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Quenched are our beacon lights-
Thou, of the Hundred Fights!*
Thou, on whose burning tongue
Truth, peace, and freedom hung!+
Both mute, but long as valour shineth,
Or mercy's soul at war repineth,
So long shall Erin's pride

Tell how they lived and died.

WE MAY ROAM THROUGH THIS WORLD.

We may roam through this world, like a child at a feast,
Who but sips of a sweet, and then flies to the rest ;
And, when pleasure begins to grow dull in the east,
We may order our wings, and be off to the west;
But if hearts that feel, and eyes that smile,

Are the dearest gifts that Heaven supplies,

We never need leave our own green isle,

For sensitive hearts, and for sun-bright eyes.

Then remember, wherever your goblet is crowned,

Through this world whether eastward or westward you roam,

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

Oh! remember the smile that adorns her at home.

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 watched after all.

Oh! they want the wild sweet-briery fence
Which round the flowers of Erin dwells;
Which warms the touch, while winning the sense,
Nor charms us least when it most repels.

Then remember, wherever your goblet is crowned,

Through this world whether eastward or westward you roam,

When a cup to the smile of dear woman goes round,
Oh! remember the smile that 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 looked when he left the shore.

*This designation, which has been applied to Lord Nelson before, is the title given to a celebrated Irish hero in a poem by O'Gnive, the bard of O'Neill, which is quoted in the "Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland," page 433:-"Con. of the hundred fights, sleep in thy grass-grown tomb, and upbraid not our defeats with thy victories!"

tFox, "ultimus Romanorum."

Then remember, wherever your goblet is crowned,

Through this world whether eastward or westward you roam,

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

Oh! remember the smile that 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 the clouds o'er the maiden's shame.
The clouds passed soon

From the chaste cold 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 on Eveleen's fame.

The white snow lay

On the narrow pathway

When the Lord of the Valley crossed over the moor;
And many a deep print

On the white snow's tint

Showed the track of his footsteps 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.

LET ERIN REMEMBER THE DAYS OF OLD.
LET Erin remember the days of old,

Ere her faithless sons betrayed her;

When Malachi wore the collar of gold

*

Which he won from her proud invader;
When her kings, with standard of green unfurled,
Led the Red-Branch Knights to danger; +
Ere the emerald gem of the western world

Was set in the crown of a stranger.

"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 History of Ireland, vol. i. book 9.

"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 Craoibhe ruadh, or the Knights of the Red Branch, from their chief seat in Emania, adjoining to the palace of the Ulster kings, called

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.*

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 furled?
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?

COME, SEND ROUND THE WINE.

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

Teagh na Craoibhe 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. 5.

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. "Piscatores aquæ illius turres ecclesiasticas, quæ more patriæ arctæ sunt et altæ, necnon et rotundæ, sub undis manifeste sereno tempore conspiciunt, et extraneis transeuntibus reique causas admirantibus frequenter ostendunt."-Topogr. Hib., dist. ii. c. 9.

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 in 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, which were begun under the direction of that enlightened friend of Ireland, the late Countess of Moira.

This moment's a flower too fair and brief

To be withered and stained by the dust of the schools. Your glass may be purple, and mine may be blue;

But, while they are filled from the same bright bowl, The fool that 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?
Shali 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 should 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!

SUBLIME WAS THE WARNING.

SUBLIME was the warning that Liberty spoke,
And grand was the moment when Spaniards awoke
Into life and revenge from the conqueror's chain.
O Liberty! let not this spirit have rest,

Till it move, like a breeze, o'er the waves of the west;
Give the light of your look to each sorrowing spot,
Nor oh be the Shamrock of Erin forgot,

While you add to your garland the Olive of Spain !
If the fame of our fathers, bequeathed with their rights,
Give to country its charm, and to home its delights,
If deceit be a wound, and suspicion a stain,
Then, ye men of Iberia, our cause is the same.
And oh may his tomb want a tear and a name
Who would ask for a nobler, a holier death,
Than to turn his last sigh into victory's breath

For the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain !

Ye Blakes and O'Donnels, whose fathers resigned
The green hills of their youth, among strangers to find
That repose which at home they had sighed for in vain,
Join, join in our hope that the flame which you light
May be felt yet in Erin, as calm and as bright;
And forgive even Albion while blushing she draws,
Like a truant, her sword, in the long-slighted cause
Of the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain!
God prosper the cause !-oh it cannot but thrive,
While the pulse of one patriot heart is alive,

Its devotion to feel, and its rights to maintain.
Then, how sainted by sorrow its martyrs will die!
The finger of Glory shall point where they lie;
While far from the footstep of coward or slave,
The young spirit of Freedom shall shelter their grave
Beneath Shamrocks of Erin and Olives of Spain !

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BELIEVE ME, IF ALL THOSE ENDEARING YOUNG CHAR`IS.

BELIEVE me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,

Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,

Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will,

And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,

That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known
To which time will but make thee more dear;
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close;

As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.

ERIN, O ERIN!

LIKE the bright lamp that shone in Kildare's holy fane,*
And burned through long ages of darkness and storm,
Is the heart that sorrows have frowned on in vain,

Whose spirit outlives them, unfading and warm.
Erin, O Erin! thus bright through the tears
Of a long night of bondage thy spirit appears.

The nations have fallen, and thou still art young,
Thy sun is but rising, when others are set :
And though slavery's cloud o'er thy morning hath hung,
The full noon of freedom shall beam round thee yet.
Erin, O Erin! though long in the shade,

Thy star will shine out when the proudest shall fade.

Unchilled by the rain, and unwaked by the wind,

The lily lies sleeping through winter's cold hour,

Till Spring's light touch her fetters unbind,

And daylight and liberty bless the young flower.†

Thus Erin, O Erin! thy winter is past,

And the hope that lived through it shall blossom at last.

* The inextinguishable fire of St. Bridget, at Kildare, which Giraldus mentions:-"Apud Kildariam occurrit Ignis Sanctæ Brigidæ, quem inextinguibilem vocant; non quod extingui non possit, sed quod tam solicite moniales et sanctæ mulieres ignem, suppetente materiâ, fovent et nutriunt, ut a tempore virginis per tot annorum curricula semper mansit inextinctus."-Girald, Camb. de Mirabil. Hibern, dist. ii. c 34.

↑ Mrs. H. Tighe, in her exquisite lines on the lily, has applied this image to a still more important subject.

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