 O child ! thou must remember that bleak day in December 
 
 When the 'Prentice-Boys of Derry rose up and shut the gates. 
 
 ' There was tumult in the street, and a rush of many feet 
 There was discord in the Council, and Lundy turned to fly, 
 
 For the man had no assurance of Ulstermen's endurance, 
 
 Nor the strength of him who trusteth in the arm of God Most 
 High. 
 
 ' These limbs, that now are weak, were strong then, and thy cheek 
 
 Held roses that were red as any rose in June 
 That now are wan, my daughter ! as the light on the Foyle water 
 
 When all the sea and all the land are white beneath the moon. 
 
 ' Then the foemen gather'd fast we could see them marching 
 past 
 
 The Irish from his barren hills, the Frenchmen from his wars, 
 With their banners bravely beaming, and to our eyes their seeming 
 
 Was fearful as a locust band v and countless as the stars. 
 
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER 521 
 
 And they bound us with a cord from the harbour to the ford, 
 And they raked us with their cannon, and sallying was hot ; 
 But our trust was still unshaken, though Culmore fort was taken, 
 And they wrote our men a letter, and they sent it in a shot. 
 
 They were soft words that they spoke, how we need not fear their 
 
 yoke, 
 And they pleaded by our homesteads, and by our children 
 
 small, 
 And our women fair and tender ; but we answered : "No 
 
 surrender ! " 
 And we called on God Almighty, and we went to man the wall. 
 
 1 There was wrath in the French camp ; we could hear their 
 Captain's stamp, 
 
 And Rosen, with his hand on his cross'd hilt, swore 
 That little town of Derry, not a league from Culmore ferry, 
 
 Should lie a heap of ashes on the Foyle's green shore. 
 
 * Like a falcon on her perch, our fair Cathedral Church 
 
 Above the tide-vext river looks eastward from the bay 
 Dear namesake of St. Columb, and each morning, sweet and 
 
 solemn, 
 The bells, through all the tumult, have call'd us in to pray. 
 
 ' Our leader speaks the prayer the captains all are there 
 His deep voice never falters, though his look be sad and grave 
 
 On the women's pallid faces, and the soldiers in their places, 
 And the stones above our brothers that lie buried in the nave. 
 
 * They are closing round us still by the river ; on the hill 
 
 You can see the white pavilions round the standard of their 
 
 chief; 
 
 But the Lord is up in heaven, though the chances are uneven, 
 Though the boom is in the river whence we look'd for our relief. 
 
 ' And the faint hope dies away at the close of each long day, 
 As we see the eyes grow lustreless, the pulses beating low ; 
 
 As we see our children languish. Was ever martyr's anguish, 
 At the stake or in the dungeon, like this anguish that we know ? 
 
522 BOOK VI 
 
 ' With the foemen's closing line, while the English make no sign, 
 And the daily lessening ration, and the fall of staggering feet, 
 
 And the wailing low and fearful, and the women, stern and tearful, 
 Speaking bravely to their husbands and their lovers in the 
 street. 
 
 ' There was trouble in the air when we met this day for prayer, 
 And the joyous July morning was heavy in our eyes ; 
 
 Our arms were by the altar as we sang aloud the Psalter, 
 And listen'd in the pauses for the enemy's surprise. 
 
 ' " Praise the Lord God in the height, for the glory of His might ! " 
 It ran along the arches and it went out to the town : 
 
 " In His strength He hath arisen, He hath loos'd the souls in 
 
 prison, 
 The wrong'd one He hath righted, and raised the fallen-down." 
 
 'And the preacher's voice was bold as he rose up then and told 
 Of the triumph of the righteous, of the patience of the saints, 
 
 And the hope of God's assistance, and the greatness of resistance, 
 Of the trust that never wearies and the heart that never faints. 
 
 ' Where the river joins the brine, canst thou see the ships in line ? 
 
 And the plenty of our craving just beyond the cruel boom ? 
 Through the dark mist of the firing canst thou see the masts 
 
 aspiring, 
 Dost thou think of one who loves thee on that ship amidst the 
 
 gloom ? ' 
 
 She was weary, she was wan, but she climb'd the rampart on, 
 And she look'd along the water where the good ships lay afar : 
 
 ' Oh ! I see on either border their cannon ranged in order, 
 And the boom across the river, and the waiting men-of-war. 
 
 1 There's death in every hand that holds a lighted brand, 
 But the gallant little Mountjoy comes bravely to the front. 
 
 Now, God of Battles, hear us ! Let that good ship draw near us. 
 Ah ! the brands are at the touch-holes will she bear the 
 cannon's brunt ? 
 
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER 523 
 
 * She makes a forward dash. Hark ! hark \ m the thunder-crash ! 
 
 O father, they have caught her she is lying on the shore. 
 Another crash like thunder will it tear her ribs asunder ? 
 
 No, no ! the shot has freed her she is floating on once more. 
 
 ' She pushes her white sail through the bullets' leaden hail 
 Now blessings on her captain and on her seamen bold ! 
 
 Crash 1 crash ! the boom is broken ; I can see my true love's 
 
 token 
 A lily in his bonnet, a lily all of gold. 
 
 ' She sails up to the town, like a queen in a white gown 
 Red golden are her lilies, true gold are all her men. 
 
 Now the Phoenix follows after I can hear the women's laughter, 
 And the shouting of the soldiers, till the echoes ring again.' 
 
 ****** 
 
 She has glided from the wall, on her lover's breast to fall, 
 As the white bird of the ocean drops down into the wave ; 
 
 And the bells are madly ringing, and a hundred voices singing, 
 And the old man on the bastion has joined the triumph stave ; 
 
 ' Sing ye praises through the land ; the Lord with His right hand, 
 With His mighty arm hath gotten Himself the victory now. 
 
 He hath scattered their forces, both the riders and their horses. 
 There is none that fighteth for us, O God ! but only Thou.' 
 
 THE IRISH MOTHER'S LAMENT 
 
 ' She watched for the return of her son from America in her house by the 
 Foyle, near Deny.' 
 
 ' THERE'S no one on the long white road 
 
 The night is closing o'er ; 
 O mother ! cease to look abroad 
 And let me shut the door. 
 
 4 Now here and there a twinkling light 
 
 Comes out along the bay ; 
 The little ships lie still and white, 
 
 And no one comes this way.' 
 
524 BOOK VI 
 
 She turned her straining eyes within ; 
 She sighed both long and low. 
 
 * Shut up the door ; take out the pin, 
 
 Then, if it must be so. 
 
 * But, daughter, set the wick alight, 
 
 And put it in the pane ; 
 If any should come home to-night, 
 He'll see it through the rain. 
 
 ' Nay, leave the pin beneath the latch ; 
 
 If some one push the door, 
 Across my broken dreams I'll hear 
 
 His footstep on the floor.' 
 
 She crouched within the ingle nook, 
 
 She spread her fingers sere, 
 Her failed eyes had a far-off look, 
 
 Despite her fourscore year. 
 
 And if in youth they had been fair, 
 'Twas not the charm they had, 
 
 Not the old beauty lingering there, 
 But something weird and sad. 
 
 The daughter, in the firelight pale, 
 
 A woman grey and wan, 
 Sat listening, while half dream, half wail, 
 
 Her words went wandering on ; 
 
 * O river that dost never halt 
 
 Till down beyond the bar 
 Thou meet'st the breakers green and salt 
 That bore my lads afar 
 
 * O sea betwixt our slighted isle 
 
 And that wide bounteous West 
 That has such magic in her smile 
 To lure away our best 
 
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER 525 
 
 1 Bring back, bring back the guiding keel ; 
 
 Bring fast the home-bound ship ; 
 Mine eyes look out ; I faint to feel 
 
 The touch of hand and lip. 
 
 * And is that land so much more fair, 
 
 So much more rich that shore 
 Than this, where, prodigal of care, 
 I nursed the sons I bore ? 
 
 ' I nursed them at my yielding breast, 
 
 I reared them at my knee, 
 They left me for the golden West ; 
 
 They left me for the sea. 
 
 * With hungry heart, and eyes that strove 
 
 In vain their eyes to meet, 
 And all my lavish mother's love 
 Beat backward to my feet 
 
 * Like that broad stream that runs, and raves, 
 
 And floweth grandly out, 
 But the salt billows catch its waves, 
 And fling them all about 
 
 ' The bitter world washed out my claim ; 
 
 In childhood it was dear, 
 But youth forgets, and manhood came, 
 
 And dashed it far and near. 
 
 ' But when I think of the eld time, 
 
 Soft fingers, eyes that met, 
 In spite of age, in spite of clime, 
 
 I wonder they forget. 
 
 ' And if they live, their life is strong ; 
 
 Forgotten here I die ; 
 I question with my heart, and long, 
 
 And cannot answer why, 
 
526 BOOK VI 
 
 * Till by Christ's grace I walk in white 
 
 Where His redeemed go, 
 And know the reason of God's right, 
 Or never care to know. 
 
 ' But out-bound ships come home again 
 They sail 'neath sun and moon. 
 
 Put thou the candle in the pane ; 
 They may be coming soon.' 
 
 * Calm lie the lights below the town ; 
 
 There's not a ship in sight ; 
 
 mother ! cease, and lay you down ; 
 They will not come to-night.' 
 
 DREAMS 
 
 BEYOND, beyond the mountain line, 
 The grey-stone and the boulder, 
 
 Beyond the growth of dark green pine, 
 That crowns its western shoulder, 
 
 There lies that fairy-land of mine, 
 Unseen of a beholder. 
 
 Its fruits are all like rubies rare ; 
 
 Its streams are clear as glasses ; 
 There golden castles hang in air, 
 
 And purple grapes in masses, 
 And noble knights and ladies fair 
 
 Come riding down the passes. 
 
 Ah me ! they say if I could stand 
 Upon those mountain ledges, 
 
 1 should but see on eithe^ hand 
 
 Plain fields and dusty hedges ; 
 And yet I know my fairy-land 
 Lies somewhere o'er their edges. 
 
EDWARD DOWDEN 527 
 
 EDWARD DOWDEN 
 
 THE younger generation of literary students owes so much to 
 the critical work of Edward Dowden that it is impossible to wish 
 away any part of it. Yet the readers of his verse must feel 
 that the hours he has spent with the sovereign lady of poesy have 
 been, alas ! too few ; that his distinction as a prose-writer has 
 been bought at almost too great a price. For he has not written 
 his poetry as with his left hand ; here he has not in any degree 
 tutored himself to speak, but speaks in his own natural voice 
 and in his native tongue. 
 
 There are among the poets of our time some whose music 
 assails the ear with more .insistence ; there is none who more 
 surely enters and subdues the heart. Like the poetry of 
 Andrew Marvell, it is not for the multitude, but for him who 
 
 Can burst joy's grape against his palate fine. 
 
 It puts forth its own flower and fruit ; it creates its own world, 
 awakens its own mood. And as a poet it is with Marvell that, 
 if comparison is needful, Professor Dowden may best be 
 compared. He recalls to us Marvell's fine simplicity, his 
 unfailing sense for the beautiful, his pervading spirituality, his 
 touch of resolute aloofness from the haste and fever of life, 
 his glad and serious temper, his unaffected charm of phrase and 
 movement. Like Marvell's, this is but a small island of poetry ; 
 but the human spirit may inhabit here. Over it bends the 
 same sky as over the great continents ; across it blow the same 
 winds, and on its shores break the everlasting seas. 
 
 W. MACNEILE DIXON. 
 
 Prof. E. Dowden, LL.D., was born in Cork, 1843, and educated at 
 Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated as Senior Moderator in 
 Metaphysics and Ethics in 1863. He is now Professor of English 
 Literature in Dublin University. He produced much prose work, in the 
 form both of books and scattered essays. His SHAKESPERE : His 
 MIND AND ART (1874) marked an epoch in Shake^perean studies in 
 England. It was the first work of importance in which the results of 
 
BOOK VI 
 
 textual research in Shakespere's plays and poems were turned fruitfully to 
 the uses of aesthetic criticism. Professor Dowden's POEMS appeared in 
 1876. 
 
 ON THE HEIGHTS 
 
 HERE are the needs of manhood satisfied ! 
 Sane breath, an amplitude for soul and sense, 
 The noonday silence of the summer hills, 
 And this embracing solitude ; o'er all 
 The sky unsearchable, which lays its claim 
 A large redemption not to be annulled 
 Upon the heart ; and far below, the sea 
 Breaking and breaking, smoothly, silently. 
 What need I any further ? Now once more 
 My arrested life begins, and I am man 
 Complete with eye, heart, brain, and that within 
 Which is the centre and the light of being ; 
 O dull ! who morning after morning chose 
 Never to climb these gorse and heather slopes 
 Cairn-crowned, but lost within one seaward nook 
 Wasted my soul on the ambiguous speech 
 And slow eye-mesmerism of rolling waves, 
 Courting oblivion of the heart. True life 
 That was not which possessed me while I lay 
 Prone on the perilous edge, mere eye and ear, 
 Staring upon the bright monotony, 
 Having let slide all force from me, each thought 
 Yield to the vision of the gleaming blank, 
 Each nerve of motion and of sense grow numb, 
 Till to the bland persuasion of some breeze 
 Which played across my forehead and my hair 
 The last volition would efface itself, 
 And I was mingled wholly in the sound 
 Of tumbling billow and upjetting surge, 
 Long reluctation, welter and refluent moan, 
 And the reverberating tumultuousness 
 'Mid shelf and hollow and angle black with spray. 
 Yet under all oblivion there remained 
 A sense of some frustration, a pale dream 
 
EDWARD DOW DEN 529 
 
 Of Nature mocking man, and drawing down 
 As streams draw down the dust of gold his will, 
 His thought, and passion, to enrich herself 
 The insatiable devourer. 
 
