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;2

1 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.

Yet must it not be said that we
Failed in the rites of minstrelsy,
So dear to souls

Like his whom lately death had ta’en,
Altho' the vast Atlantic main

Between us rolls!

Too few, too few, among our great,
In camp or cloister, Church or State,
Wrought as he wrought;

Too few, of all the brave we trace
Among the champions of our race,
Gave us his thought.

He toiled to make our story stand,
As from Time's reverent, Runic hand
It came undecked

By fancies false; erect, alone,
The monumental Arctic stone
Of ages wrecked.

He marshalled Brian on the plain,
Sailed in the galleys of the Dane;
Earl Richard too,

Fell Norman as he was and fierce-
Of him and his he dared rehearse
The story true.

O'er all low limits still his mind
Soared catholic and unconfined,
From malice free.

On Irish soil he only saw

One State, One People, and One Law, One Destiny.

Truth was his solitary test,

His star, his chart, his east, his west ; Nor is there aught

In text, in ocean, or in mine,

Of greater worth, or more divine

Than this he sought.

With gentle hand he rectified
The errors of old bardic pride,
And set aright

The story of our devious past.
And left it, as it now must last,
Full in the light.

TO DUFFY IN PRISON

'TWAS but last night I traversed the Atlantic's furrow'd face-
The stars but thinly colonised the wilderness of space-
A white sail glinted here and there, and sometimes o'er the swell,
Rang the seaman's song of labour or the silvery night-watch bell ;
I dreamt I reached the Irish shore and felt my heart rebound
From wall to wall within my breast, as I trod that holy ground;
I sat down by my own hearth-stone, beside my love again—
I met my friends, and him the first of friends and Irish men.

I saw once more the dome-like brow, the large and lustrous eyes;
I mark'd upon the sphinx-like face the cloud of thoughts arise,
I heard again that clear quick voice that as a trumpet thrill'd
The souls of men, and wielded them even as the speaker will'd –
I felt the cordial-clasping hand that never feigned regard,
Nor ever dealt a muffled blow, or nicely weighed reward.

My friend my friend!-oh, would to God that you were here with me

A-watching in the starry West for Ireland's liberty!

Oh, brothers, I can well declare, who read it like a scroll,
What Roman characters were stamp'd upon that Roman soul.
The courage, constancy and love-the old-time faith and truth -
The wisdom of the sages-the sincerity of youth -

Like an oak upon our native hills, a host might camp there-under,
Yet it bare the song-birds in its core, amid the storm and thunder;
It was the gentlest, firmest soul that ever, lamp-like, showed
A young race seeking freedom up her misty mountain road.
Like a convoy from the flag-ship our fleet is scattered far,
And you, the valiant Admiral, chained and imprisoned are—
Like a royal galley's precious freight flung on sea-sunder'd strands,
The diamond wit and golden worth are far-cast on the lands,

And I, whom most you lov'd, am here, and I can but indite
My yearnings and my heart-hopes, and curse them while I write.
Alas! alas! ah, what are prayers, and what are moans or sighs,
When the heroes of the land are lost-of the land that will not
RISE?

They will bring you in their manacles beneath their blood-red rag,
They will chain you like the conqueror to some sea-moated crag,
To their slaves it will be given your great spirit to annoy,

To fling falsehood in your cup, and to break your martyr joy;
But you will bear it nobly, as Regulus did of eld,

The oak will be the oak, and honoured e'en when fell'd.
Change is brooding over earth; it will find you 'mid the main,
And, throned between its wings, you'll reach your native land again.

INFELIX FELIX

Phelim or Felix O'Neill, leader of the rising of 1641, which began the Nine Years' War. He was executed in Dublin by Cromwell, after having refused to purchase liberty by implicating Charles I. in the rebellion.

WHY is his name unsung, O minstrel host?
Why do ye pass his memory like a ghost?
Why is no rose, no laurel, on his grave?
Was he not constant, vigilant and brave?
Why, when that hero-age ye deify,
Why do ye pass Infelix Felix by?

He rose the first-he looms the morning-star
Of the long, glorious, unsuccessful war.
England abhors him! Has she not abhorr'd
All who for Ireland ventured life or word?
What memory wou'd she not have cast away
That Ireland hugs in her heart's heart to-day?

He rose in wrath to free his fetter'd land.

'There's blood-there's Saxon blood-upon his hand.' Ay, so they say! Three thousand, less or more,

He sent untimely to the Stygian shore.

They were the keepers of the prison-gate

He slew them his whole race to liberate.