Oh close I'll clasp him to my breast
When homeward from the war he comes;
The fires shall light the mountain's crest,

The valley peal with drums.

Tinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle; let the white wool drift and dwindle.

Oh! we weave a damask doublet for my love's coat of steel. Hark! the timid, turning treadle crooning soft, old-fashioned ditties

To the low, slow murmur of the brown round wheel.

THOMAS CAULFIELD IRWIN

IRWIN possessed many of the essential qualities of a poet; he had imagination and music, and he had gained wide culture by education and travel. But for a strain of mental derangement he might have left behind him a very distinguished name. In his later days, as he used to be seen in the Dublin streets, he presented a weird and uncouth but venerable figure. The gentle mania which had then descended upon him had, however, occasionally made its appearance much earlier. The great Irish antiquary, O'Donovan, has left a picture of him and his ways in a note to Sir Samuel Ferguson :

I understand that the mad poet who is my next-door neighbour claims acquaintance with you. He says I am his enemy, and watch him through the thickness of the wall which divides our houses. He threatens in consequence to shoot me. One of us must leave. I have a houseful of books and children; he has an umbrella and a revolver. If, under the circumstances, you could use your influence and persuade him to remove to other quarters, you would confer a great favour on, yours sincerely, JOHN O'DONOVAN.

Irwin's besetting sin was diffuseness. He published six volumes, and much of them is a waste of words. But perhaps there is scarcely one of his poems in which one may not find

lines that ring with the unmistakable note of true poetry. The 'mad poet' was a keen observer both of men and Nature, delighting in life wherever he found it, and capable of rendering what he saw and felt in verse-now charged with tragic solemnity, and now coloured with a delicate fancy. He must be reckoned as a great but unrealised possibility in modern Irish literature.

Thomas Caulfield Irwin was born in the County Down, 1823. He wrote much in various periodicals, and was on the staff of The Irish People, the organ of the Fenian movement, edited by John O'Leary. In an essay on his writings in Tinsley's Magazine he is described as the Irish Keats.' He published his VERSICLES in 1856, and followed it with IRISH POEMS AND LEGENDS, 1869; Songs and ROMANCES, 1878; Winter and SUMMER STORIES (prose), 1879; PICTUREs and Songs, 1880; SONNETS ON THE POETRY AND Problem of LIFE, 1881; POEMS, SKETCHES AND SONGS, 1889. He had been intended for the medical profession, but lost all his private means in 1848, and from this time lived a desultory and, at least in outward circumstances, rather unhappy life. He died in Dublin

in 1892.

A WINDOW SONG

WITHIN the window of this white,

Low, ivy-roofed, retired abode,
We look through sunset's sinking light
Along the lone and dusty road

That leads unto the river's bridge,

Where stand two sycamores broad and green,

Whence from their rising grassy ridge

The low rays lengthen shade and sheen.

The village panes reflect the glow,

And all about the scene is still,

Save, by the foamy dam below,

The drumming wheel of the whitewashed mill :

A radiant quiet fills the air,

And gleam the dews along the turf:
While the great wheel, bound

On its drowsy round,

Goes snoring through the gusts of surf.

A-south, beyond the hamlet lie
The low, blue hills in mingling mist,
With furl of cloud along the sky,

And ravines rich as amethyst,
And mellow edges golden-ored

As sinks the round sun in the flood, And high up wings the crow line toward Old turrets in the distant wood; Awhile from some twilighted roof

The blue smoke rises o'er the thatch; By cots along the green aloof

Some home-come labourer lifts the latch;

Or housewife sings her child to sleep,
Or calls her fowl-flock from the turf,
While the mill-wheel, bound

On its drowsy round,

Goes snoring through the gusts of surf

Still at our open window, where

Gleams on the leaves the lamp new lit,
For hours we read old books, and share
Their thoughts and pictures, love and wit :
As midnight nears, its quiet ray

Thrown on the garden's hedges faint,
Pales, as the moon, from clouds of grey,
Looks down serenely as a saint.
We hear a few drops of a shower,
Laying the dust for morning feet,
Patter upon the corner bower,
Then, ceasing, send an air as sweet.

And as we close the window down,
And close the volumes read so long,
Even the wheel's snore

Is heard no more,

And scarce the runnel's swirling song.

A CHARACTER

As from the sultry town, oppressed,
At eve we pace the suburb green,
There, at his window looking west,

Our good old friend will sure be seen :
Upon the table, full in light,

Backgammon box and Bible lie:
Behind the curtain, hid from sight,
A wine-glass no less certainly ;
A finger beckons-nothing loath
We enter-ah! his heart is low,
His flask is brimming high, but both
Shall change their level ere we go.

We sit, and hour on hour prolong,

For memory loves on wine to float;
He tells old tales, chirps scraps of song,
And cracks the nut of anecdote ;
Tells his best story with a smile--
'Tis his by fifty years of right;

And slowly rounds his joke, the while,
With eye half closed, he trims the light :
The clock hand marks the midnight's date,
But blithe is he as matin wren ;

His grasp is firm, his form dilate

With wine, and wit of vanished men.

He reads each morn the news that shook
The days of Pitt and Nelson, too,
But little cares for speech or book,
Or battle after Waterloo ;

The present time is lost in haze,

The past alone delights his eye;
He deems the men of these poor days
As worthless all of history;

Who dares to scorn that love of thine,

Old friend, for vanished men and years?

'Tis youth that charms thee-pass the wine-The wine alone is good as theirs.

Each morn he basks away the hours

In garden nooks, and quaffs the air; Chats with his plants, and holds with flowers A tender-toned communion there; Each year the pleasant prospect shrinks,

And houses close the olden view;
The world is changing fast; he thinks
The sun himself is failing too.

Ah! well-a-day, the mists of age
May make these summer seasons dim ;
No matter-still in Chaucer's page
The olden summers shine for him.

From CESAR

I

WITHIN the dim museum room,

'Mid dusty marbles, drowsed in light,
Black Indian idols, deep-sea bones,
Gods, nymphs, and uncouth skeletons,
One statua of stately height

Shines from an old nook's shifting gloom.

Droops some victorious flag, the wreath

Of conquest tops him; keenly nigh
Gleam the worn cheek and falcon eye,
Whose fixed spirit flames beneath
That bony crown pyramidal.

III

'Tis he whose name around the earth Has rolled in History's echoing dreams; An antique shape of Destiny,

A soul dæmonic, born to be

A king or nothing-moulded forth

From giant Nature's fierce extremes.