 Welcome Earth, 
 
 My natural heritage ! and this soft turf, 
 These rocks, which no insidious ocean saps, 
 But the wide air flows over, and the sun 
 Illumines. Take me, mother, to thy breast ; 
 Gather me close in tender, sustinent arms ; 
 Lay bare thy bosom's sweetness and its strength 
 That I may drink vigour and joy and love. 
 O infinite composure of the hills, 
 Thou large simplicity of this fair world, 
 Candour and calmness, with no mockery, 
 No soft frustration, flattering sigh or smile 
 Which masks a tyrannous purpose ; and ye Powers 
 Of these sky-circled heights, and Presences 
 Awful and strict, I find you favourable, 
 Who seek not to exclude me or to slay, 
 Rather accept my being, take me up 
 Into your silence and your peace. Therefore 
 By him whom ye reject not, Gracious Ones, 
 Pure vows are made that haply he will be 
 Not all unworthy of the world ; he casts 
 Forth from him, never to resume again, 
 Veiled nameless things, frauds of the unfilled heart, 
 Fantastic pleasures, delicate sadnesses, 
 The lurid and the curious and the occult, 
 Coward sleights and shifts, the manners of the slave, 
 And long unnatural uses of dim life. 
 Hence with you ! Robes of angels touch these heights 
 Blown by pure winds, and I lay hold upon them. 
 Here is a perfect bell of purple heath, 
 Made for the sky to gaze at reverently, 
 As faultless as itself, and holding light, 
 Glad air and silence in its slender dome ; 
 Small, but a needful moment in the sum 
 Of God's full joy the abyss of ecstasy 
 
 M M 
 
530 BOOK VI 
 
 O'er which we hang as the bright bow of foam 
 
 Above the never-filled receptacle 
 
 Hangs seven-hued, where the endless cataract leaps. 
 
 Oh ! now I guess why you have summoned me, 
 
 Headlands and heights, to your companionship. 
 
 Confess that I this day am needful to you ! 
 
 The heavens were loaded with great light, the winds 
 
 Brought you calm summer from a hundred fields, 
 
 All night the stars had pricked you to desire, 
 
 The imminent joy at its full season flowered, 
 
 There was a consummation, the broad wave 
 
 Toppled and fell. And had ye voice for this ? 
 
 Sufficient song to unburden the urged breast ? 
 
 A pastoral pipe to play ? a lyre to touch ? 
 
 The brightening glory of the heath and gorse 
 
 Could not appease your passion, nor the cry 
 
 Of this wild bird that flits from bush to bush. 
 
 Me therefore you required, a voice for song, 
 
 A pastoral pipe to play, a lyre to touch. 
 
 I recognise your bliss to find me here ; 
 
 The sky at morning, when the sun upleaps, 
 
 Demands her atom of intense melody, 
 
 Her point of quivering passion and delight, 
 
 And will not let the lark's heart be at ease. 
 
 Take me, the brain with various subtile fold, 
 
 The breast that knows swift joy, the vocal lips ; 
 
 I yield you here the cunning instrument 
 
 Between your knees ; now let the plectrum fall ! 
 
 ABOARD THE 'SEA-SWALLOW' 
 
 THE gloom of the sea-fronting cliffs 
 
 Lay on the water, violet-dark ; 
 The pennon drooped, the sail fell in, 
 
 And slowly moved our bark. 
 
 A golden day ; the summer dreamed 
 In heaven and on the whispering sea, 
 
 Within our hearts the summer dreamed ; 
 The hours had ceased to be. 
 
ED WARD DO WDEN 531 
 
 Then rose the girls with bonnets loosed, 
 
 And shining tresses lightly blown, 
 Alice and Adela, and sang 
 
 A song of Mendelssohn. 
 
 Oh ! sweet and sad and wildly clear, 
 Through summer air it sinks and swells, 
 
 Wild with a measureless desire 
 And sad with all farewells. 
 
 OASIS 
 
 LET them go by the heats, the doubts, the strife ; 
 
 I can sit here and care not for them now, 
 Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life 
 
 Once more I know not how. 
 
 There is a murmur in my heart ; I hear 
 
 Faint oh ! so faint some air I used to sing ; 
 
 It stirs my sense ; and odours dim and dear 
 The meadow-breezes bring. 
 
 Just this way did the quiet twilights fade 
 Over the fields and happy homes of men, 
 
 While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade, 
 Long since I know not when. 
 
 EDMUND JOHN ARMSTRONG 
 
 THE elder brother of George Francis Savage-Armstrong (q.v.), 
 by whom the story of his short life has been written and his 
 literary remains collected (1877). His fine character and 
 brilliant intellect appear to have made a deep impression on his 
 contemporaries, and his death at the age of twenty-three was 
 accompanied with a widespread regret and sense of loss such as 
 rarely attend the passing-away of so young a writer. Armstrong 
 was born in Dublin in 1841, and entered Trinity College, Dublin, 
 in 1859. Though apparently of strong physique, and, like his 
 
 M M 2 
 
532 BOOK VI 
 
 brother, a great lover of outdoor life, he was attacked by con- 
 sumption and died in 1865. 
 
 Mr. E. J. Armstrong's POEMS have been posthumously published. 
 
 THE BLIND STUDENT 
 
 ON Euripides' plays we debated, 
 
 In College, one chill winter night ; 
 A student rose up, while we waited 
 
 For more intellectual light. 
 As he stood, pale and anxious, before us, 
 
 Three words, like a soft summer wind, 
 Went past us and through us and o'er us 
 
 A whisper low-breathed : ' He is blind ! ' 
 
 And in many a face there was pity, 
 
 In many an eye there were tears ; 
 For his words were not buoyant or witty, 
 
 As fitted his fresh summer years. 
 And he spoke once or twice, as none other 
 
 Could speak, of a woman's pure ways 
 He remembered the face of his mother 
 
 Ere darkness had blighted his days. 
 
 ADIEU 
 
 I HEAR a distant clarion blare 
 The smouldering battle flames anew ; 
 
 A noise of onset shakes the air 
 Dear woods and quiet vales, adieu ! 
 
 Weird crag, where I was wont to gaze 
 
 On the far sea's aerial hue, 
 Below a veil of glimmering haze 
 
 At morning's breezy prime adieu ! 
 
 Clear runnel, bubbling under boughs 
 Of odorous lime and darkling yew. 
 
 Where I have lain on banks of flowers 
 And dreamed the livelong noon adieu ! 
 
EDMUND JOHN ARMSTRONG 533 
 
 And, ah ! ye lights and shades that ray 
 These orbs of brightest summer blue, 
 
 That haunted me by night and day 
 For happy moons adieu ! adieu ! 
 
 From FIONNUALA 
 
 WITH heaving breast the fair-haired Eileen sang 
 
 The mystic, sweet, low-vowelled Celtic rhyme 
 
 Of Fionnuala and her phantom lover, 
 
 Who wooed her in the fairy days of yore 
 
 Beneath the sighing pines that gloom the waves 
 
 Of Luggala and warbling Anamoe 
 
 And how he whispered softly vows of love, 
 
 While the pale moonbeam glimmered down and lit 
 
 The cataract's flashing foam, and elves and fays 
 
 Played o'er the dewy harebells, wheeling round ' 
 
 The dappled foxglove in a flickering maze 
 
 Of faint aerial flame ; and the wild sprites 
 
 Of the rough storm were bound in charmed sleep 
 
 And how the lovely phantom lowly knelt, 
 
 And pleaded with such sweet-tongued eloquence, 
 
 Such heavenly radiance on his lips and eyes, 
 
 That Fionnuala, blushing, all in tears, 
 
 Breaking the sacred spell that held her soul, 
 
 Fell on his bosom and confessed her love 
 
 And how the demon changed, and flashed upon her 
 
 In all his hideous beauty, and she sank 
 
 In fearful slumbers, and, awaking, found 
 
 Her form borne upward in the yielding air ; 
 
 And, floating o'er a dark blue lake, beheld 
 
 The reflex of a swan, white as the clouds 
 
 That fringe the noonday sun, and heard a voice, 
 
 As from a far world, shivering through the air : 
 
 ' Thou shalt resume thy maiden form once more 
 
 When yon great Temples, piled upon the hills 
 
 With rugged slabs and pillars, shall be whelmed 
 
 In ruin, and their builders' names forgot ! ' 
 
 And how she knew her phantom lover spoke, 
 
534 BOOK VI 
 
 And how she floated over lake and fell 
 
 A hundred years, and sighed her mournful plaint 
 
 Day after day, till the first mass-bell pealed 
 
 Its silvery laughter amid Erin's hills, 
 
 And a young warrior found her, with the dew 
 
 Of morning on her maiden lips, asleep 
 
 In the green woods of warbling Anampe, 
 
 And wooed and won her for his blushing bride. 
 
 GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 
 
 MR. ARMSTRONG is one of the most fertile of Irish writers of the 
 present day. He has given himself to poetry in that spirit of 
 single-hearted devotion in which great works are achieved ; and 
 his arrayof volumes containing dramas, lyrics, narrative poems, 
 odes, meditations, and what not represent a strenuous attempt 
 to pay what Baudelaire calls the poet's ransom by the harvest 
 of his art. 
 
 The earliest years of Mr. Armstrong were spent in the 
 southern part of the County Wicklow, and as in the case of his 
 elder brother, Edmund J. Armstrong (q.v.), whom he accom- 
 panied in endless rambles and explorations 
 
 ... Along the stormful shore, 
 
 Roaming underneath the lonely woodlands' branches old and hoar, 
 Where the golden rills of Wicklow foaming 
 Flash from rock to rock through many a dark ravine, 
 Where the crags above the hollows and the lakes in splendour lean, 
 
 this region with its singular and pathetic beauty was the 
 true nursing-mother of his poetic gift. The following passage 
 from a letter which I am permitted to quote gives the clue to 
 the character of his whole poetic work : ' The love of Nature 
 led in my brother's case and in mine to the love of poetry. 
 At the age of twelve I had read all Shakespeare's plays and a vast 
 deal of other poetry and prose besides. I used to spend hours, 
 
GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 53$ 
 
 with a book of poetry in my hand, in the tops of tall trees, reading, 
 or on the side of the Dublin or Wicklow mountains, alone ; or my 
 brother and I together would scale a mountain, with a volume 
 of Byron or Scott or Wordsworth or Coleridge or Keats or 
 Shelley, and lie in the heather, reading aloud alternately poem 
 after poem." All his life long, but especially in the years from 
 about 1864 to 1877, Mr. Armstrong as his readers might per- 
 ceive has been a devoted lover of the knapsack and the ' open 
 road,' and has tramped not only over a great part of his own 
 country, but through Normandy and Brittany, the Riviera, 
 Switzerland, Italy, and even Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria. 
 The effect of his devotion both to poetry and to open-air life 
 may be clearly traced in Mr. Armstrong's work. It shows fine 
 culture and acquaintance with the highest models, and it 
 brings with it also something far more precious a breath 
 from the hills, the odour of pines, the gleam of mountain 
 torrents, the sunlight on leagues of heather. Mr. Armstrong 
 has travelled much, both in the outward world and in that 
 inner one of thought and study, and from every place that he 
 has visited in both worlds some glimpse of the scenery of his 
 life is reflected in his verse. But he seems to have taken 
 everywhere with him, and preserved in all its buoyancy, the 
 early youthful delight in exploration and in the physical con- 
 tact with wild Nature. The distinct note, the original flavour, 
 of Mr. Armstrong's poetry appears to be formed by the union 
 of his ornate and stately diction with the peculiar freshness and 
 directness of his pictures of outdoor life. These pictures have 
 the true quality of the plein air they are not memories or 
 dreams of Nature, but experiences, won by the toil that deepens 
 the breath and braces the muscle upon the mountain-side, and 
 that reader must have surely left his youth of body and spirit 
 long behind in whose veins they do not stir the roving blood. 
 
 But though Mr. Armstrong's renderings of the life of Nature 
 form, to my mind, the most original and valuable part of his 
 work, he is also a poet of human thought and passion, and has 
 produced in that province a great deal of masterly work. 
 His three-volumed drama, or trilogy, on ' Saul,' David,' and. 
 
