What shelters Right?
The sword!

What makes it might?

The sword!

What strikes the crown

Of tyrants down,

And answers with its flash their frown?
The sword!

THE REV. MICHAEL TORMEY was born in Westmeath 1820, and died in 1893. He edited The Tablet at one time, and was keenly interested in the Tenant League movement which succeeded the Famine, and was partly evoked by it. He was not distinguished as a poet, but 'The Ancient Race' has in it a surge of heartfelt anguish and wrath which renders not unfitly the master passion of the Irish peasant.

THE ANCIENT RACE

This poem was written at the era of the Irish Tenant League (1850-56), when the principles of the land struggle were first formulated.

WHAT shall become of the ancient race,

The noble Keltic island race?

Like cloud on cloud o'er the azure sky,
When winter storms are loud and high,
Their dark ships shadow the ocean's face--
What shall become of the Keltic race?

What shall befall the ancient race

The poor, unfriended, faithful race?

Where ploughman's song made the hamlet ring,
The hawk and the owlet flap their wing;
The village homes, oh, who can trace—
God of our persecuted race!

What shall befall the ancient race?
Is treason's stigma on their face?
Be they cowards or traitors? Go-
Ask the shade of England's foe;
See the gems her crown that grace ;
They tell a tale of the ancient race.

They tell a tale of the ancient race-
Of matchless deeds in danger's face;
They speak of Britain's glory fed
With blood of Kelts, right bravely shed;
Of India's spoil and Frank's disgrace —
Such tale they tell of the ancient race.

Then why cast out the ancient race?
Grim want dwelt with the ancient race,
And hell-born laws, with prison jaws ;
And greedy lords, with tiger maws,
Have swallowed-swallow still apace-
The limbs and blood of the ancient race.

Will no one shield the ancient race?
They fly their fathers' burial place ;

M

The proud lords with the heavy purse,
Their fathers' shame-their people's curse ---
Demons in heart, nobles in face-

They dig a grave for the ancient race!

What shall befall the ancient race?
Shall all forsake their dear birthplace,
Without one struggle strong to keep
The old soil where their fathers sleep?
The dearest land on earth's wide space-
Why leave it so, O ancient race?

What shall befall the ancient race?
Light up one hope for the ancient race;
Oh, priest of God-Soggarth Aroon !
Lead but the way, we'll go full soon ;
Is there a danger we will not face,
To keep old homes for the Irish race?

They shall not go, the ancient race-
They must not go, the ancient race!
Come, gallant Kelts, and take your stand—
And form a league to save the land;
The land of faith, the land of grace,
The land of Erin's ancient race!

They must not go, the ancient race!
They shall not go, the ancient race!
The cry swells loud from shore to shore,

From emerald vale to mountain hoar,

From altar high to market-place

'THEY SHALL NOT GO, the ancient race!'

THOMAS D'ARCY MCGEE

Of all the rhetorical qualities of poetry rhythm and phrase and picturesque diction- McGee possessed a greater measure than any other of The Nation poets. But he wrote with a

careless energy which, if it always produced something remarkable, yet rarely left it strong and finished in every part. He was born in Carlingford, County Louth, in 1825. After much success as a journalist in America, where he edited The Boston Pilot, he came home and joined The Nation and its political movement in 1844. He escaped, with a price on his head, after the outbreak of 1848, and eventually settled in Canada, where he entered the legislature and became a Minister of the Crown. He took a leading part in the federation of the Canadian States. He revisited Ireland during the time of the Fenian movement, which he denounced with a fervour which, in view of his own antecedents, caused intense bitterness of feeling, and led to the dreadful crime of his assassination in Ottawa in 1868.

McGee was a prolific and versatile writer. He published in 1847 IRISH WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEenth CenturY; HISTORY OF THE IRISH SETTLERS IN AMERICA, 1851; MEMOIRS OF C. G. DUFFY, 1849; LIFE OF BISHOP MAGIN, 1856; LIFE OF ART MCMURROUGH, 1847; HISTORY OF IRELAND; and contributed numberless poems to The Nation and other periodicals. A collected edition of his poems has been edited by Mrs. J. Sadleir, New York, 1869.

THE DEAD ANTIQUARY O'DONOVAN

FAR are the Gaelic tribes and wide
Scattered round earth on every side,
For good or ill;

They aim at all things, rise or fall,
Succeed or perish-but, through all,
Love Erin still.

Although a righteous Heaven decrees 1
"Twixt us and Erin stormy seas

And barriers strong

Of care, and circumstance, and cost-
Yet count not all your absent lost,
Oh, Land of Song !

These lines were written in America.

Above your roofs no star can rise
That does not lighten in our eyes;
Nor any set,

That ever shed a cheering beam
On Irish hillside, street or stream,
That we forget.

And thus it comes that even I,
Though weakly and unworthily,
Am moved by grief

To join the melancholy throng
And chant the sad entombing song
Above the Chief.

I would not do the dead a wrong :
If graves could yield a growth of song
Like flowers of May,

Then Mangan from the tomb might raise
One of his old resurgent lays—

But, well-a-day!

He, close beside his early friend,
By the stark shepherd safely penned,
Sleeps out the night;

So his weird numbers never more
The sorrow of the isle shall pour,
In tones of might.

Though haply still, by Liffey's tide,
That mighty master must abide,
Who voiced our grief

O'er Davis lost; and he who gave
His free frank tribute to the grave
Of Eire's Chief; ?

Samuel Ferguson.

2 Denis Florence McCarthy, whose poem on the death of O'Connell was one of the noblest tributes paid to the memory of the great Tribune. — Author's note.