In England the garden of beauty is kept
By a dragon of prudery, placed within call;
But so oft this unamiable dragon has slept,

That the garden's but carelessly watch'd after all.
Oh! they want the wild sweet-briery fence
Which round the flowers of Erin dwells,
Which warns the touch while winning the sense,
Nor charms us least when it most repels.

Then remember, wherever your goblet is crown'd,

Through this world, whether eastward or westward you roam, When a cup to the smile of dear woman goes round,

Oh! remember the smile which adorns her at home.

In France, when the heart of a woman sets sail
On the ocean of wedlock its fortune to try,

Love seldom goes far in a vessel so frail,

But just pilots her off, and then bids her good-bye! While the daughters of Erin keep the boy

Ever smiling beside his faithful oar,

Through billows of woe and beams of joy,

The same as he look'd when he left the shore.

Then remember, wherever your goblet is crown'd

Through this world, whether eastward or westward you roam,

When a cup to the smile of dear woman goes round,

Oh! remember the smile which adorns her at home.

EVELEEN'S BOWER.

OH! weep for the hour

When to Eveleen's bower

The lord of the valley with false vows came;
The moon hid her light

From the heavens that night,

And wept behind her clouds o'er the maiden's shame.
The clouds past soon

From the chaste old moon,

And heaven smiled again with her vestal flame;
But none will see the day

When the clouds shall pass away

Which that dark hour left upon Eveleen's fame.

The white snow lay

On the narrow pathway

When the lord of the valley crost over the moor;
And many a deep print

On the white snow's tint

Shew'd the track of his footstep to Eveleen's door.

The next sun's ray

Soon melted away

Every trace on the path where the false lord came;
But there's a light above

Which alone can remove

That stain upon the snow of fair Eveleen's fame.

THE SONG OF FIONNUALA.*

SILENT, O Moyle! be the roar of thy water,
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,
While, murmuring mournfully, Lir'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 bell 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 bell ringing,
Call my spirit to the fields above?

LET ERIN REMEMBER THE DAYS OF OLD.

LET Erin remember the days of old,
Ere her faithless sons betray'd her;
When Malachi wore the collar of gold+

Which he won from her proud invader;

*To make this story intelligible in a song would require a much greater number of verses than any one is authorised to inflict upon an audience at once; the reader must therefore be content to learn, in a note, that Fionnuala, the daughter of Lir, was, by some supernatural power, transformed into a swan, and condemned to wander, for many hundred years, over certain lakes and rivers of Ireland till the coming of Christianity, when the first sound of the mass-bell was to be the signal of her release. I found this fanciful fiction among some manuscript translations from the Irish, begun under the direction of the late Countess of Moira.

"This brought on an encounter between Malachi (the monarch of Ireland in the tenth century) and the Danes, in which Malachi defeated two of their champions, whom he encountered successively hand to hand, taking a collar of gold from the neck of one, and carrying off the sword of the other, as trophies of his victory."-Warner's Hist. of Ireland, vol. i., book ix.

When her kings with standard of green unfurl'd
Led the Red-Branch Knights to danger;

Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of a stranger.

*

On Lough Neagh's bank as the fisherman strays,+
When the clear cold eve's declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining!

Thus shall memory often, in dreams sublime,
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over,
Thus, sighing, look through the waves of time
For the long-faded glories they cover!

COME, SEND ROUND THE WINE.

COME, send round the wine, and leave points of belief
To simpleton sages and reasoning fools;

This moment's a flower too fair and brief

To be wither'd and stain'd by the dust of the schools.
Your glass may be purple, and mine may be blue,
But while they are fill'd from the same bright bowl,
The fool who would quarrel for difference of hue
Deserves not the comfort they shed o'er the soul.
Shall I ask the brave soldier, who fights by my side
In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?
Shall I give up the friend I have valued and tried,
If he kneel not before the same altar with me?
From the heretic girl of my soul shall I fly,

To seek somewhere else a more orthodox kiss?
No! perish the hearts and the laws that try

Truth, valour, or love by a standard like this!

*"Military orders of knights were very early established in Ireland. Long before the birth of Christ we find an hereditary order of chivalry in Ulster, called Curaidhe na Craiobhe ruadh, or the Knights of the Red Branch, from their chief seat in Emania, adjoining to the palace of the Ulster kings, called Teagh na Craiobhe ruadh, or the Academy of the Red Branch; and contiguous to which was a large hospital, founded for the sick knights and soldiers, called Bron-bhearg, or the house of the sorrowful soldier."-O'Halloran's Introduction, &c., part i., chap. v.

† It was an old tradition in the time of Giraldus, that Lough Neagh had been originally a fountain, by whose sudden overflowing the country was inundated, and a whole region, like the Atlantis of Plato, overwhelmed. He says, that the fishermen, in clear weather, used to point out to strangers the tall ecclesiastical towers under the water.