536 BOOK VI 
 
 'Solomon,' was perhaps a piece of misdirected labour for 
 these figures have become symbols to us, and as human 
 characters in a drama of action they do not appear to live- 
 yet one cannot but admire the strenuous artistic impulse in 
 which such a work was conceived and executed. These 
 dramas like the author's earlier work UGONE, founded on 
 a passionate Italian story are designed with thoughtfulness 
 and skill, and wrought out with accomplished craftsmanship. 
 But it is in poems half narrative, half reflective like ' Through 
 the Solitudes ' or ' Lugnaquillia,' where the poet's mind is free 
 to roam at will and follow up any pleasant path that may pre- 
 sent itself, that Mr. Armstrong's art is seen at its best. It is 
 true that in the pure analysis of passion (as in the striking poem 
 4 Sundered Friendship/ which won the enthusiastic praise of 
 Sainte-Beuve) and in the region of pure philosophic meditation, 
 to which he has devoted a complete volume, ONE IN THE 
 INFINITE, Mr. Armstrong has won laurels which the critic 
 cannot overlook. But he seems most at home and most 
 original when the outward and the inward life play into and 
 stimulate each other, and the bulk of his work is conceived on 
 this plane : 
 
 Yet the Indefinite, Awful, Infinite 
 
 Vibrates about me, and these scenes have grown 
 
 The tokens of Its life and of Its power, 
 
 And, yielding to the pulses of Its might, 
 
 And worshipping before Its viewless throne, 
 
 My spirit widens towards a larger light. 
 
 So may that Voice still speak from hill, wave, flower, 
 
 Love, to thy heart and mine. 
 
 Yet with all this love and reverence for external Nature 
 Mr. Armstrong's feeling towards it differs markedly from that of 
 the new Celtic school, in that it is not mingled with the least 
 trace of mysticism. Nature with him is always one thing ; God 
 is another ; self a third. To the mystic the scenery of the 
 inward and of the outward life are indistinguishably blended, 
 just as they are in the old Celtic literature from which the Irish 
 
GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 537 
 
 mystical poetry of to-day has sprung. Mr. Armstrong's poetry 
 shows no sign in this or any other way of the influence of the 
 Celtic .literary tradition. It is simple and objective in its con- 
 ception, and forms the most important body of poetic work which 
 has been produced outside the Celtic tradition since the time 
 when Ferguson and Mangan began to lead the waters from 
 that ancient source into the channels of modern Irish verse. 
 
 T. W. ROLLESTON. 
 
 George Francis Savage- Armstrong, M.A., D.Litt., was born in the 
 County Dublin, 1845 ; son of the late Edmund J. Armstrong, a descendant 
 of the Irish branch of the Armstrongs of Mangerton. Mr. Armstrong's 
 mother was a daughter of the Rev. Henry Savage, of Glastry, County 
 Down. On the death of a maternal uncle in 1891, Mr. Armstrong assumed 
 the additional surname of Savage, as representative of the Glastry branch of 
 the Savages of the Ards, the most ancient of the Anglo-Norman families 
 of Ulster. He was educated, partly by private tuition, in the Channel 
 Islands -whither he had accompanied his elder brother, Edmund J. 
 Armstrong (q.v. ) and at Trinity College, Dublin, where among 
 other distinctions he won the Vice-Chancellor's prize for English verse 
 with a poem on ' Circassia.' His first literary work was the editing of his 
 brother Edmund's POEMS. This was shortly followed, in 1869, with a 
 volume of POEMS, LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC, which won the warm 
 commendations of many distinguished critics, including Sainte-Beuve. The 
 tragedy UGONE followed next (1871), and after this the TRAGEDY OF 
 ISRAEL (1872-1876). Mr. Armstrong next turned to a fresh edition of his 
 brother's writings, accompanied with a ' Life and Letters.' A GARLAND 
 FROM GREECE was the fruit of a tour in that country undertaken in 1877. 
 Next, after a long break, came STORIES OF WICKLOW (1886), the fulfil- 
 ment of an early poetic project which was to have been carried out in 
 concert with the author's brother; VICTORIA REGINA, a 'Jubilee Song' 
 (1887) ; a satire entitled MEPHISTOPHELES IN BROADCLOTH (1888) ; ONE 
 IN THE INFINITE (1891); the Trinity College, Dublin, TERCENTENARY 
 ODE (1892), set to music by Sir Robert Stewart; and a poem for the 
 Diamond Jubilee (1898), written in a very successful adaptation of the 
 Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. Mr. Armstrong has also written occasional 
 prose articles in various magazines, and has compiled in an interesting 
 volume the family history of the Savages of the Ards. In 1871 he 
 was appointed to the post, which he still holds, of Professor of English 
 Literature in the Queen's College, Cork. He is a Fellow of the Royal 
 University. 
 
538 BOOK VI 
 
 THE SCALP 
 
 STERN granite Gate of Wicklow, with what awe, 
 
 What triumph, oft (glad children strayed from home) 
 We passed into thy shadows cool, to roam 
 
 The Land beyond, whose very name could draw 
 
 A radiance to our faces ; till we saw, 
 
 With airy peak and purple mountain-dome, 
 
 And lawn and wood and blue bay flecked with foam. 
 
 The Land indeed fair truth without one flaw ! 
 
 Never may I with foot of feeble age 
 
 Or buoyant step of manhood pass thy pale 
 And feel not still renewed that awe, that joy 
 
 (Of the dim Past divinest heritage) 
 
 Seeking the sacred realm thou dost unveil, 
 Earth's one spot loved in love without alloy ! 
 
 A WICKLOW SCENE l 
 
 FROM THE SUMMIT OF LUGNAQUILLIA 
 
 FOR many a mile the tawny mountains heaved 
 In rough confusion. Here among the heaths 
 A brown dull tarn reflected the heaven's blue, 
 Or the slow-moving shadow of a cloud 
 Darkened a cliff or valley. Northward far 
 Slieve-Cullinn,. dwindled to an arrowy point, 
 Lifted his rosy peak beyond grey Djouce, 
 That in a cleft amid the summer woods 
 Showed, nestling, Luggela ; and near us ran 
 The Avonbeg by Fananierin's base 
 Away to mingle with bright Avonmore ; 
 And low amid Ovoca's wooded vale 
 We traced the wedded waters to the sea ; 
 Then, turning, watched beneath in wide Imahl 
 Far-winding Slaney glittering in the noon, 
 And fashioned for our fancies in the haze 
 Faint in the West the rims of Galteemore. 
 
 1 From Lugnaquillia' (STORIES OF WICKLOW). 
 
GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 539 
 
 WlCKLOW 
 
 YES, this is Wicklow ; round our feet 
 And o'er our heads its woodlands smile ; 
 
 Behold it, love the garden sweet 
 And playground of our stormy isle. 
 
 Look round thee from this wooded height 
 Where, girdled in its sheltering trees, 
 
 Our home uprears its turrets bright 
 Our own dear home of rest and peace. 
 
 in 
 
 Is it not fair the leafy land ? 
 
 Not boasting Nature's sterner pride, 
 Voluptuous beauty, scenes that stand 
 
 By minds immortal deified ; 
 
 IV 
 
 Yet fraught with sweet resistless spells 
 That wake a deep, a tranquil love, 
 
 The witchery of the ferny dells, 
 
 The magic of the murmuring grove. 
 
 The ever-present varying sea, 
 
 The graceful Peaks, the violet hills, 
 
 The fruitful lawn and flowery lea, 
 The breezy moors, the golden rills. 
 
 VI 
 
 A land with every delicate tint 
 
 Of fleeting shadow, wandering light 
 
 Rich as the rainbows when they glint 
 O'er its own bays ere falls the night 
 
 1 From * De Verdun of Darragh ' (STORIES OF WICKLOW). 
 
540 BOOK VI 
 
 VII 
 
 Here all the year the mountains change 
 From month to month, from hour to hour ; 
 
 Now rosy-flushed, now dim and strange, 
 Now sparkling from the sunlit shower. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Now far in moving clouds withdrawn, 
 Or gilt with yellowing fern and larch, 
 
 Or smit with crimson beams of dawn, 
 Or silvered with the sleets of March. 
 
 IX 
 
 Fair when the first pale primrose shines, 
 The first gay moth the furze has kissed ; 
 
 When under Little Giltspear's pines 
 The bluebells seem an azure mist ; 
 
 When summer robes with all her leaves 
 The rough ravine, the lakelet's shore ; 
 
 Or when the reaper piles his sheaves 
 Beside the pools of Avonmore ; 
 
 XI 
 
 When the brown bee on Croghan bites 
 In eager haste the heathbell through, 
 
 And children climb Gleneely's heights 
 To gather fraughans fresh with dew ; 
 
 XII 
 
 When grouse lie thick in lonely plots 
 On Lugnaquillia's lofty moor, 
 
 And loud the sportsmen's echoing shots 
 Ring from the rocks of Glenmalure. 
 
GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 541 
 
 XIII 
 
 Fair when the woodland strains and creaks 
 As loud the gathering whirlwinds blow, 
 
 And through the smoke-like mists the PeaJks 
 In warm autumnal purples glow ; 
 
 XIV 
 
 When madly toss the bracken's plumes 
 Storm-swept upon the seaward steep, 
 
 As far below them foams and fumes 
 On beach and cliff the wrathful deep, 
 
 xv 
 
 Till cloud and tempest, creeping lower, 
 Old Djouce's ridges swathe in night, 
 
 And down through all his hollows pour 
 The foaming torrents swoln and white ; 
 
 XVI 
 
 Or when o'er Powerscourt's leafless woods, 
 With crests that down the tempest lean, 
 
 Bend, braving winter's fiercest moods, 
 The pines in all their wealth of green. 
 
 XVII 
 
 A tract of quiet pastoral knolls ; 
 
 Of farms ; of gardens breathing balm ; 
 Grey beaches where the billow rolls 
 
 With wandering voice in storm or calm ; 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Of sombre glen and lonely lake, 
 
 Of ivied castles, ruined fanes, 
 Wild paths by crag and skyey brake, 
 
 And dewy fields and bowery lanes ; 
 
542 BOOK VI 
 
 XIX 
 
 With glimpses sweet and prospects wide 
 Of sea and sky from wood or scar, 
 
 And faint hills glimmering from the tide 
 That tell of other realms afar. 
 
 XX 
 
 A spot that owns the priceless charm 
 Of gentle human hearts and minds 
 
 A people whom the roughest storm 
 True to its kindlier impulse finds ; 
 
 XXI 
 
 A kindly folk in vale and moor, 
 
 Unvext with rancours, frank and free 
 
 In mood and manners rich with poor 
 Attuned in happiest amity ; 
 
 XXII 
 
 Where still the cottage door is wide, 
 
 The stranger welcomed at the hearth, 
 And pleased the humbler hearts confide 
 Still in the friend of gentler birth ; 
 
 XXIII 
 
 A land where alway God's right hand 
 Seems stretching downward to caress 
 
 His wayward children as they stand 
 And gaze upon its loveliness. 
 
 THROUGH THE SOLITUDES 
 
 i 
 
 IT was long past the noon when I pushed back my chair 
 In the hostel, slung knapsack on shoulder, and walked 
 
 Through the low narrow room where the folk from the fair 
 Old peasants deep-wrinkled, sat clustered and talked 
 
GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 543 
 
 In their guttural Gaelic ; and out through the stalls 
 
 Girt with marketers laughing, and groups here and there 
 Of maidens blue-eyed, hooded figures in shawls 
 
 Of scarlet, and wild mountain lads in long hair, 
 Rude carts, and rough ponies with creels, gaily passed 
 
 Up the street ; through the starers and bargainers prest ; 
 And asked of an idler my way ; and at last 
 
 Struck out on the hill-road that winds to the west. 
 
 II 
 
 And I thought, as I strode by the last heavy cart 
 
 Moving earlier home than the rest (wife and child 
 Sitting close on the trusses of straw, and apart 
 
 On the road, cracking whip, chatting loud, laughing wild, 
 The husband and sire in knee-breeches and shoes), 
 
 Though it was of the first of such journeys to me 
 Since my life's friend was lost, yet I dared not refuse 
 
 The gift of good angels that even, the free 
 Glad heart in my breast, the delight in my soul, 
 
 As I greeted the hill-tops, and saw down below 
 The sea winding in from afar, heard the roll 
 
 Of the stream on the rocks, felt the autumn air blow 
 Through my hair as I moved with light step on the way : 
 
 And I said, ' Let me drink to the dregs the black cup 
 Of pain when 'tis nigh ; but if joy come to-day, 
 
 Let me drain the last drop of the daemon-wine up.' 
 Then I journeyed along through the moorlands, and crossed 
 
 The mad stream by the bridge at the crest of the creek, 
 And wound up the mountain to northward, and lost 
 
 All sight of the village and hill-folk. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A bleak 
 
 Heavy cloud, dull and inky, crept over the sun 
 And blackened the valleys. 
 
544 BOOK VI 
 
 IV 
 
 In under the hills 
 Ran the road, among moors where the myrtle stood dun, 
 
 And the heather hung rusted. The voice of the rills 
 Was choked in grey rushes. No footstep was nigh. 
 
 One rush-covered hut smoked aloft. Not a bird 
 Or a bee flittered by me. The wind seemed to die 
 
 In the silence and sadness. No blade of grass stirred. 
 Not a tuft of the bog-cotton swayed. Lone and rude 
 
 Grew the path ; and the hills, as I moved, stood apart 
 And opened away to the drear solitude. 
 
 Then a sorrow crept writhingly over my heart 
 And clung there a viper I dared not fling off. 
 
 The sound of dear voices sang soft in my ear 
 To mock me, dear faces came smiling to scoff 
 
 At my lone iness, making the drearness too drear. 
 Up the track, now to right, now to left as I c'omb, 
 
 Weird visions came thronging in thick on the brain 
 Of days long forgotten, of friends, of a home 
 
 By death deso'ated, of eyes that in vain 
 Gazed out for a soul that no more would come back, 
 
 Of one face far away drawing out my life's love 
 
 Very strangely that day to it. 
 
