Who, as friend only met,
Soggarth aroon,

Never did flout me yet,

Soggarth aroon?

And when my heart was dim
Gave, while his eye did brim,
What I should give to him,
Soggarth aroon?

Och, you and only you,
Soggarth aroon!

And for this I was true to you,
Soggarth aroon;

In love they'll never shake,
When for Old Ireland's sake
We a true part did take,
Soggarth aroon!

HE SAID THAT HE WAS NOT OUR BROTHER

This ferocious attack was provoked by some utterances of the Duke of Wellington about Ireland.

HE said that he was not our brother

The mongrel! he said what we knew.
No, Eire our dear Island-mother,

He ne'er had his black blood from you!
And what though the milk of your bosom
Gave vigour and health to his veins?
He was but a foul foreign blossom,

Blown hither to poison our plains!

He said that the sword had enslaved us—
That still at its point we must kneel.
The liar!-though often it braved us,
We cross'd it with hardier steel!

This witness his Richard-our vassal!

His Essex-whose plumes we trod down!

His Willy--whose peerless sword-tassel
We tarnish'd at Limerick town!

No! falsehood and feud were our evils,
While force not a fetter could twine.

Come Northmen-come Normans - come Devils!
We give them our Sparth to the chine!
And if once again he would try us,

To the music of trumpet and drum,

And no traitor among us or nigh us

Let him come, the Brigand! let him come !

THE IRISH MOTHER IN THE PENAL DAYS

Now welcome, welcome, baby-boy, unto a mother's fears,
The pleasure of her sufferings, the rainbow of her tears,
The object of your father's hope, in all he hopes to do,
A future man of his own land, to live him o'er anew !

How fondly on thy little brow a mother's eye would trace,
And in thy little limbs, and in each feature of thy face,
His beauty, worth, and manliness, and everything that's his,
Except, my boy, the answering mark of where the fetter is!

Oh! many a weary hundred years his sires that fetter wore,
And he has worn it since the day that him his mother bore;
And now, my son, it waits on you, the moment you are born,
The old hereditary badge of suffering and scorn!

Alas, my boy so beautiful!-alas, my love so brave!

And must your gallant Irish limbs still drag it to the grave?
And you, my son, yet have a son, foredoomed a slave to be,
Whose mother still must weep o'er him the tears I weep o'er thee!

Battle-axe.

BOOK III

THE POETS OF THE NATION

THE NATION newspaper was founded in the autumn of 1842, and its first proprietor and editor, Charles Gavan Duffy, emigrated to Australia in 1855. These fourteen years fell into two distinct periods—the first ending with the imprisonment of Duffy in 1848, the second with his emigration. They were certainly the most eventful years tha: Ireland had experienced since the Union. They witnessed the rise and fall of O'Connell's Repeal movement; the insurrection of '48; the Famine; the introduction into the British Parliament of Duffy's scheme of Independent Opposition, and its failure; and the consequent wreck of the Tenant Right movement, through the treachery of the Brigadiers' and the madness of the people. It is a record of heroic effort, of crushing disaster, and of miserable defeat. Yet if these years were among the most calamitous in Irish history, it is none the less true that they were the most fertile in the seeds of future success. Almost everything that Ireland has since gained in the practical field and she has gained much-has been won by developing and applying the ideas struck out at that time. And The Nation newspaper was the forge of thought in which the most active and ardent minds of the country wrought indefatigably at the fabric of her freedom and prosperity. But it was not only ideas and suggestions that were bequeathed to the future from these fourteen years, it was also passion and inspiration. The body of National poetry produced at this period-first as

fugitive verse in the columns of the newspaper, afterwards collected and reprinted in countless editions-entered profoundly into the heart and mind of Irishmen of that and subsequent generations. Other writers have produced poetic work of a loftier order; but of this it may be said, and of this alone, that no one who is unacquainted with it can understand the contemporary history of Ireland.

The story of the foundation and early career of The Nation has been told so fully in so accessible a book as Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's YOUNG IRELAND, that it is not necessary here to describe these transactions at any length. Seldom, if ever, has any journal exercised so great and so worthy an effect on the political education of a people. The founders of The Nation found the masses of their countrymen just emerging from serfdom, unconscious of their power, ignorant of their history; the sense of nationality, such as there was, the monopoly of one religious faction and the scorn of another; their aspirations either fantastically vague or crudely material. On the ears of such a people fell sentences like these:

This country of ours is no sand-bank, thrown up by some recent caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour and its sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast organisations, subtle codes, beacon crimes, leading virtues, and self-mighty men were here. If we live influenced by wind and sun and tree, and not by the passions and deeds of the PAST, we are a thriftless and hopeless people. — DAVIS'S ESSAYS.

Thus, and in a hundred essays, articles, and poems, elaborating these conceptions in detail, did Thomas Davis, Duffy, and their colleagues point their countrymen to their past. And as for the future, we may recognise in the following passage the kernel of multitudes of similar articles, essays, poems, holding up before the Irish people a noble and severe ideal of self-cultivation, of discipline and preparation, for great

Deep down in the heart of every young Irishman,' says Mr. William O'Brien, with absolute truth, you will find the spirit of The Nation.'