Says Herself to Myself: 'We're as good as the best o' them.' Says Myself to Herself: 'Shure, we're betther than gold.’ Says Herself to Myself: 'We're as young as the rest o' them.' Says Myself to Herself: Troth, we'll never grow old.'

As down the lane goin', I felt my heart growin'

As young as it was forty-five years ago.

'Twas here in this bóreen I first kissed my stóireen-
A sweet little colleen with skin like the snow.
I looked at my woman-a song she was hummin'
As old as the hills, so I gave her a pogue;1
'Twas like our old courtin', half sarious, half sportin',

When Molly was young, an' when hoops were in vogue.

When she'd say to Myself: 'You can coort with the best o' them.'

When I'd say to Herself: When she'd say to Myself: And I'd say to Herself:

'Sure, I'm betther than gold.' You're as wild as the rest o' them.' Troth, I'm time enough old.'

LADY GILBERT (ROSA MULHOLLAND)

A POPULAR and gifted Irish poetess and novelist of the day, born in Belfast about fifty years ago. She has published one volume of delicate verse (VAGRANT VERSES, 1886); all her other writings, which are numerous, being stories. In 1891

she married Mr. (afterwards Sir J. T.) Gilbert, the noted Irish archæologist.

SONG

THE silent bird is hid in the boughs,

The scythe is hid in the corn,

The lazy oxen wink and drowse,

The grateful sheep are shorn ;
Redder and redder burns the rose,
The lily was ne'er so pale,

Stiller and stiller the river flows

Along the path to the vale.

Pogue kiss.

A little door is hid in the boughs,

A face is hiding within ;

When birds are silent and oxen drowse
Why should a maiden spin?
Slower and slower turns the wheel,

The face turns red and pale,
Brighter and brighter the looks that steal
Along the path to the vale.

SAINT BRIGID

'MID dewy pastures girdled with blue air,
Where ruddy kine the limpid waters drink,
Through violet-purpled woods of green Kildare,
'Neath rainbow skies, by tinkling rivulet's brink,
O Brigid, young, thy tender, snow-white feet
In days of old on breezy morns and eves
Wandered through labyrinths of sun and shade,
Thy face so innocent-sweet

Shining with love that neither joys nor grieves
Save as the angels, meek and holy maid!

With white fire in thy hand that burned no man,

But cleansed and warmed where'er its ray might fall, Nor ever wasted low, or needed fan,

Thou walk'dst at eve among the oak-trees tall. There thou didst chant thy vespers, while each star Grew brighter listening through the leafy screen. Then ceased the song-bird all his love-notes soft, His music near or far,

Hushing his passion 'mid the sombre green To let thy peaceful whispers float aloft.

And still from heavenly choirs thou steal'st by night
To tell sweet Avès in the woods unseen,

To tend the shrine-lamps with thy flambeau white
And set thy tender footprints in the green.
Thus sing our birds with holy note and pure,

As though the loves of angels were their theme;

Thus burn to throbbing flame our sacred fires
With heats that still endure;

Thence hath our daffodil its golden gleam,
From thy dear mindfulness that never tires!

KATHARINE TYNAN-HINKSON

WHEN in 1885 the little volume entitled LOUISE DE LA VALLIÈRE was given to the world, not a few lovers of modern poetry perceived that here was the voice of a new and a real singer. Faults it would have been doubtless easy to find, but they were the faults of youth. Where, for instance, so many and so various were the metres essayed, it would be strange for a young writer not to fail occasionally in the striking of the first chord; the metre is sometimes not, in the first line, inevitable and unmistakable, and the reader may stumble for a moment before he finds it. Here and there, again, in Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson's work a rhyme may be found which will not find acceptance east of St. George's Channel. Having made these reservations, we have in LOUISE DE LA VALLIÈRE not only a promise that has been since fulfilled, but an achievement well worthy of note for its own sake. Greater experience in metrical training has long since corrected such roughnesses as are to be expected in an early work, and the most captious critic will not find fault with the technical workmanship of THE WIND IN THE TREES. And apart from this point-a minor one, doubtless, when compared with the great essentials of poetry, inspiration, sincereness, insight, and real melody Miss Tynan's subsequent work has placed her among the foremost women writers in English verse of the present day.

There are three notes immediately and distinctly discernible in Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson's poetry which demand special observation--love of country; a religious feeling at once deep, sincere, and glowing; and an intimate appreciation of the beauty and essence of external Nature. The first of these need not

detain us long; it is obvious on perusal. Mrs. Hinkson is Irish in many of her subjects and in much of her style, and her work is pervaded with a healthy patriotism such as can hardly offend either those of another nationality or those of her compatriots who differ from her upon points of present interest and pressure. She loves the real Ireland as well as that of romance, and in (for instance) the pathetic verses entitled 'An Island Fisherman' gives a picture of the hometragedies of the poor of to-day as faithful to truth and Nature as the piece called 'Waiting' in her first published volume is to the glory and glamour of an Ireland that has passed away. But if this be a charm appealing especially to her compatriots, in her devotional moods she represents and interprets, as few others now living do, the yearnings and the mental struggles, the temptations, fears, and hopes of the Christian soul, not only for the Church to which she belongs, but for an audience larger still, inasmuch as that which has found utterance in her religious verse is concerned with the central truths of Christianity and its essential operation. In the Chapel of the Grail,' the Rock of Ages,' the Angel of the Annunciation,' this devout and reverent spirit is expressed in artistic form, and the charm of language throughout enables one to understand how to her at least there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.'

The critics have already pointed out the special fascination which St. Francis exercises upon Mrs. Hinkson's mind as shown in her poetry. This influence indeed is obvious, and it would have been strange had it been absent. For that gentlest and most lovable figure among the saints of the Medieval Church must necessarily make a peculiar appeal to the spirit of a writer so full of reverent admiration for all the creatures of God; so imbued with a loving observation of the beauties of Nature, whether exhibited on a broad and grand scale, as in the great landscapes, or in closer detail in bird, insect, flower, and leaf. It is in this latter sphere indeed that to my mind Mrs. Hinkson rises to her highest point. She loves the creatures, and therefore understands them and is able

to depict them so well. I have spoken of 'the essence of external Nature;' what I am endeavouring to express by the phrase is the life that is in Nature, and that not every one perceives, because to see it one must have reverence and love reverence for the great spiritual forces that imbue external Nature, and love for the small things that are so beautiful, and even glorious, when one watches them with an understanding eye. I have tried to avoid the mention of Wordsworth in this connection, because to my mind Mrs. Hinkson has come to this inner understanding of Nature by another path than his ; but of course it is an understanding of the same kind. Other poets have had it; it is a part-almost, though not quite, an essential part of the poetic insight, innate but trained by observation. Take, for instance, the murmur and rustle of that living thing, the rain; how variously will two different poets, of diverse genius, take note of it! In his beautiful verses 'Il pleure dans mon cœur Comme il pleut sur la ville' Verlaine has the lines:

O bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits!
Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie
O le chant de la pluie !

The rain is already falling; we are treating of its effect on the cast-down spirit of a poet caged and confined in prison-cells. We are in a city; the rain falls on roof and pavement. Compare with this Mrs. Hinkson's short poem called 'Drought :'

Little voices complain,

The leaves rustle before the rain.

Only the trembling cry

Of young leaves murmuring thirstily.

Only the moan and stir

Of little hands in the boughs I hear,

Beckoning the rain to come

Out of the evening, out of the gloom.

Here the rain has not yet fallen; its sister-creatures are calling, yearning for it. The voices are the voices of the country;