Worlds hang for lamps on high ;
And thought's world lives in thy
Lustrous and tender eye-

Oh, girl of the blue eye, love me!

Girl of the swan's neck,

Love me Love me!

Girl of the swan's neck,

Love me !

As a marble Greek doth grow
To his steed's back of snow,

Thy white neck sits thy shoulder so,-
Oh, girl of the swan's neck, love me!

Like the echo of a bell,—

Like the bubbling of a well

Sweeter! Love within doth dwell,

Oh, girl of the low voice, love me !

RICHARD DALTON WILLIAMS

THE 'Munster War-Song' was sent to The Nation by Williams when a schoolboy at Carlow. He was born in the County Tipperary, 1821. He was tried for treason-felony in 1848, but acquitted. In 1849 he took his medical degree in Edinburgh, practised in Dublin for a couple of years, and then emigrated to the U.S.A. He became Professor of Belles Lettres in Mobile (Ala.), and in 1856 took up practice as a physician at New Orleans. He died in 1862. Amonument has been raised to him by a regiment of Irish-American soldiers who happened to encamp near his grave during the Civil War. Williams wrote a great deal of humorous as well as patriotic verse for The Nation. With much grace, pathos, and energy, he had the

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'fatal facility' of many Irish verse-writers, and never achieved all that he was capable of. His 'Dying Girl' is, however, a piece of verse which will not easily be forgotten. His poems have been collected and published by P. A. Sillard, Dublin.

THE MUNSTER WAR-SONG

BATTLE OF AHERLOW, A.D. 1190

CAN the depths of the ocean afford you not graves,
That you come thus to perish afar o'er the waves--
To redden and swell the wild torrents that flow
Through the valley of vengeance, the dark Aherlow? 1

The clangour of conflict o'erburthens the breeze,
From the stormy Slieve Bloom to the stately Galtees ;
Your caverns and torrents are purple with gore,
Slievenamon, Glen Colaich, and sublime Galtee Mor!

The Sunburst that slumbered, embalmed in our tears,
Tipperary shall wave o'er thy tall mountaineers !
And the dark hill shall bristle with sabre and spear
While one tyrant remains to forge manacles here.

The riderless war-steed careers o'er the plain
With a shaft in his flank and a blood-dripping mane;
His gallant breast labours, and glare his wild eyes;
He plunges in torture-falls-shivers and dies.

1

Let the trumpets ring triumph! The tyrant is slain !
He reels o'er his charger deep-pierced through the brain;
And his myriads are flying, like leaves on the gale—
But who shall escape from our hills with the tale?

For the arrows of vengeance are show'ring like rain,
And choke the strong rivers with islands of slain,
Till thy waves, lordly Shannon, all crimsonly flow,
Like the billows of hell, with the blood of the foe.

Aherlow Glen, County Tipperary.

Ay! the foemen are flying, but vainly they fly—
Revenge with the fleetness of lightning can vie ;

And the septs of the mountains spring up from each rock
And rush down the ravines like wolves on the flock.

And who shall pass over the stormy Slieve Bloom,
To tell the pale Saxon of tyranny's doom,

When, like tigers from ambush, our fierce mountaineers Leap along from the crags with their death-dealing spears?

They came with high boasting to bind us as slaves,
But the glen and the torrent have yawned on their graves.
From the gloomy Ardfinnan to wild Temple Mor-
From the Suir to the Shannon-is red with their gore.

By the soul of Heremon! our warriors may smile,
To remember the march of the foe through our isle ;
Their banners and harness were costly and gay,
And proudly they flashed in the summer sun's ray;

The hilts of their falchions were crusted with gold,
And the gems of their helmets were bright to behold;
By Saint Bride of Kildare! but they moved in fair show-
To gorge the young eagles of dark Aherlow !

THE DYING GIRL

FROM a Munster vale they brought her,
From the pure and balmy air;

An Ormond peasant's daughter,

With blue eyes and golden hair—

They brought her to the city,
And she faded slowly there.
Consumption has no pity

For blue eyes and golden hair.

When I saw her first reclining

Her lips were mov'd in pray'r,
And the setting sun was shining
On her loosen'd golden hair.

When our kindly glances met her,
Deadly brilliant was her eye;

And she said that she was better,

While we knew that she must die.

She speaks of Munster valleys,
The pattern, dance and fair,
And her thin hand feebly dallies
With her scattered golden hair.
When silently we listen'd

To her breath with quiet care,
Her eyes with wonder glisten'd-

And she asked us, 'What was there?

The poor thing smiled to ask it,

And her pretty mouth laid bare,

Like gems within a casket,
A string of pearlets rare.
We said that we were trying

By the gushing of her blood
And the time she took in sighing
To know if she were good.

Well, she smil'd and chatted gaily,

Though we saw in mute despair The hectic brighter daily,

And the death-dew on her hair.
And oft her wasted fingers
Beating time upon the bed :
O'er some old tune she lingers,
And she bows her golden head.

At length the harp is broken;
And the spirit in its strings,
As the last decree is spoken,

To its source exulting springs.
Descending swiftly from the skies,
Her guardian angel came,

He struck God's lightning from her eyes, And bore Him back the flame.

Before the sun had risen

Thro' the lark-loved morning air,
Her young soul left its prison,

Undefiled by sin or care.

I stood beside the couch in tears

Where pale and calm she slept,
And tho' I've gaz ́d on death for years,
I blush not that I wept.

I check'd with effort pity's sighs
And left the matron there,

To close the curtains of her eyes
And bind her golden hair.

ELLEN MARY PATRICK DOWNING

KNOWN as 'Mary of The Nation,' her poems in that journal being generally signed by the name Mary' alone. She was born in Cork on March 19, 1828, and died on January 27, 1869. In 1849 she had entered a convent. Her religious poems have been collected in a couple of volumes, but her National and love poems are still uncollected. Her poetry has the simplicity and unconscious grace of a bird's song.

VOICES OF THE HEART, 1868, 1880; POEMS for Children, 1881.

MY OWEN

PROUD of you, fond of you, clinging so near to you,
Light is my heart now I know I am dear to you!
Glad is my voice now, so free it may sing to you
All the wild love that is burning within for you!
Tell me once more, tell it over and over,

The tale of that eve that first saw you my lover.
Now I need never blush

At my heart's hottest gush;

The wife of my Owen her heart may discover.