 Everywhere, b'ack, 
 
 Storm-shattered, the mountains loomed lonely above. 
 A horror, a sickness slipt down through my blood. 
 
 All my thoughts, all my dreams, all that memory's load, 
 All the terror of loneliness, broke like a flood 
 
 Over body and soul, and I shrank from the road. 
 
 VI 
 
 I cowered at the frown of the mountains that hung 
 On this side and that ; and the brown dreary waste ; 
 
 The barren grey rocks far aloft ; for they wrung 
 My soul with dim fears ; and I yearned but to taste 
 
GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 545 
 
 The sweets of companionship, yearned to return 
 
 To the far-away village ; to hear once again 
 The buzz of kind voices about me ; to spurn 
 
 The sadness and horror, the fear and the pain. 
 Then I bent down my head as I moved, and my mind 
 
 Ran out in vague musings : 
 
 4 If God laid His hand 
 On my life now, and suddenly, swiftly consigned 
 
 My soul, at a breath, to the dim spirit-land 
 Guiding on to a world that at best would be strange, 
 
 Would be sad in its joys, in its sweetness unsweet 
 To a mind rent away in so awful a change 
 
 From a world of bright faces, the park and the street, 
 And the room, and the glances of languishing eyes, 
 
 The smiles of red lips, and the touch of soft arms, 
 The gay merry laughters, the happy love-sighs 
 
 And I found myself out in a region of storms, 
 Out beating my way through the waste, with one star 
 
 In dark heavens to lead me ; through regions unknown, 
 Dim regions of midnight outstretching afar ; 
 
 A bodiless soul on its journey alone : 
 Ah, methinks I would yearn for a land such as this, 
 
 For a cloud that but darkens the sun, for the strife 
 With dim dreams, for the heights that shut out the near bliss 
 
 Of dear home for a little . . . O life of my life, 
 My lost one, thou stay of my childhood, my youth, 
 
 Thou fount of my joys in the days that are gone, 
 Where, where in the darkness, the regions of drouth, 
 
 The realm of the dead, art thou journeying on ? 
 Is it strange to thee now, that new being of thine ? 
 
 Dost thou fear in the midst of the darkness, and yearn 
 To be back in the sweet human throngs, in the shine 
 
 Of the bird-waking sun, 'mid the soft eyes that burn 
 With love and with bliss ? . . art thou lonely as I ? 
 
 Art thou sad in a world that belieth its God 
 In its pitiless coldness?' . . Then up to the sky 
 
 I lifted my face, and I cried unto God. 
 
 N N 
 
546 BOOK VI 
 
 VII 
 
 And when back from the dream I had come, every rock 
 
 Had a livelier tinge, and the frown from the heaven 
 Had faded, the mountains no more seemed to lock 
 
 My lone life in their folds out of hate, and the even 
 Grew cheery, grew sweet, and a light wind upsprung 
 
 'Mid the grasses, and fanned me, and wooed me to roam 
 Through the moorland to seaward, and blissfully sung 
 
 In music as soothing as whispers of home. 
 And at last when the sun had gone down to his sleep, 
 
 And I caught the Atlantic's loud roar from the west, 
 Saw the flare of the lighthouse, and wound to the deep, 
 
 All awe of the wilds had died out in my breast. 
 
 GAY PROVENCE 
 
 O'ER Provence breathing, nimble air, 
 Blown keen by dale and sea, 
 
 Who throws the throbbing bosom bare, 
 And bathes himself in thee, 
 
 Who feels thee clear on cheek and brows, 
 And quaffs thee through the lips, 
 
 With love and light and music glows 
 From foot to finger-tips. 
 
 in 
 
 He lives a king, in court and hall, 
 
 'Mid wail of wildering lyres ; 
 A priest, by carven cloister-wall 
 
 Or dim cathedral-choirs \ 
 
 IV 
 
 A knight, with airy lance in rest, 
 
 That rides in lonely vale ; 
 A page, by queenly hand caressed, 
 
 By gate or vineyard-pale. 
 
GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG 547 
 
 He loiters in a golden light, 
 
 Is led with dulcet lure 
 By ghostly town, by towered height, 
 
 A tuneful troubadour. 
 
 VI 
 
 He pines for soft imagined eyes 
 
 Where fictive fervour beams, 
 And wooes with phantom tears and sighs 
 
 The faery dame of dreams. 
 
 VII 
 
 O'er Provence breathing, nimble air, 
 
 Blown keen by dale and sea, 
 O subtle, playful spirit rare, 
 
 O wanton witchery, 
 
 VIII 
 
 Well, well I love that land of thine, 
 
 Its peaks and ferny caves, 
 And fields of olive, orange, vine, 
 
 Blue bays, and breaking waves ! 
 
 WILLIAM WILKINS 
 
 A PERFECTLY genuine ardour ; a keen delight in Nature ; a 
 hearty self-abandonment to emotion and imagination ; a 
 fearless frankness in the utterance of personal thought and 
 feeling ; often a power of calling up a vivid picture by means 
 of a single felicitous original phrase ; a good deal of rhythmic 
 fervour ; a fine sympathy with the varied activities of human- 
 kind ; a cultivated intellectuality, are among the poetic 
 qualities which lift Mr. Wilkins out of the ranks of the versifiers, 
 and entitle him to a place among the poets. He has not to 
 wander the world over in search of subjects for his song, or to 
 
 N N 2 
 
548 BOOK VI 
 
 go back for material to the crudities of a remote antiquity. 
 He finds poetry in the objects that are nearest to him and in 
 the life of the actual present ; in the pursuits and aspirations 
 of his fellow-students ; in the moonlit quadrangles of his 
 college ; in the whirl of the city by which he is surrounded ; 
 in the blue Irish hills which draw him away to their solitudes ; 
 in the sea-that breaks upon familiar Irish shores. It was these 
 aptitudes and these habits which made his University in his 
 college days look forward with interest to his future as a poet, 
 and which still encourage us to expect from him strong, virile, 
 healthy poetry, ennobled by the reflections of a rnaturer intellect 
 and moulded with the perfection of a more practised art. 
 
 G. F. SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG. 
 
 Mr. William Wilkins, born in the garrison of Zante, Ionian Islands, 
 on August 21, 1852, is the second surviving son of the late Dr. William 
 Mortimer Wilkins, who was surgeon to the 4ist Regiment, and served 
 in the Peninsula and in India. Having received his early education at 
 Dundalk Grammar School, under Dr. Flynn, he entered Trinity College, 
 Dublin, where his career was brilliant. At college at the same time with 
 him were his two brothers- George, who is now a Fellow of Trinity, and 
 Charles, who died in 1878 at the early age of twenty-two, and in whose 
 memory has been established the prize known as the ' Wilkins Prize.' In 
 his first year at college Mr. Wilkins won the Vice-Chancellor's Prize for 
 English verse by a poem on the subject of Columbus, and the following 
 year he made a name for himself as a poet by his earliest contributions to 
 Kottabos. Equally distinguished in Modern Literature and in Mathematics, 
 Mr. Wilkins graduated with the best degree of his year in 1878. In the 
 following year he was appointed headmaster of the High School, Dublin, 
 the duties of which position he still continues to discharge. 
 
 Mr. Wilkins's chief work is : SONGS OF STUDY, 1881. 
 
 From ACTION 
 
 IT was on the Mount Cithaeron, in the pale and misty morn, 
 That the hero, young Actaeon, sounded the hunter's horn. 
 Princeliest of pursuers of the flying roe was he, 
 Son of great Aristaeus and Theban Autonoe. 
 Oak-like in massy stature and carriage of kingly limb 
 Lo ! the broad, brave grace, and the fleet, fine might of manhood's 
 fair prime in him, 
 
WILLIAM WILKINS 549 
 
 Grandly brow'd as a sea-cliff with the curling waves at its base, 
 And its storm-haunted crest a tangle of deep ripe weeds and grass. 
 And many an Arcadian maiden thought not of a maicten's pride, 
 But looked on the youth with longing, and watch'd as he went, 
 
 and sighed ; 
 
 And yEgle had proffer'd a jewel that a queen might carefully keep 
 For a favouring smile of the hunter and a touch of his beardless 
 
 lip; 
 
 But never on dame or damsel had his falcon glance made stay, 
 And he turn'd from the love-sick /Egle, and toss'd her gifts away. 
 
 For where was so soft a bower, or where so goodly a hall, 
 As the dell where the echoes listen'd to the noise of the waterfall ? 
 And where was there cheek of woman as lovely to soul and sense 
 As the gracious hues of the woodlands in depths of the stately 
 
 glens ? 
 
 And where were there eyes or tresses as gloriously dark or bright 
 As the flood of the wild Alpheus as it pour'd from the lonely 
 
 height ? 
 
 So the hero, young Actseon, fled far from the girl-fill'd house, 
 
 To rove with the beamy spear-shaft through the budded forest 
 
 boughs. 
 
 And sweeter than smiles of ALgle or sheen of her rippling hair 
 Were the heads of his great hounds fawning, or snuffing the 
 
 morning air ; 
 And to tread by the precipices that down from his feet shore 
 
 clean ; 
 And to mark where the dappled leopard was couch'd in the long 
 
 ravine ; 
 And to look at the eagle wheeling up peak-ward, and hear him 
 
 scream ; 
 And to plant strong steps in the meadows, and plash through the 
 
 babbling stream ; 
 And to hurl the spear in the thicket, and draw the bow in the 
 
 glade, 
 And to rush on the foaming fury of the boar by the dogs 
 
 embayed ; 
 
550 BOOK VI 
 
 And ever in midland valley to smell the leaves and the grass, 
 
 Or the brine-scent blown o'er the headlands high up to the bare 
 
 hill-pass, 
 
 Where, lovelier far than ^gle or her eyes' bright witchery, 
 Was Morning, born of the marriage of silent Sky and Sea. 
 
 So the hunter, young Actaeon, to the Mount Cithaeron came, 
 And blew his horn, in the dank, white morn, to startle the sleeping 
 
 game ; 
 Nor thought, as the pealing echoes were clatter'd from crag to 
 
 crag, 
 That Fate on his trace held him in chase, as a huge hound holds 
 
 a stag. 
 
 By rock and by rift and runnel, by marsh and meadow and 
 
 mound, 
 He went, with his dogs beside him, and marvell'd no game was 
 
 found ; 
 Till the length of the whole green gorge and the grey cliffs 
 
 gleaming on high 
 
 Rang and re-echoed with horns and the musical hunting-cry ; 
 And the hounds broke out of the cover, all baying together in 
 
 tune ; 
 
 And the hart sprang panting before them along up the lawns dew- 
 strewn ; 
 And a bevy of buskin' d virgins, dove-breasted, broke from the 
 
 bowers, 
 With spears half-poised for the hurling, and tresses tangled with 
 
 flowers ; 
 
 Their lips, rose-ruddy, disparted to draw their delightsome breath 
 For the chase, and the cheer thereof ringing the rapture of dealing 
 
 death 
 
 The fine heads eagerly lifted, the pitiless fair eyes fix'd ; 
 The cheeks, flower-fresh, flush'd flower-like rich lily, rich rose 
 
 commix'd ; 
 
 The slender feet flying swiftly, the slight shapes rushing like reeds 
 When the Thracian breezes of winter descend on the marshy 
 
 meads ; 
 
 So swept they along like music, and wilder'd Actaeon stood 
 Till the last of the maiden rangers was lost in the leaning wood. 
 
WILLIAM WILKIXS 551 
 
 DISILLUSION 
 
 1 Say a day without the ever.' 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 YOUR proud eyes give me their wearied splendour ; 
 
 Your cold loose touch and your colder smile 
 The truth to my jealous heart surrender : 
 
 You tire, having loved me a little while. 
 Ah ! well, my sweet, I was sure you would, 
 
 For I knew you false when I saw you fair. 
 I have watched and watched for your altered mood, 
 
 And have schooled me so that I shall not care. 
 
 The knoll's blue bonnet, the dell's green mantle, 
 
 The mid-wood hollow where waters run, 
 The bare, stained shore, with its white surf-sandal, 
 
 The sudden smile of the gallant sun 
 Will change not, be you or sweet or bitter : 
 
 A heart after all is hard to break ; 
 But the world at sweetest were surely sweeter 
 
 If only sweet for your own sweet sake. 
 
 Yea, I know right well, if our love were sterling 
 
 We had drained the earth and the skies of joy ; 
 But I God wot and you too, my darling, 
 
 No rare fair flower of girl and boy : 
 How should we rise to such exaltation 
 
 As climbs from a cloud a splendid star ? 
 How live how love with such perfect passion, 
 
 We who are only what others are ? 
 
 MAGAZINE FORT, PHCENIX PARK, DUBLIN 
 
 INSIDE its zig-zag lines the little camp is asleep, 
 
 Embalm'd in the infinite breath of the greensward, the river, the 
 stars. 
 
 Round the staff, the yellow leopards of England, weary of wars, 
 Curl and uncurl, to the murmurous voice of the greenwood deep. 
 
