But thou wast lying prone upon the sand,

Death-wounded, blind with blood, and gasping: 'Go! Two swords are somewhat; join the rest. I know Another charge will beat them from the land.'

So when the slaughter of the Danes was done,
We found thee dead-a-stare with sunken eyes
At those red surges, and bewailed by cries
Of sea-mews sailing from the fallen sun.

We kissed thee, one by one, lamenting sore:

Men's tears have washed the blood-stain from thy brow; Thy spear and sword and our dear love hast thou :

We have thy name and fame for evermore.

So sang the warriors to their clouded star,

King Ivor, as they heapt his cairn on high;

A landmark to the sailor sailing by,

A warning to the spoiler from afar.

KING AILILL'S DEATH

FROM THE EARLY MIDDLE IRISH

Book of Leinster, fol. 214

I KNOW who won the peace of God,

King Ailill, called 'the Beardless Man ;'

Who fought beyond the Irish Sea

All day against a Connaught clan.

His host was broken as he fled
He muttered to his charioteer :
'Look back-the slaughter, is it red?

The slayers, are they drawing near?'

The boy looks back. The west wind blows
Dead clansmen's hair against his face;

He heard the war-shout of his foes,
The death-cry of his ruined race.

The foes came darting from the height,
Like pine trees down a flooded fall:
Like heaps of hay in spate, his clan
Swept on or sank-he saw it all.

And spake

'The slaughter is full red, But we may still be saved by flight.' Then groaned the king: No sin of theirs Falls on my people here to-night :

'No sin of theirs, but sin of mine,
For I was worst of evil kings;
Unrighteous, wrathful, hurling down
To death or shame all weaker things.

'Draw rein, and turn the chariot round :
My face against the foeman bend ;
When I am seen and slain, mayhap
The slaughter of my tribe will end.'

They drew, and turned. Down came the foe,
The king fell cloven on the sod;
The slaughter then was stayed, and so
King Ailill won the peace of God.

MAN OCTIPARTITE

FROM THE MIDDLE IRISH

Cod. Clarend. (Mus. Brit.), vol. xv. fol. 7a, col. 1

THUS sang the sages of the Gael

A thousand years ago well-nigh: 'Hearken how the Lord on high

Wrought man, to breathe and laugh and wail, To hunt and war, to plough and sail,

To love and teach, to pray and die !'

Then said the sages of the Gael :

'Of parcels eight was Adam built.

The first was earth, the second sea,

The third and fourth were sun and cloud,
The fifth was wind, the sixth was stone,
The seventh was the Holy Ghost,
The last, the Light which lighteth God.'

Then sang the sages of the Gael :

'Man's body, first, was built of earth
To lodge a living soul from birth,
And earthward home again to go
When Time and Death have spoken so.
Then of the sea his blood was dight
To bound in love and flow in fight.
Next, of the sun, to see the skies,
His face was framed with shining eyes.
From hurrying hosts of cloud was wrought
His roaming, rapid changeful thought.
Then of the wind was made his breath
To come and go from birth to death.
And then of earth-sustaining stone
Was built his flesh-upholding bone.
The Holy Ghost, like cloven flame,
The substance of his soul became ;
Of Light which lighteth God was made
Man's conscience, so that unafraid
His soul through haunts of night and sin
May pass and keep all clean within.

'Now, if the earthiness redound,
He lags through life a slothful hound.
But, if it be the sea that sways,
In wild unrest he wastes his days.
Whene'er the sun is sovran, there
The heart is light, the face is fair.
If clouds prevail, he lives in dreams
A deedless life of gloom and gleams.
'If stone bear rule, he masters men,
And ruthless is their ransom then.
But when the wind has won command,
His word is harder than his hand.
The Holy Ghost, if He prevail,
Man lives exempt from lasting bale,
And, gazing with the eyes of God,
Of all he sees at home, abroad,

Discerns the inmost heart, and then
Reveals it to his fellow-men,

And they are truer, gentler, more
Heroic than they were before.

'But he on whom the Light Divine
Is lavished bears the sacred sign,
And men draw nigh in field or mart
To hear the wisdom of his heart.
For he is calm and clear of face,
And unperplexed he runs his race,
Because his mind is always bent
On Right, regardless of event.

'Of each of those eight things decreed
To make and mould the human breed,
Let more or less in man and man
Be set as God has framed His plan.
But still there is a ninth in store
(Oh grant it now and evermore !)--
Our Freedom, wanting which, we read,
The bulk of earth, the strength of stone,
The bounding life o' the sea, the speed
Of clouds, the splendour of the sun,
The never-flagging flight of wind,
The fervour of the Holy Ghost,
The Light before the angels' host,
Though all be in our frame combined,
Grow tainted, yea, of no avail.'

So sang the sages of the Gael.

JOHN TODHUNTER

DR. TODHUNTER'S gifts and tastes are very various. While it is not quite certain whether his versatility has been the most favourable ally of his poetic genius, that it has contributed charms to his poetic productions is unquestionable. Few

poets have been able to interpret the emotions of music in another art more effectively than he. His In a Gondola' (written in Trinity College Park, when he was an undergraduate) exhibits this power to a remarkable degree, and he has written no more genuine poems than the series in which he describes the essential characteristics of the music of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Rossini. In these poems he conducts the reader into a region of imagination to which no man who is not a poet ever finds his way alone. His eye for colour and form enables him to describe the objects of Nature with extreme minuteness-a faculty which recalls that of Keats, united with a manner which, no doubt, has been suggested by Keats. The rhythmic swing and verbal melody which abound in some of his poems make us miss them all the more in poems in which he seems deliberately to neglect them. His love of the stage, his intelligent appreciation of the greatest works of the greatest dramatists, and his eye for stage grouping and stage effects, have induced him to write dramas; but there is little doubt that he has excelled most in his lyrical poems. His humour asserts itself most successfully-certainly most agreeably-in Laurella,' which, though closely following Paul Heyse's tale, is yet an original and delightful narrative poem. In this poem the difficult ottava rima is handled, frequently after the fashion of 'Beppo' and 'Don Juan,' with skill and dexterity; and the narrative is so condensed, so well proportioned, and so well arranged, that one cannot help thinking that the author, if he had chosen, might have developed into one of the brightest and pleasantest of our story-tellers in verse. Until about the year 1888 he does not seem to have turned his attention to his native country. In his principal poems on Irish themes he has discarded rhyme in his regular lyrical measures-a dangerous experiment until something better and more pleasing to the ear can be provided as a substitute for it. Dr. Todhunter possesses a priceless gift, without which no man need ever hope to be a poet of the highest order he is a thinker; all that he has written in verse and prose bears upon it the attractive impress of a mind