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 liquid 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

s?

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 silent starry 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
Without the portal knows-

Which hath been since the world began,
And shall be till its close.

PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY

'A Protestant King, a Protestant House of Lords and Commons, a Protestant Hierarchy; the courts of Justice, the army, the navy, and the revenue, in all their branches and details, Protestant-and this system fortified and maintained by a connection with the Protestant State of Great Britain.

'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.

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.

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 newspaper 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

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. 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.

Duffy's

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 the people rose under their chiefs, seized the English towns and expelled the English 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,-Author's note.