552 BOOK VI 
 
 On the lonely terrace their watch the shadowy sentinels keep, 
 Each bayonet a spire of silver high over the silvery jars 
 Of the streamtide, swooning in starlight adown its foam-fretted 
 
 bars 
 
 To the city, that lies in a shroud as of ashes under the steep. 
 To the south are the hills everlasting ; eastward the sea-capes 
 
 and isles ; 
 Inland, the levels of emerald stretch for a hundred miles. 
 
 GEORGE ARTHUR GREENE 
 
 OF a distinguished Anglo-Irish stock, George Arthur Greene 
 was born at Florence on February 21, 1853, in that Casa 
 Capponi in which Lever, a family friend, had written his 
 CHARLES O'MALLEY. His father, the Rev. H. Greene, had 
 been for many years British Chaplain at Pisa and Lucca, and 
 most of his own youth was spent in Italy. 
 
 Educated first at a French school in Florence, and then at 
 the Institute di Studi Superiori in that city, he afterwards 
 entered Dublin University, and there obtained the highest 
 distinctions in the Romance Languages as well as in English 
 Literature. He was in 1876 appointed Professor of English 
 Literature in the Alexandra College, Dublin. He is now 
 settled in London. 
 
 As vice-chairman of the committee of the Irish Literary 
 Society of London he has become one of the leaders of the 
 new Irish literary movement, by contributing valuable papers 
 and addresses on Irish history to its proceedings, and has turned 
 his linguistic talent to the study of Irish, throwing himself 
 actively into the work of the newly established Irish Texts 
 Society. His contributions to the two volumes of the Rhymers' 
 Club and to DUBLIN VERSES BY MEMBERS OF TRINITY 
 COLLEGE have gained him acceptance as a song-writer and 
 sonneteer of fine poetic quality. 
 
GEORGE ARTHUR GREENE 553 
 
 In 1893 was published his ITALIAN LYRISTS OF TO-DAY 
 (now 'in its second edition) by far the most brilliant series 
 of translations from the modern Italian writers that has yet 
 appeared. These translations possess the interest of being in 
 the original metres used by some thirty Italian writers living at 
 the time of their publication. 
 
 ARTS LOUGH 
 
 GLENMALURE, COUNTY WICKLOW 
 
 LONE lake, half lost amidst encircling hills, 
 
 Beneath the imprisoning mountain-crags concealed, 
 Who hest to the wide earth unrevealed, 
 
 To whose repose the brief and timorous rills 
 
 Bring scarce a murmur thou whose sight instils 
 Despair, o'er whom his dark disdainful shield 
 Abrupt Clogherna 'gainst the sun doth wield, 
 
 And thy dim face with deepening shadow fills 
 
 O poet soul ! companionless and sad, 
 
 Though half the daytime long a death-like shade 
 Athwart thy depths with constant horror lies, 
 
 Thou art not ever in dejection clad, 
 
 But showest still, as in a glass displayed, 
 The limitless, unfathomable skies. 
 
 ON GREAT SUGARLOAF 
 
 WHERE Sugarloaf with bare and ruinous wedge 
 Cleaves the grey air to view the darkening sea, 
 We stood on high, and heard the northwind flee 
 
 Through clouds storm-heavy fallen from ledge to ledge. 
 
 Then sudden * Look ! ' we cried. The far black edge 
 Of south horizon oped in sunbright glee, 
 And a broad water shone, one moment free, 
 
 Ere darkness veiled again the wavering sedge. 
 
554 BOOK VI 
 
 Such is the Poet's inspiration, still 
 
 Too evanescent ! coming but to go : 
 Such the great passions showing good in ill, 
 
 Quick brightnesses, love-lights too soon burnt low : 
 And such man's life, which flashes Heaven's will 
 Between two glooms a transitory glow. 
 
 THE RETURN 
 
 ITALIAN lakes, transparent blue, 
 Where, mirrored in the waters deep, 
 The wraith of every hill asleep 
 
 Dreams all the day-time through : 
 
 And heights of Alp with winter hoar, 
 
 And olivets of Apennine, 
 
 Where the grey, twisted woods incline 
 Down to the dark seashore : 
 
 Valdarno with its rounding hills 
 
 That hem it from the invading north, 
 Whence o'er Morello bursting forth 
 
 The tramontana shrills : 
 
 Maremma shores all fever-pale, 
 Where slow the evening mist outspread 
 Covers the coast from head to head, 
 
 And poisons every vale ; 
 
 Cyclopean cities, silent, vast, 
 
 Stretched, all one wilderness of stones, 
 Like some colossal mammoth's bones 
 
 From a forgotten past : 
 
 And Rome the great eternal, dread, 
 
 Whose feet stand in the depths of Time, 
 Grown old in fame and still sublime, 
 
 She lifts her meteor head 
 
GEORGE ARTHUR GREENE 555 
 
 Like Memnon's statue, grandly dumb, 
 
 Standing for ever bold, erect, 
 
 With open eyes that still expect 
 The sunrise that shall come 
 
 Rome the Republic Empire she 
 The footstool of three hundred Popes 
 Rome of the newer, wider hopes 
 
 That pulse through Italy 
 
 Aye, Rome the eternal city, throned 
 
 Upon the seven sacred hills, 
 
 And by the people's patient wills 
 Made new, her crimes atoned : 
 
 unforgotten southern skies ! 
 
 Though now I plough the northward sea, 
 The white-winged memories fly with me, 
 The young hopes re-arise. 
 
 And yet, though sweet the sunburnt South 
 When daylight ebbs o'er west and east, 
 The North shall not obtain the least 
 
 Of praises from my mouth ; 
 
 For, now returned from golden lands, 
 
 I see Night lift her misty shroud, 
 
 And through the veil of morning cloud 
 The sun strikes northern sands ; 
 
 1 hail with joy the early ray 
 
 That gleams o'er valleys thrice more dear ; 
 My pulse beats quicker as I hear 
 Up from Killiney Bay 
 
 The whisper of familiar rills ; 
 
 And sudden tremors veil mine eyes 
 
 As, at a turn, before me rise, 
 Long sought, the Wicklow Hills. 
 
556 BOOK VI 
 
 LINES 
 
 SURELY a Voice hath called her to the deep 
 The deep of heaven, star calling unto star : 
 
 Surely she passed but through the vale of sleep 
 That hideth from our hearts the things that are. 
 
 Surely the ringing music of the spheres 
 Sounds richlier to-day by one pure voice : 
 
 Ah ! though we mourn its silence with our tears, 
 The stars we hear not, hearing it, rejoice. 
 
 WILLIAM KNOX JOHNSON, 
 
 Author of TERRA TENEBRARUM (1897), from which this poem 
 is taken ; a native of County Kildare, now a Civil Servant in 
 Benares. Mr. Johnson has published a striking but unequal 
 poem on the ' Death of Mangan,' and has written an admirable 
 criticism on him as an interpreter of the Celtic genius to 
 English readers. 
 
 AN ANNIVERSARY 
 
 How sweetly keen, how stirred the air ! 
 
 The woods are thrilled at touch of spring ; 
 Along the road from Chateau Vert 
 
 Gaily the thrushes sing. 
 
 No stranger here I come to-day ! 
 
 I know the river winding slow, 
 This haze of blue, with green and grey ; 
 
 And all the flowers I know. 
 
 With you I plucked them ; now, alone. 
 
 The slope is starred with shaken flame 
 Three times the daffodils have blown 
 
 Since we together came. 
 
WILLIAM KNOX JOHNSON 557 
 
 A fire was in our souls ; we spoke 
 
 Of Fate, the evil reign of things 
 How good men ever spurn the yoke 
 
 That tyrant Nature brings. 
 
 ' She knows no God ; her law is hate. 
 
 Brave deed and duty still remain ; 
 Justice and Love we must create, 
 
 Whose quest of Love is vain.' 
 
 My hope was set across the seas ; 
 
 I'd till a land with freer men, 
 Where greed no more the heart should freeze, 
 
 And Pity rule again. 
 
 In widening current from our shore 
 The great gulf-stream of joy should flow ; 
 
 Nations, their lethargy past o'er, 
 Should feel the answering glow,! 
 
 Three years ! and under dusking skies 
 To-night you cross the stream with me. 
 
 I cannot turn, those ardent eyes, 
 That eager mien to see. 
 
 I dare not look upon your face 
 
 Our dreams I sold for daily bread 
 I mingle with the accursed race, 
 
 Dead with the living dead ! 
 
 Yet hear ! ah no ! far northward now 
 
 In Aran of the mighty wave 
 The thunder of the surges slow 
 
 Rolls- round your ocean grave. 
 
 High on the rocky spur you lie, 
 
 A splendour floods the solemn west, 
 The voices of the sea go by, 
 
 And night is thine and rest. 
 
558 BOOK VI 
 
 W. E. H. LECKY 
 
 MR. LECKY is well known as the historian of the eighteenth 
 century, whose deep research and unwavering rectitude in 
 dealing with the stormy history of his own country have set so 
 high an example to future writers. He was born in County 
 Dublin, 1838. He was educated in Trinity College, and now 
 (1900) represents his University in Parliament. His POEMS 
 were published in 1891. 
 
 UNDEVELOPED LIVES 
 
 NOT every thought can find its words, 
 
 Not all within is known ; 
 For minds and hearts have many chords 
 
 That never yield their tone. 
 
 Tastes, instincts, feelings, passions, powers, 
 
 Sleep there unfelt, unseen ; 
 And other lives lie hid in ours 
 
 The lives that might have been. 
 
 Affections whose transforming force 
 
 Could mould the heart anew ; 
 Strong motives that might change the course 
 
 Of all we think and do. 
 
 Upon the tall cliff's cloud-wrapt verge 
 
 The lonely shepherd stands, 
 And hears the thundering ocean surge 
 
 That sweeps the far-off strands ; 
 
 And thinks in peace of raging storms 
 
 Where he will never be 
 Of life in all its unknown forms 
 
 In lands beyond the sea. 
 
W. E. H. LECKY 559 
 
 So in our dream some glimpse appears, 
 
 Though soon it fades again, 
 How other lands or times or spheres 
 
 Might make us other men ; 
 
 How half our being lies in trance, 
 
 Nor joy nor sorrow brings, 
 Unless the hand of circumstance 
 
 Cart touch the latent strings. 
 
 We know not fully what we are, 
 
 Still less what we might be ; 
 But hear faint voices from the far 
 
 Dim lands beyond the sea. 
 
 THE SOWER AND HIS SEED 
 
 HE planted an oak in his father's park 
 
 And a thought in the minds of men, 
 And he bade farewell to his native shore, 
 
 Which he never will see again. 
 Oh, merrily stream the tourist throng 
 
 To the glow of the Southern sky ; 
 A vision of pleasure beckons them on, 
 
 But he went there to die. 
 
 The oak will grow and its boughs will spread, 
 
 And many rejoice in its shade, 
 But none will visit the distant grave, 
 
 Where a stranger youth is laid ; 
 And the thought will live when the oak has died, 
 
 And quicken the minds of men, 
 But the name of the thinker has vanished away, 
 
 And will never be heard again. 
 
56o BOOK VI 
 
 THE ' KOTTABISTAI ' 
 
 AN anthology of Anglo-Irish verse would be incomplete if it 
 did not include within it some selections representative of 
 an interesting literary movement in Trinity College, Dublin, 
 which has been marked by the publication of successive 
 numbers of a college magazine entitled Kottabos, between the 
 year 1874 and the present day. Kottabos owed its origin, and 
 much of its lustre, to the eminent classical scholar, Professor 
 Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, F.T.C.D., who for many years acted 
 as its editor. It was primarily a magazine of Greek and Latin 
 compositions written by Trinity College men, but it was open 
 also to contributions, from the same source, of original 
 English verse and of English verse-translations. In such a 
 miscellany we could not expect to find the productions of 
 many born poets. Born poets are not numerous in any 
 generation, and when they do appear they are seldom 
 gregarious ; they are disposed to * dwell apart ; ' their utter- 
 ances are not often of the kind that fits them to take a place 
 side by side with the productions of the ' elegant trifler ' in 
 verse. To Kottabos some writers of unmistakable kinship 
 with the genuine poets did occasionally contribute ; but these 
 cannot be numbered with the typical ' Kottabistai.' The 
 typical ' Kottabistai' have been men of culture and scholarship, 
 who have written English verse at that period of life at which 
 men are most enthusiastic, most emotional, most enamoured 
 of beauty, most ambitious, most receptive, and most imitative. 
 Kottabos encouraged a taste for English verse- writing, just as it 
 encouraged a taste for Greek and Latin verse-writing ; and 
 between the accomplished contributor of English verse and 
 the accomplished contributor of Greek and Latin verse there 
 was generally a close affinity. Many of the English verse- 
 compositions like some by Mulvany, Hartley, Mr. S. K. 
 Cowan, and Professor Tyrrell were excellent parodies; 
 many like some by Professor Dowden, Dr. Todhunter, and 
 Professor Tyrrell were deliberate and acknowledged studies 
 
THE 'KOTTABISTAP 561 
 
 of the styles of eminent masters ; many like some by 
 De Burgh, Dr. Todhunter, Mr. Newcomen, Mr. George 
 Wilkins, and Mr. Rolleston were clever translations; many 
 were unconscious imitations of poets who happened at the 
 moment to be in vogue. Often the lyrics were humorous and 
 very amusing ; often they contained just enough spontaneous 
 personal emotion to be very nearly genuine poems ; occasionally 
 they were genuine poems. A few of the early contributors to 
 Kottabos have proved that the poetic impulse of their college 
 days was not transient ; their poetical individuality has shown 
 itself to be strong and persistent ; and to these must be 
 assigned separate places in every anthology of modern Irish 
 verse. On the other hand, some who did very good and even 
 promising work in those days have gone to the grave without 
 having accomplished anything better ; and some had not yet 
 had time to prove whether their early fervour was the enduring 
 spirit of poetry or not. From these two latter classes, with 
 hesitation and with diffidence, and not without a misgiving 
 that writers as worthy have been omitted, the names of Charles 
 Pelham Mulvany, John Martley, Professor Palmer, and Percy 
 Somers Payne have been selected. 
 
