This is delusion, but it is so sweet

Let me be

That I could live deluded.
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:

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.

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

NIECE 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 Magazine, 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

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 DARLEY

THE poems of George Darley are among the most curious phenomena of literature. There are surely few as yet unacquainted 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 weary, we seek a refuge from the unvarying blaze of

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 mortuum; 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 Darley'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, wayward, 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; the 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 À BECKET and ETHELSTAN, dramas in which the light of poetry plays but fitfully. He died in London in 1846.