She forgets her own story: and none, she complains,

Of the cause for her grief will remind her;

She fancies but one of her kindred remains

She is certain he never can find her. Whence caught you, sweet Mourner, the swell of that song?

"From the arch of yon wind-laden billow."

Whence learned you, sweet Lady, your sadness?"From Wrong."

Your meekness who taught you?"The Willow."

Asking to know for what man here.

is sent.

The bravest heart must often pause and

gaze;

The firm resolve to seek the chosen end Of manhood's judgment cautious and mature,

Each of these newless bonds binds friend to friend

With strength no selfish purpose can

secure.

My happy lot is this that all attend That friendship which first came and which shall last endure.

THE MARCH TO KINSALE.

DECEMBER, A. D. 1601.

O'ER many a river bridged with ice, Through many a vale with snow-drifts dumb,

Past quaking fen and precipice,

The Princes of the North are come! Lo, these are they that year by year Roll'd back the tide of England's

war;

Rejoice, Kinsale! thy help is near!

That wondrous winter march is o'er. And thus they sang, "To-morrow morn Our eyes shall rest upon the foe: Roll on, swift night, in silence borne, And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!"

Blithe as a boy on march'd the host, With droning pipe and clear-voiced harp;

At last above that southern coast

Rang out their war-steeds' whinny sharp:

And up the sea-salt slopes they wound,

And airs once more of ocean quaff'd;

Those frosty woods the rocks that crown'd

As though May touch'd them waved and laugh'd.

And thus they sang, “To-morrow morn Our eyes shall rest upon our foe: Roll on, swift night, in silence borne, And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!"

Beside their watch-fires couch'd all night,

Some slept, some laugh'd, at cards some play'd,

While, chanting on a central height

Of moonlit crag, the priesthood pray'd: And some to sweetheart, some to wife Sent message kind; while others told Triumphant tales of recent fight,

Or legends of their sires of old. And thus they sang, "To-morrow morn Our eyes at last shall see the foe: Roll on, swift night, in silence borne, And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!"

GRATTAN.

GOD works through man, not hills or snows!

In man, not men, is the godlike

power;

The man, God's potentate, God foreknows;

He sends him strength at the destined hour.

His Spirit he breathes into one deep heart:

His cloud he bids from one mind depart:

A Saint! and a race is to God reborn!

A Man! One man makes a nation's morn!

A man, and the blind land by slow degrees

Gains sight! A man, and the deaf land hears!

A man, and the dumb land like wakening seas

Thunders low dirges in proud, dull ears!

One man, and the People, a three days'

corse,

Stands up, and the grave-bands fall off perforce;

One man, and the nation in height a span To the measure ascends of the perfect

man.

Thus wept unto God the land of Eire: Yet there rose no man and her hope was dead:

In the ashes she sat of a burn'd-out fire; And sackcloth was over her queenly head.

But a man in her latter days arose; A deliverer stepp'd from the camp of her foes:

He spake; the great and the proud gave

way,

And the dawn began which shall end in day!

THE "OLD LAND."

Aн, kindly and sweet, we must love thee perforce!

The disloyal, the coward alone would not love thee:

Ah mother of heroes! strong mother! soft nurse!

We are thine while the large cloud swims onward above thee!

Ah, well sings the thrush by Lixnau and Traigh-li!

Ah, well breaks the wave upon Umbhall and Brandon!

Thy breeze o'er the upland blows clement and free,

And o'er fields, once his own, which the hind must abandon. A caitiff the noble who draws from thy plains

His all, yet reveres not the source of his greatness;

A clown and a serf, 'mid his boundless domains

His spirit consumes in the prison of his straightness!

Through the cloud of its pathos thy face is more fair:

In old time thou wert sun-clad; the gold robe thou worest!

To thee the heart turns as the deer to her lair,

Ere she dies, her first bed in the

gloom of the forest.

Our glory, our sorrow, our mother! Thy God

In thy worst dereliction forsook but to prove thee: —

Blind, blind as the blindworm; cold, cold as the clod;

Who, seeing thee, see not, possess but not love thee!

[John Banim, poet, novelist, and dramatist, was born at Kilkenny, April 3d, 1798. He wrote "Tales of the O'Hara Family," a series of novels descriptive of peasant life in Ireland, in which he was ably assisted by his brother Michael; "The Celts' Paradise," a poem; "Damon and Pythias," a tragedy; and a series of clever essays entitled "Revelations of the Dead Alive." His novels will ever retain a hold upon the mind so long as mankind shall love truthful delineations of character and strong dramatic power of narration. Many of his poems are full of pathos and vigor. Mr. Banim died August 13th, 1844.]

IRISH MARY..

FAR away from Erin's strand,

And valleys wide, and sounding wa

ters,

Still she is, in every land,

One of Erin's real daughters.

Oh! to meet her here is like

A dream of home and natal moun

tains ;

On our hearts their voices strike,

We hear the gushing of their fountains!

Yes, our Irish Mary dear!

Our own, our real Irish Mary! A flower of home, fresh blooming come, Art thou to us, our Irish Mary.

Round about us here we see Bright eyes like hers, and sunny faces,

Charming all!-if all were free

Of foreign airs, of borrowed graces. Mary's eye, it flashes truth,

And Mary's spirit, Mary's nature, "Irish lady," fresh in youth,

Have beamed o'er every look and feature.

Yes, our Irish Mary dear!
When La Tournure doth make us

weary,

We have you, to turn unto

For native grace, our Irish Mary.

Sighs of home!—her Erin's songs,

O'er all her songs we love to listen; Tears of home!-her Erin's wrongs

Subdue our kindred eyes to glisten! Oh! should woe to gloom consign

The clear fireside of love and honor, You will see a holier sign

Of Irish Mary bright upon her! Yes, our Irish Mary dear

Will light that home though e'er so dreary,

Shining still o'er clouds of ill,

Sweet star of life, our Irish Mary!

THE OLD MAN AT THE ALTAR.* AN old man knelt at the altar,

His enemy's hand to take, And at first his weak voice did falter,

And his feeble limbs did shake; For his only brave boy, his glory,

Had been stretch'd at the old man's

feet

A corpse, all so haggard and gory,

By the hand which he now must greet.

And soon the old man stopp'd speaking, And rage which had not gone by,

*The facts of this ballad occurred in a little mountainchapel, in the county of Clare, at the time efforts were made to put an end to faction-fighting among the peasantry.