 G. F. SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG. 
 
 CHARLES PELHAM MULVANY 
 
 CHARLES PELHAM MULVANY was born in Dublin on May 20, 
 1835. He was educated in Dublin, and took his degree of 
 B.A. at Trinity College in 1856. For a time he was a surgeon 
 in the Royal Navy, but subsequently entered Holy Orders, 
 and went to reside in Canada, where he died after a very 
 chequered career on May 31, 1885. Besides his many 
 contributions to Kottabos, he published verses in The Nation, 
 The Irish Metropolitan Magazine, and, we believe, in The 
 College Magazine, which he edited. 
 
 Mulvany's works are : LYRICS OF HISTORY AND OF LIFE 
 
 o o 
 
562 BOOK VI 
 
 (1880) ; A HISTORY OF BRANT, ONTARIO (1883) : TORONTO, 
 PAST AND PRESENT (1884) ; HISTORY OF THE NORTH- WEST 
 REBELLION OF 1885 (1886). 
 
 Mulvany is less of a poet than of a clever and humorous 
 parodist. His serious poems are often pervaded by a melan- 
 choly not unlike Edgar Allan Poe's. They generally begin 
 well, but, like the productions of most writers of his degree, 
 fall off towards the close. 
 
 G. F. S.-A. 
 EMMELINE 
 
 WHY sit. st thou by the shore, 
 
 Emmeline ? 
 Why sportest thou no more, 
 
 Emmeline ? 
 
 'Mid those oozy-looking damsels just emerging from the brine, 
 Thy blue eyes on the blue water why so sadly dost incline, 
 Looking wistful 
 And half tristful 
 
 Emmeline ? 
 
 One summer morn like this, 
 
 Emmeline, 
 Thy heart beat close to his, 
 
 Emmeline ! 
 
 And I rather think he took the liberty to twine 
 His arm just for one moment round that slender waist of thine ; 
 Oh ! wasn't it imprudent 
 For a penniless law-student, 
 Emmeline ? 
 
 He loves you, th^ poor wretch ! 
 
 Emmeline ; 
 But there's many a better catch, 
 
 Emmeline. 
 
 Cut him dead when next you meet him, burn his letters every line, 
 And deserve the eligible match your dearest friends assign. 
 He is but a poor and true man, 
 You a lady (not a woman), 
 Emmeline. 
 
CHARLES PELHAM MULVANY 563 
 
 LONG DESERTED 
 YON old house in moonlight sleeping, 
 
 Once it held a lady fair, 
 Long ago she left it weeping, 
 
 Still the old house standeth there 
 That old pauper house unmeet for the pleasant village street 
 
 With its eyeless window sockets, 
 
 And its courts all grass o'ergrown, 
 And the weeds above its doorway 
 
 Where the flowers are carved in stone, 
 And its chimneys lank and high like gaunt tombstones on the sky. 
 
 Ruin'd, past all care and trouble, 
 
 Like the heir of some old race 
 Whose past glories but redouble 
 
 Present ruin and disgrace, 
 For whom none are left that bear hope or sorrow anywhere. 
 
 Lost old house ! and I was happy 
 
 'Neath thy shade one summer night, 
 When on one that walk'd beside me 
 
 Gazed I by the lingering light, 
 In the depths of her dark eyes searching for my destinies. 
 
 There within our quiet garden 
 
 Fell that last of happy eves 
 Through the gold of the laburnum 
 
 And the thickening lilac leaves ; 
 There the winter winds are now sighing round each leafless bough. 
 
 . Haunted house ! and do they whisper 
 
 That the wintry moon-rays show, 
 
 Glancing through thy halls, a ghastly 
 
 Phantasy of long ago, 
 And thy windows shining bright with a spectral gala light ? 
 
 Vain and idle superstition ! 
 
 Thee no spectral rays illume ; 
 But one shape of gentlest beauty 
 
 I can conjure from thy gloom, 
 In whose sad eyes I can see ghosts that haunt my memory. 
 
 002 
 
564 BOOK VI 
 
 JOHN HARTLEY 
 
 JOHN HARTLEY, the third son of Hr. Henry Hartley, Q.C., 
 afterwards a Judge of the Landed Estates Court, Ireland, was 
 horn in Dublin on Hay 15, 1844. He was educated at 
 Cheltenham College at St. Columba's College, Rathfarnham ; 
 and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree c f 
 B.A. in 1866. In 1875 ne was called to the Irish Bar, bur, 
 obtaining an appointment in the Landed Estates Court, he 
 did not practise. He wrote both for Kottabos and for Froth, 
 a Dublin periodical (1879). He married Hiss Frances 
 Howorth, sister of Hr. H. Howorth, H.P., and died of 
 consumption on August 25, 1882. 
 
 Hartley's work is : FRAGMENTS IN PROSE AND VERSE 
 (published posthumously, 1883). 
 
 Hartley, like Hulvany, excelled as a parodist ; but his 
 parodies lack the completeness and the original surprises of 
 Hulvany's. His serious poems have the same tendency to 
 lose force and power as they advance. He manifests a higher 
 culture, a greater tenderness, and a purer taste than Hulvany ; 
 and his skill in versification is sometimes, though not always, 
 masterly. 
 
 G. F. S.-A. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF SHANGANAGH 
 
 WRITTEN FOR THE AIR ' THE WEARING OF THE GREEN ' 
 
 IN the Valley of Shanganagh, where the songs of skylarks teem, 
 And the rose perfumes the ocean-breeze, as love the hero's dream, 
 'Twas there I wooed my Maggie. In her dark eyes there did 
 
 dwell 
 A secret that the billows knew, but yet could never tell. 
 
 Oh 1 light as fairy tread her voice fell on my bounding heart ; 
 And like the wild bee to the flower still clinging we would part. 
 ' Sweet Valley of Shanganagh,' then I murmur'd, ' though I die, 
 My soul will never leave thee for the heaven that's in the sky ! ' 
 
JOHN MARTLET 565 
 
 In the Valley of Shanganagh, where the sullen sea-gulls gleam, 
 And the pine-scent fills the sighing breeze as death the lover's 
 
 dream, 
 
 'Twas there I lost my Maggie. Why that fate upon us fell 
 The powers above us knew, perhaps, if only they would tell. 
 
 Oh ! like the tread of mournful feet it fell upon my heart, 
 When, as the wild bee leaves the rose, her spirit did depart. 
 In the Valley still I linger, though it's lain I am to die, 
 But it's hard to find a far-off heaven when clouds are in the sky. 
 
 A BUDGET OF PARADOXES 
 
 CHILD in thy beauty ; empress in thy pride ; 
 Sweet and unyielding as the summer's tide ; 
 Starlike to tremble, starlike to abide. 
 
 Guiltless of wounding, yet more true than steel 
 Gem-like thy light to flash and to conceal ; 
 Tortoise to bear, insect to see and feel. 
 
 Blushing and shy, yet dread we thy disdain ; 
 Smiling, a sunbeam fraught with hints of rain ; 
 Trilling love-notes to freedom's fierce refrain. 
 
 The days are fresh, the hours are wild and sweet, 
 When spring and winter, dawn and darkness meet ; 
 Nymph, with one welcome, thee and these we greet. 
 
 ARTHUR PALMER 
 
 BORN in Canada about 1842 ; scholar of Trinity College, 
 Dublin, 1 86 1 ; Fellow, 1867 ; Professor of Latin, 1880, Mr. 
 Palmer won high distinction in the world of learning by his 
 editions of Ovid (HEROIDES) and Propertius. He died in 1897. 
 His contributions to KOTTABOS, whether in English or the 
 classical tongues, show a peculiar delicacy as well as dignity of 
 
566 BOOK VI 
 
 phrase ; and some of his Latin lines, such as In tacitis silvis 
 altum finivit amorem, for Keats's ' There in the forest did his 
 great love cease,' dwell in the memory like certain lines of Virgil. 
 
 T. W. R. 
 
 EPICHARIS 
 
 TAG. ' ANN.' XV. 57 
 
 MOTIONLESS, in a dark, cold cell in Rome, 
 
 A woman, bruised and burnt, but breathing still, 
 
 Lay all alone, and thus her weak, wan lips 
 
 Whispered to high Jove from that dungeon floor : 
 
 ' I am a poor weak woman, O ye gods, 
 
 And now I ask forgiveness, lying here 
 
 (I have no strength to rise upon my knees), 
 
 For all the heavy sins that I have done. 
 
 Remember, O just gods, that this is Rome, 
 
 And I a woman, and the weakest born. 
 
 Could such a woman, nursed in such a city, 
 
 Live righteously, as high-born maidens live ? 
 
 A poor, fair slave, on Rome's waste ocean thrown, 
 
 I had but Heaven to turn to in distress, 
 
 And Heaven always turn'd away from me. 
 
 But if I have offended by my life, 
 
 Oh, let me make atonement by my death ! 
 
 I bore the torture yesterday, kind gods, 
 
 Bravely, and would have died before a word 
 
 Escaped me ; but my cunning torturers, 
 
 Seeing the ensign of my ally Death 
 
 Advancing swiftly, seeing me still dumb, 
 
 Released me, hoping that another trial 
 
 Would quell me, and I fear, I fear it may 
 
 For, oh, the pain was horrible ! But yesterday 
 
 A sort of trance was on me all the time 
 
 That let me triumph over any pain, 
 
 And made me secretly deride the fools 
 
 For wasting all their cruel toil in vain. 
 
 But to begin the agony again ! 
 
 The burning bricks, the red-hot plates, the scourge 
 
ARTHUR PALMER 567 
 
 Kind gods, assist me ! let me not die a traitor ! 
 
 Take from me this weak breath, or give me means 
 
 To stop it, so men may say when I am gone : 
 
 " This was a poor, weak woman, but no traitor ! " 
 
 And so, perhaps, when poor Epicharis 
 
 Is cast away, without a grave or name, 
 
 Some man who fears the gods, and loves not traitors, 
 
 May come and lay a penny on my lips, 
 
 That I may want not Charon's passage-fee, 
 
 Nor flit for ever by the bank of Styx ' 
 
 She ceased for very weakness, but her words 
 
 Mounted as high as heaven from the stones, 
 
 And on the moment Nero's messengers 
 
 (Jame in to lead her to the torment-room ; 
 
 But finding that she could not stand, they brought 
 
 A litter, and so bore her through the streets. 
 
 And thus the gods granted the harlot's prayer ; 
 
 For in the litter's roof she spied a ring, 
 
 And quickly loosed the band that bound her waist, 
 
 And did it round her neck, and through the ring, 
 
 And, calling up her torture-broken strength, 
 
 Crush'd out her little life a faithful girl ! 
 
 And on the soldiers bore her through the streets, 
 
 Until they reach'd the hall of doom, and there 
 
 Open'd the litter's door, and she was gone ; 
 
 More nobly dead, though a freedwoman, 
 
 Than many a Roman swoln with pedigree. 1 
 
 PERCY SOMERS PAYNE 
 
 SON of the Rev. Somers Payne, of Upton, County Cork. He 
 died in 1874, aged twenty-four. He contributed to Kottabos 
 two or three poems marked by an intensity and sincerity of 
 feeling, and a certain creative power, which gave promise of 
 high distinction. 
 
 T. W. R. 
 
 1 Cf. Juv. SAT. viii : Tumes alto Drusorum stemmate.' 
 
568 BOOK VI 
 
 REST 
 
 SILENCE sleeping on a waste of ocean 
 
 Sun-down westward traileth a red streak 
 One white sea-bird, poised with scarce a motion, 
 
 Challenges the stillness with a shriek 
 Challenges the stillness, upward wheeling 
 
 Where some rocky peak containeth her rude nest ; 
 For the shadows o'er the waters they come stealing, 
 
 And they whisper to the silence : ' There is Rest.' 
 
 Down where the broad Zambesi River 
 
 Glides away into some shadowy lagoon 
 Lies the antelope, and hears the leaflets quiver, 
 
 Shaken by the sultry breath of noon 
 Hears the sluggish water ripple in its flowing ; 
 
 Feels the atmosphere, with fragrance all opprest ; 
 Dreams his dreams ; and the sweetest is the knowing 
 
 That above him, and around him, there is Rest. 
 
 Centuries have faded into shadow, 
 
 Earth is fertile with the dust of man's decay ; 
 Pilgrims all they were to some bright El-dorado, 
 
 But they wearied, and they fainted, by the way. 
 Some were sick with the surfeiture of-pleasure, 
 
 Some were bow'd beneath a care-encumber'd breast ; 
 But they all trod in turn Life's stately measure, 
 
 And all paused betimes to wonder, ' Is there Rest ?' 
 
