We left an infant playing with her dead mother's hand :

We left a maiden maddened by the fever's scorching brand: ' Better, maiden, thou wert strangled in thy own dark-twisted tresses!

Better, infant, thou wert smothered in thy mother's first caresses.

'We are fainting in our misery, but God will hear our groan;
Yea, if fellow-men desert us, He will hearken from His throne !
Accursed are we in our own land, yet toil we still and toil;
But the stranger reaps our harvest- the alien owns our soil.
O Christ, how have we sinned, that on our native plains
We perish houseless, naked, starved, with branded brow, like
Cain's?

Dying, dying wearily, with a torture sure and slow—

Dying as a dog would die, by the wayside as we go.

'One by one they're falling round us, their pale faces to the sky;
We've no strength left to dig them graves-there let them lie.
The wild bird, when he's stricken, is mournèd by the others,
But we, we die in Christian land—we die amid our brothers—
In the land which God has given-like a wild beast in his cave,
Without a tear, a prayer, a shroud, a coffin, or a grave.
Ha! but think ye the contortions on each dead face ye see,
Shall not be read on judgment-day by the eyes of Deity?

'We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride,

But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.

Now is your hour of pleasure, bask ye in the world's caress;

But our whitening bones against ye will arise as witnesses,
From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffined

masses,

For the ANGEL OF THE TRUMPET will know them as he passes. A ghastly, spectral army before great God we'll stand

And arraign ye as our murderers, O spoilers of our land!'

END OF POETS OF THE NATION

ANONYMOUS

A LAY OF THE FAMINE

HUSH! hear you how the night wind keens around the craggy reek?

Its voice peals high above the waves that thunder in the creek.

'Aroon! aroon! arouse thee, and hie thee o'er the moor! Ten miles away there's bread, they say, to feed the starving poor.

'God save thee, Eileen bawn astor, and guide thy naked feet, And keep the fainting life in us till thou come back with meat.

'God send the moon to show thee light upon the way so drear, And mind thou well the rocky dell, and heed the rushy mere.'

She kissed her father's palsied hand, her mother's pallid cheek, And whirled out on the driving storm beyond the craggy reek.

All night she tracks, with bleeding feet, the rugged mountain way,
And townsfolks meet her in the street at flushing of the day.

But God is kinder on the moor than man is in the town,
And Eileen quails before the stranger's harsh rebuke and frown.

Night's gloom enwraps the hills once more and hides a slender form

That shudders o'er the moor again before the driving storm.

No bread is in her wallet stored, but on the lonesome heath
She lifts her empty hands to God, and prays for speedy death.

Yet struggles onward, faint and blind, and numb to hope or fear,
Unmindful of the rocky dell or of the rushy mere.

But, ululu! what sight is this?-what forms come by the reek? As white and thin as evening mist upon the mountain's peak.

Mist-like they glide across the heath- a weird and ghostly band; The foremost crosses Eileen's path, and grasps her by the hand.

'Dear daughter, thou hast suffered sore, but we are well and free; For God has ta'en our life from us, nor wills it long to thee.

'So hie thee to our cabin lone, and dig a grave so deep,

And underneath the golden gorse our corpses lay to sleep

'Else they will come and smash the walls upon our mould'ring bones,

And screaming mountain birds will tear our flesh from out the

stones.

'And, daughter, haste to do thy work, so thou mayst quickly come, And take with us our grateful rest, and share our peaceful home.'

The sun behind the distant hills far-sinking down to sleep;
A maiden on the lonesome moor, digging a grave so deep;

The moon above the craggy reek, silvering moor and wave, And the pale corpse of a maiden young stretched on a new-made grave.

JAMES MCCARROLL

BORN at Lanesborough, County Longford, on August 3, 1814, and died in New York in 1891. He was an active journalist, and possessed much musical knowledge, and was also a successful inventor and patentee. His collected poems were published in 1889 He lived many years in America and Canada.

THE IRISH WOLF

The Times once used this term to designate the Irish people.

SEEK music in the wolf's fierce howl
Or pity in his blood-shot eye,
When hunger drives him out to prowl
Beneath a rayless northern sky :

But seek not that we should forgive
The hand that strikes us to the heart,
And yet in mockery bids us live

To count our stars as they depart.

We've fed the tyrant with our blood;
Won all his battles-built his throne-
Established him on land and flood,

And sought his glory next our own.

We raised him from his low estate;
We plucked his pagan soul from hell,
And led him pure to heaven's gate,
Till he, for gold, like Judas fell.

And when in one long, soulless night
He lay unknown to wealth or fame,
We gave him empire-riches -light,
And taught him how to spell his name.

But now, ungenerous and unjust,

Forgetful of our old renown,

He bows us to the very dust;

But wears our jewels in his crown.

JOHN SAVAGE

JOHN SAVAGE was born in Dublin 1828 and died in New York 1888. After taking some part in the '48 movement he emigrated to America and adopted the profession of journalism. there. In 1879 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from St. John's College, Fordham. He published several volumes of poetry: LAYS OF THE FATHERLAND, 1850; SYBIL, 1850; FAITH AND FANCY, 1864; POEMS, 1870. The following powerful ballad has appeared in many Irish collections of verse. An inferior first verse, apparently added as an afterthought, has been here omitted, to the great gain of the poem in dramatic energy.

SHANE'S HEAD

Scene.-Before Dublin Castle. Night. A clansman of Shane O'Neill's discovers his Chief's head on a pole.

Is it thus, O Shane the haughty! Shane the valiant! that we

meet

Have my eyes been lit by Heaven but to guide me to defeat?
Have I no Chief, or you no clan, to give us both defence,

Or must I, too, be statued here with thy cold eloquence?
Thy ghastly head grins scorn upon old Dublin's Castle Tower;
Thy shaggy hair is wind-tossed, and thy brow seems rough with

power;

Thy wrathful lips like sentinels, by foulest treachery stung,

Look rage upon the world of wrong, but chain thy fiery tongue.

That tongue, whose Ulster accent woke the ghost of Columbkill; Whose warrior-words fenced round with spears the oaks of Derry

Hill;

Whose reckless tones gave life and death to vassals and to knaves, And hunted hordes of Saxons into holy Irish graves.

The Scotch marauders whitened when his war-cry met their ears, And the death-bird, like a vengeance, poised above his stormy cheers;

Ay, Shane, across the thundering sea, out-chanting it, your tongue Flung wild un-Saxon war-whoopings the Saxon Court among.

Just think, O Shane! the same moon shines on Liffey as on
Foyle,

And lights the ruthless knaves on both, our kinsmen to despoil;
And you the hope, voice, battle-axe, the shield of us and ours,
A murdered, trunkless, blinding sight above these Dublin towers!

Thy face is paler than the moon; my heart is paler still— My heart? I had no heart-'twas yours-'twas yours! to keep or kill.

And you kept it safe for Ireland, Chief-your life, your soul, your pride;

But they sought it in thy bosom, Shane-with proud O'Neill it died.