 Look, O man ! to the limitless Hereafter, 
 
 When thy Sense shall be lifted from its dust, 
 When thy Anguish shall be melted into Laughter, 
 
 When thy Love shall be sever'd from its Lust. 
 Then thy spirit shall be sanctified with seeing 
 
 The Ultimate dim Thule of the Blest, 
 And the passion-haunted fever of thy being 
 
 Shall be drifted in a Universe of Rest. 
 
INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A CABIN on the mountain -side hid in a grassy nook . . . 489 
 A little sun, a little rain ......... 379 
 
 A nation's voice, a nation's voice . . . . . . .124 
 
 A plenteous place is Ireland for hospitable cheer . . . 308 
 
 A poor old cottage tottering to its fall . . . . . .216 
 
 A spirit speeding down on All Souls' Eve . . . . . . 442 
 
 A star has gone ! a star has gone ! ...... 62 
 
 A terrible and splendid trust ........ 467 
 
 A wind that dies on the meadows lush . . . . . .427 
 
 Adieu to Belashanny ! where I was bred and born . . . . 371 
 
 Adown the leafy lane we two . . . . . . .186 
 
 Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ . . . 468 
 Ah, sweet Kitty Neil, rise up from that wheel .... 75 
 
 All day in exquisite air . . . . . . . 414 
 
 All hail ! Holy Mary, our hope and our joy ! . . . 155 
 
 All the heavy days are over . . . . . . 501 
 
 Am I the slave they say ........ 107 
 
 An old castle towers o'er the billow ....... 209 
 
 An' the thought of us each was the boat ; och, however'd she stand 
 
 it at all 432 
 
 As beautiful Kitty one morning was tripping ..... 33 
 
 As chimes that 'flow o'er shining seas . . . . . 335 
 
 As flow the rivers to the sea ........ 491 
 
 As from the sultry town, oppressed . . . . . 221 
 
 As I roved out, at Faha, one morning . . . . . .16 
 
 As slow our ship her foamy track . . . . . . . 48 
 
 At early dawn I once had been ....... 102 
 
 At night what things will stalk abroad . . . . . . 417 
 
 At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly . . . 45 
 Away from the town, in the safe retreat . . . . . . 448 
 
 BARD ! to no brave chief belonging ...... 63 
 
570 INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Behold the world's great wonder . . . . . 60 
 
 Beloved, do you pity not my doleful case . . . . .103 
 
 Beloved, gaze in thine own heart ....... 502 
 
 Beyond, beyond the mountain line . - f 526 
 
 Bring from the craggy haunts of birch and pine ..... 357 
 
 But the rain is gone by, and the day's dying out in a splend nir . 417 
 
 Buttercups and daisies in the meadow . . . . 363 
 
 By memory inspired . . '. . . . . . . 21 
 
 By the foot of old Keeper, beside the bohreen . . . 189 
 
 By the shore a plot of ground . . . . . . . 374 
 
 CAN the depths of the ocean afford you not graves . . . . 146 
 
 Cead mile failte ! child of the Ithian . . . . . . 87 
 
 Cean duv deelish, beside the sea . . . . . . . 440 
 
 Child in thy beauty ; empress in thy pride ... . .- . 565 
 
 Chill the winter, cold the wind . . . . . . 340 
 
 Come ! pledge again thy heart and hand . . . . .126 
 
 Come, tell me, dearest mother, what makes my father stay . . 3 
 
 Count each affliction, whether light or grave . . . . 322 
 
 Crom Cruach and his sub-gods twelve . ... . 299 
 
 DARK angel, with thine aching lust . . . . . . 469 
 
 Dead heat and windless air . . . . . . . . 415 
 
 Dear maiden, when the sun is down ... . . .184 
 
 Deep in Canadian woods we've met ....... 236 
 
 ' Did they dare did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neill ? ' . . 120 
 
 Did ye hear of the Widow Malone . - . . . . 71 
 
 Do you remember, long ago . . V ~ ' . 152 
 
 Dry be that tear, my gentlest love .' ... . . . 31 
 EACH nation master at its own fireside . . . . . -515 
 
 FAIR our fleet at Castle Sweyn . : .. * > .- . . . . 341 
 
 Far are the Gaelic tribes and wide . ' ' . . . . 163 
 
 Far from the churchyard dig his grave . ... . . . 368 
 
 Far out beyond our sheltered bay . . -. . . . . 234 
 
 Farewell ! the doom is spoken, All is o'er . 333 
 Fled foam underneath us and round us, a wandering and milky 
 
 smoke . . . . . ..... 503 
 
 For many a mile the tawny mountains heaved ..... 538 
 
 From a Munster vale they brought her . ~ ... .- .... 147 
 
 From the ocean half a rood . . . . . . . . 516 
 
 From what dripping cell, through what fairy glen .... 191 
 
 GET up, our Anna dear from the weary spinning-wheel . . . 305 
 
 Gile Machree 85 
 
 Girl of the red mouth ; . . . . . . . . 144 
 
INDEX TO FIRST LINES 571 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Go not to the hills of Erin ........ 440 
 
 Good men and true ! in this house who dwell . . . . . 139 
 
 Great fabric of oppression . . . . . . . 131 
 
 Great woods gird me now around ....... 336 
 
 HAD I a heart for falsehood framed .... 31 
 
 Hail to our Keltic brethren, wherever they may be . . . 168 
 
 Have you been at Carrick, and saw you my true-love there . . 101 
 
 Have you e'er a new song ........ 389 
 
 He came across the meadow-pass . . . . . . .129 
 
 He grasped his ponderous hammer ; he could not stand it more . . 210 
 
 He planted an oak in his father's park . . . . . 559 
 
 He said that he was not our brother . . . . . . . 108 
 
 Heard'st thou over the Fortress wild geese flying and crying ? . 368 
 
 Heed her not, O Cuhoolin, husband mine . . . . . 477 
 
 Here are the needs of manhood satisfied !..... 528 
 
 His locks are whitened with the snows of nigh a hundred years . . 202 
 Honey-sweet, sweet as honey smell the lilies . . . . .415 
 
 How hard is my fortune ......... 96 
 
 How sweet the answer Echo makes . . . ... 47 
 
 How sweetly keen, how stirred the air ! 556 
 
 Hush ! hear you how the night wind keens around the craggy reek . 179 
 
 AM desolate ........... 344 
 
 am Ethell, the son of Conn . . . . . .315 
 
 am the breath of Tethra, voice of Tethra . . '.' . . . 481 
 
 am the Death who am come to you . , . v . " . 458 
 
 am the tender voice calling ' Away ' . . ... , . . . 487 
 
 'm sittin' on the stile, Mary. . ... . > . . 226 
 
 'm very happy where I am . . . . . . 232 
 
 give my heart to thee, O mother-land . . . . . 484 
 
 go to knit two clans together . . " . . . . . 320 
 
 groan as I put out . . . . . . ... . 416 
 
 had a chair at every hearth . . . . . . . 502 
 
 hear a distant clarion blare . ..... . . 532 
 
 know what will happen, sweet ....... 235 
 
 know who won the peace of God . . . . . . 347 
 
 said my pleasure shall not move ....... 490 
 
 saw the Master of the Sun. He stood ..... 314 
 
 see black dragons mount the sky , . . . . . 273 
 
 see thee ever in my dreams . . . . . . . 264 
 
 sit beside my darling's grave .. . . . . ..215 
 
 walked entranced . . . . . . . . 252 
 
 walked through Ballinderry in the spring-time . . . . 308 
 
572 INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
 
 I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree ..... 500 
 
 I would I were on yonder hill . . . . . . . . 14 
 
 I'd rock my own sweet childie to rest in a cradle of gold on a bough 
 
 of the willow . . . . . . . . . . 393 
 
 If I had thought thou could'st have died . . . 55 
 If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking . . . . . -3 
 
 If you searched the county o' Carlow, ay, and back again . . . 405 
 
 'If you would like to see the height of hospitality .... 398 
 
 Image of beauty, when I gaze on thee . . . . . . 489 
 
 Imageries of dreams reveal a gracious age . . . . . 471 
 
 In a grey cave, where comes no glimpse of sky . . . . . 418 
 
 In a quiet water'd land, a land of roses . . . . . .460 
 
 In Siberia's wastes . . . .' ' . . . . . . 268 
 
 In the valley of Shanganagh, where the songs of skylarks teem . 564 
 
 In the wet dusk silver sweet . . . ,. . . . . 491 
 
 Inside its zigzag lines the little camp is asleep . . . 55 1 
 
 Inside the city's throbbing heart . . . . . . . 426 
 
 Is it thus, O Shane the haughty ! Shane the valiant ! that we meet. 182 
 
 Is there one desires to hear . . . ~. ' .. . . . 479 
 
 It is not beauty I demand . . . . ^ . . . . 61 
 
 It rose upon the sordid street . ". . - . . 229 
 
 It was long past the noon when I pushed back my chair . . 542 
 
 It was on the Mount Cithseron, in the pale and misty morn . . 548 
 
 It was the fairy of the place . . , . . . . . 490 
 
 Italian lakes, transparent blue . . ...... . . . 554 
 
 JIST after the war, in the year 'Ninety-eight .... 193 
 
 Joy ! joy ! the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride . . 135 
 July the First, of a morning clear, one thousand six hundred and 
 
 ninety . . . . . . . . . . .19 
 
 LATE at morning's prime I roved . . . . . . 57 
 
 Let all the fish that swim the sea . . . ." ; . . . 396 
 
 Let the farmer praise his grounds . . . ,- . . . 13 
 Let them go by the heats, the doubts, the strife . . . -S3 1 
 
 Like a great burst of singing came the day . . . . 352 
 
 Little child, I call thee fair . .-.''. . . . . 457 
 
 Lone lake, half lost amidst encircling hills . . . . 553 
 
 Long they pine in weary woe the nobles of our land . . .261 
 
 Low lie your heads this day . ' . " . . . . 353 
 MAN is no mushroom growth of yesterday . . . . .514 
 
 Me hither from moonlight . \. . x . . . . . 276 
 
 Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning' ..... 74 
 
 Mid dewy pastures girdled with blue air . . . . . 408 
 
INDEX TO FIRST LINES 573 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Moans the bay 338 
 
 Mother, is that the passing bell ? . . . . . . . 1 57 
 
 Motionless, in a dark, cold cell in Rome ..... 566 
 
 Music as of the winds when they awake . . ' . . 35^ 
 
 ' My birthday ! ' what a different sound ...... 49 
 
 My eyes are filmed, my beard is grey . . . . . 266 
 
 My grief on the sea ......... 457 
 
 My heart is far from Liffey's tide . . . . . . . 99 
 
 My love, still I think that I see her once more ... -32 
 
 My love to fight the Saxon goes . . . . . . . 217 
 
 My name it is Hugh Reynolds, I come of honest parents . . 5 
 
 My spirit's on the mountains, where the birds . . . . . 54 
 
 NIGHT closed around the conqueror's way ..... 45 
 
 No, not more welcome the fairy numbers . . . . . . 49 
 
 Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note . . . . -53 
 
 Not beauty which men gaze on with a smile . . . . . 511 
 
 Not every thought can find its words . . . . . -558 
 
 Not far from old Kinvara, in the merry month o r May . . . 400 
 
 Now let me alone, though I know you won't ..... 67 
 
 Now Memory, false, spendthrift Memory . . . . . 483 
 
 Now welcome, welcome, baby-boy unto a mother's fears . . 109 
 
 Now when the giant in us wakes and broods ..... 488 
 
 O MOTHER, mother, I swept the hearth, I set his chair and the white 
 
 board spread . . ... . . . . . 443 
 
 O my daughter ! lead me forth to the bastion on the north . . 520 
 
 O Sigh of the sea, O soft lone-wandering sound . . . . 334 
 
 O thou whom sacred duty hither calls . . . . . .170 
 
 O Unknown Bclov'd One ! to the perfect season . . . . 375 
 
 O Woman of the Piercing Wail ....... 254 
 
 O woman of Three Cows, agra! don't let your tongue thus rattle ! . 262 
 
 Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety ..... 394 
 
 Oft in the stilly night ......... 46 
 
 Oh ! drimin donn dilis \ the landlord has come . . . .185 
 
 Oh ! fairer than the lily tall, and sweeter than the rose . . . 399 
 
 Oh, how she plough'd the ocean, the good ship Cos le Down . . 140 
 
 Oh ! in the quiet haven, safe for aye 518 
 
 Oh, Larry M'Hale he had little to fear 70 
 
 Oh, many a day have I made good ale in the glen .... 98 
 
 Oh ! my dark Rosaleen ......... 250 
 
 Oh, Paddy dear ! an' did ye hear the news that's goin' round . . 2 
 
 Oh ! rise up, Willy Reilly, and come along with me . . . . 6 
 
 Oh ! the French are on the sea 22 
 
574 INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Oh, then, tell me, Shawn O'Ferrall 212 
 
 Oh, up the brae, and up and up, beyont the fairy thorn . . . 446 
 Oh ! who is that poor foreigner that lately came to town . . 15 
 
 Old Church, thou still art Catholic e'en dream they as they may . 153 
 On Carrigdhoun the heath is brown . . . . . 153 
 
 On Euripides' plays we debated . . . . . . '532 
 
 On the deck of Patrick Lynch's boat I sat in woeful plight . . . 105 
 Once more, through God's high will and grace . . . -323 
 One touch there is of magic white . . . . . . . 518 
 
 Over here in England I'm helpin' wi' the hay. . . . .451 
 
 Over hills and uplands high . . . .; . . . . . 60 
 
 O'er Provence breathing, nimble air . . . . 546 
 
 Over the dim blue hills . . . . . . . . . 213 
 
 PHYLLIS and Damon met one day . . . . . . 475 
 
 Prince Baile of Ulster rode out in the morn . . . 376 
 
 Proud of you, fond of you, clinging so near to you . . . .149 
 
 RAISE the Cromlech high ! . . 461 
 
 Righ Shemus he has gone to France and left his crown behind . 137 
 Ringleted youth of my love . '.'. '. . . . 456 
 
 River of billows, to whose mighty heart . . . .512 
 
 Roll forth, my song, like the rushing river . . . . 271 
 
 Rose o' the World, she came to my bed . . . . . 474 
 
 Royal and saintly Cashel ! I would gaze . V . . 512 
 
 SAD is yonder blackbird's song ....... 336 
 
 Sadly the dead leaves rustle in the whistling wind . . . . 470 
 
 Seek music in the wolf's fierce howl . . . . . .180 
 
 Shall mine eyes behold thy glory, O my country . . . . 238 
 
 She casts a spell oh ! casts a spell .... . . . 454 
 
 She lived beside the Anner . . . . . . 205 
 
 Show me a sight . . . 1 .. . . . . . 392 
 
 Silence sleeping on a waste of ocean . ./->. . . . 568 
 
 Silent as thou, whose inner life is gone . . , . . . 224 
 Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water . . . . . . 43 
 
 So he trassed away dreamin' of Nora na Mo ..... 385 
 
 So Kings and Chiefs and Bards, in Eman of the Kings . . . 358 
 So, my Kathleen, you're going to leave me ..... 228 
 
 Solomon ! where is thy throne ? It is gone in the wind . . . 274 
 Some laws there are too sacred for the hand . . . . .511 
 
 Stern granite Gate of Wicklow, with what awe . ... 538 
 
 Sure, he's five months, an' he's two foot long ..... 452 
 
 Surely a Voice hath called her to the deep . . . 556 
 Sweet is a voice in the land of gold 339 
 
INDEX TO fIRST LINES 575 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TAKE, proud Ambition, take thy fill 83 
 
 That rake up near the rafters ........ 200 
 
 The bride she bound her golden hair ...... 77 
 
 The colour gladdens all your heart . . . . . 475 
 
 The dismal yew and cypress tall ....... 89 
 
 The gloom of the sea-fronting cliffs . . . . . 530 
 
 The, host is riding from Knocknarea . . . . . . 498 
 
 The little Black Rose shall be red at last 329 
 
 The long, long wished-for hour has come . . . . 175 
 
 The night before Larry was stretched ...... 8 
 
 The Princess with her women-train without the fort he found . . 290 
 
 The silent bird is hid in the boughs ....... 407 
 
 The summer sun is falling soft on Carbery's hundred isles . . 121 
 
 The sun on Ivera .......... 94 
 
 The top o' the mornin' to you, Mick ...... 403 
 
 The waters O the waters ! wild and glooming . . . . 512 
 
 The work that should to-day be wrought . . . . .127 
 
 Then Oberon spake the word of might ...... 435 
 
 There are veils that lift, there are bars that fall .... 462 
 
 There is a green island in lone Gougaune Barra . . . . . 97 
 
 There's no one on the long white road ...... 523 
 
 There our murdered brother lies . . . . . . . 27 
 
 They heaved the stone ; they heaped the cairn .... 303 
 
 This wolf for many a day .......... 422 
 
 Those delicate wanderers ........ 487 
 
 Thou golden sunshine in the peaceful day ! . . . . 346 
 
 Through grief and through danger thy smile hath cheered my way . 44 
 
 Thus sang the sages of the Gael ....... 348 
 
 'Tis I go fiddling, fiddling . . .. . . . . 473 
 
 'Tis pretty to see the girl of Dunbwy . . . . . . 123 
 
 To Rathlin's isle I chanced to sail .... ... 56 
 
 'Twas a balmy summer morning ....... 260 
 
 'Twas beyond at Macreddin, at Owen Doyle's weddin' . . . 406 
 
 'Twas but last night I traversed the Atlantic's furrowM ;i <. . . 166 
 
 'Twas in green-leafy springtime ....... 401 
 
 UP the airy mountain ......... 370 
 
 Up the sea-saddened valley, at evening's decline . . . .321 
 
 WATHERS o' MOYLE an' the white gulls flyin' ..... 453 
 
 We hate the Saxon and the Dane 118 
 
 Weary men, what reap ye ? - Golden corn for the stranger ' . . 177 
 Were you ever in sweet Tipperary, where the fields are so sunny and 
 
 154 
 
576 INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 What ails you that you look so pale . . . . ... 444 
 
 What is it that is gone we fancied ours ? . . . . . 367 
 
 What rights the brave ? . . . . . . . . . 159 
 
 What shall become of the ancient race . . . . . .161 
 
 When Erin first rose from the dark swelling flood . . . 25 
 
 When he who adores thee has left but the name .... 45 
 
 When I was young, I said to Sorrow . .' . . . . 322 
 
 When, like the early rose . ../.'. . . . 90 
 
 When my arms wrap you round, I press ... '. ... 499 
 
 When through life unblest we rove ...... . . 47 
 
 When you are old and grey and full of sleep -.;' .- . 501 
 
 Where is my Chief, my Master, this bleak night, mavro'ie \ . . 269 
 
 Where is thy lovely perilous abode ? . * . . . 463 
 
 Where Sugarloaf with bare and ruinous wedge . . . 553 
 
 Where the huge Atlantic swings heavy water eastward . . . 447 
 While going the road to sweet Athy . . . . . .10 
 
 White bird of the tempest ! O beautiful thing ! . . . . . 88 
 
 Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream .... 500 
 
 Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight ? .,' . . . . . 142 
 
 Who passes down the wintry street ' .. . . . . .414 
 
 Who rideth thro' the driving rain . . . . . . . 465 
 
 Who took me from my mother's arms . . . . 28 
 
 Why is his name unsung, O minstrel host ? . . . N . . 167 
 Why sitt'st thou by the shore . . . . . . .562 
 
 Widow Machree, it's no wonder you frown . . . . . 65 
 
 Wirra, wirra ! ologone ! . .. . . . . ' . . 395 
 
 With deep affection and recollection '. . ... . . . 73 
 
 With heaving breast the fair-haired Eileen sang . . . . 533 
 
 Within the dim museum room . . . . i . . . 222 
 
 Within the letter's rustling fold . . .^ ' . . . .172 
 
 Within the window of this white . . . . . . . 219 
 
 YES, Gertrude, I remember well . .... . . 206 
 
 Yes, let us speak, with lips confirming . . . . . . 480 
 
 Yes! mourn the soul, of high and pure intent .... 514 
 
 Yes, this is Wicklow ; round our feet '..... . . . 539 
 
 Yon old house in moonlight sleeping . . . . 563 
 
 You lads that are funny, and call maids your honey . . . 18 
 
 You were always a dreamer, Rose red Rose .... 442 
 
 Young Rory O'More courted Kathleen bawn . . . . . 68 
 
 Your proud eyes give me their wearied splendour . . . 551 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 'A. E.' . , . . 
 
 Alexander, C. F. 
 Alexander, William . - . 
 Allingham, W. . 
 An Chraobhin Aoibhinn (see 
 
 Hyde) 
 Anonymous, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 1 
 
 14, 15, 16, ;8, 19, 21, 22, 33, 
 
 179, 229 
 
 Armstrong, E. J. 
 Armstrong, G. P\ S. 
 
 BANIM, JOHN 
 Barlow, Jane 
 Barry, M. J. 
 Boucicault, D. . 
 
 Boyd, T. . 
 Brooke, Stopford A. 
 
 CALLANAN, J. J. . 
 Carleton, W. 
 Casey, J. K. . . 
 Coleman, P J. . 
 Conolly, L. Aylmer 
 Curran, J. P. 
 
 DARLEY, GEO. . 
 Davis, Thomas . . 
 De Vere, Sir Aubrey . 
 De Vere, Aubrey 
 Doheny, M. 
 Dowden, E . 
 Downing, Ellen M. P. 
 Drennan, William 
 Dufferin, Countess of . 
 Duffy, Sir C. Gavan . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 4*5 
 
 FAHY, F. A. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 39* 
 
 519 
 
 Ferguson, Sir S. . 
 
 276 
 
 5i5 
 
 Fox, George 
 
 104 
 
 364 
 
 Frazer, J. de J. 
 
 I2 5 
 
 
 Furlong, Alice 
 
 427 
 
 ), 12, 
 
 GEOGHEGAN, A. G. 
 
 J 5i 
 
 33. 
 
 Gifford, the Countess of (see 
 
 
 
 Dufferin) 
 
 
 531 
 
 Gilbert, Lady 
 
 407 
 
 534 
 
 Graves, A. P. 
 
 380 
 
 
 Greene, Geo. A. . 
 
 552 
 
 1 06 
 
 Griffin, Gerald . 
 
 84 
 
 428 
 
 Gwynn, S. L. 
 
 446 
 
 158 
 
 Gyles, Althea 
 
 475 
 
 232 
 
 
 
 463 
 
 HINKSON, K. TYNAN- 
 
 409 
 
 376 
 
 Hopper, Nora 
 
 47i 
 
 
 Hyde, Douglas . 
 
 454 
 
 92 
 
 
 
 76 
 
 INGRAM, J. K. . . 142, 
 
 513 
 
 211 
 
 Irwin, T. C. . 
 
 218 
 
 403 
 
 
 
 56 
 
 JOHNSON, LIONEL 
 
 465 
 
 30 
 
 Johnson, W. Knox 
 
 556 
 
 
 Joyce, R. D. 
 
 208 
 
 58 
 
 
 
 1x6 
 
 KAVANAGH, ROSE 
 
 425 
 
 509 
 
 Keegan, John 
 
 !55 
 
 3" 
 
 Kelly, Mary 
 
 1 S1 
 
 175 
 
 Kickham, C. J. . 
 
 199 
 
 527 
 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 LANE, DENNY . 
 
 *5 2 
 
 25 
 
 Larminie, W. 
 
 476 
 
 226 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H. 
 
 558 
 
 133 
 
 Le Fanu, J. S. . 
 
 187 
 
 P P 
 
578 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ' Leo ' ( see Casey) 
 
 
 Payne, P. S. 
 
 567 
 
 Lever, Chas. J. . 
 
 69 
 
 Power, Marguerite A. . 
 
 57 
 
 Lover, S. 
 
 64 
 
 Prout, Father 
 
 72 
 
 MACALEESE, D. . 
 
 1 86 
 
 REYNOLDS, G. N. 
 
 32 
 
 McBurney, W. B. 
 
 139 
 
 Rolleston, T. W. . 
 
 460 
 
 McCall, P. T- 
 
 404 
 
 Russell, G. W. (see < A. E.') 
 
 
 McCarroll, J. 
 
 1 80 
 
 Ryan, Malachy . 
 
 401 
 
 McCarthy, D. F. 
 
 169 
 
 
 
 MacDerrnott, M. . 
 
 144 
 
 SAVAGE, JOHN . 
 
 181 
 
 McGee, T. D'Arcy 
 
 162 
 
 Sheridan, R. B. . 
 
 30 
 
 Mahony, Francis S. (see 
 
 
 Shorter, Mrs. (see Sigerson, 
 
 
 Prout) 
 
 
 Dora) 
 
 
 Malone, Carroll (se* McBur- 
 
 
 Sigerson, Dora 
 
 437 
 
 ney) 
 
 
 Sigerson, George . 
 
 330 
 
 Mangan, J. C. . . ." . 
 
 241 
 
 Stokes, Whitley . 
 
 345 
 
 Martley, John 
 
 564 
 
 Sullivan^ T. D. . 
 
 233 
 
 Moore, Thomas . 
 
 34 
 
 
 
 Mul hoi land, Rosa (see Gil- 
 
 
 TODHUNTER, JOHN 
 
 350 
 
 bert) 
 
 
 Tormey, M. 
 
 160 
 
 Mulvany, C. P. . 
 
 561 
 
 
 
 
 
 WALLER, JOHN F. 
 
 74 
 
 O'DOHERTY, Mrs. (see Kelly) 
 
 
 Walsh, Edward . 
 
 99 
 
 O'Donnell, J. F. . 
 
 217 
 
 Walsh, John 
 
 184 
 
 O'Grady, S. J. . . . 
 O'Hagan, John . . . 
 
 482 
 127 
 
 Wilde, Lady . .. : 
 Wilkins, W. 
 
 176 
 
 547 
 
 O'Leary, Ellen . 
 
 214 
 
 Williams, R. Dalton . 
 
 145 
 
 ' O'Neill, Moira ' . - .. 
 
 45 1 
 
 Wolfe, Charles . 
 
 5i 
 
 
 
 Wynne, Frances . 
 
 448 
 
 PALMER, A. '' . . . 
 
 565 
 
 
 
 Parnell, Fanny . 
 
 238 
 
 YEATS, W. B. . . 
 
 492 
 
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