Terror went before him,

Death behind his back;
Well the wolves of Erinn

Knew his chariot's track.
Seven bloody battles

He broke upon his foes;
In each a hundred heroes
Fell beneath his blows.

Once he fought at Fossud,
Thrice at Ath-finn Fail;
'Twas my king that conquered.
At bloody Ath-an-Scail.

At the boundary Stream

Fought the Royal Hound,

And for Bernas battle

Stands his name renowned.

Here he fought with Leinster-
Last of all his frays-

On the Hill of Cucorb's Fate
High his Cromlech raise.

SONG OF MAELDUIN.

THERE are veils that lift, there are bars that fall, There are lights that beckon, and winds that call— Good-bye!

There are hurrying feet, and we dare not wait,

For the hour is on us- the hour of Fate,

The circling hour of the flaming gate

Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

Fair, fair they shine through the burning zone-
The rainbow gleams of a world unknown ;

Good-bye!

And oh to follow, to seek, to dare,
When, step by step, in the evening air
Floats down to meet us the cloudy stair!
Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

The cloudy stair of the Brig o' Dread

Is the dizzy path that our feet must tread-
Good-bye!

O children of Time-O Nights and Days,
That gather and wonder and stand at gaze,
And wheeling stars in your lonely ways,

Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

The music calls and the gates unclose,
Onward and onward the wild way goes-
Good-bye!

We die in the bliss of a great new birth,
O fading phantoms of pain and mirth,
O fading loves of the old green earth--
Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

THOMAS BOYD

A YOUNG Irish poet of remarkable power and promise. He is a native of County Louth, and at present resides in London. His very striking poem 'To the Leanán Sidhe' shows a genius closely akin to that of George Darley and eminently Celtic in character.

TO THE LEANÁN SIDHE1

WHERE is thy lovely perilous abode ?

In what strange phantom-land
Glimmer the fairy turrets whereto rode
The ill-starred poet band?

Say, in the Isle of Youth hast thou thy home,
The sweetest singer there,

Stealing on wingéd steed across the foam

Thorough the moonlit air?

Or, where the mists of bluebell float beneath

The red stems of the pine,

And sunbeams strike thro' shadow, dost thou breathe

The word that makes him thine?

The Fairy Bride.' Pronounced Lenawn Shee.

Or by the gloomy peaks of Erigal,
Haunted by storm and cloud,

Wing past, and to thy lover there let fall
His singing-robe and shroud?

Or, is thy palace entered thro' some cliff
When radiant tides are full,

And round thy lover's wandering, starlit skiff,
Coil in luxurious lull?

And would he, entering on the brimming flood,

See caverns vast in height,

And diamond columns, crowned with leaf and bud, Glow in long lanes of light,

And there, the pearl of that great glittering shell
Trembling, behold thee lone,

Now weaving in slow dance an awful spell,
Now still upon thy throne?

Thy beauty! ah, the eyes that pierce him thro'
Then melt as in a dream;

The voice that sings the mysteries of the blue
And all that Be and Seem!

Thy lovely motions answering to the rhyme

That ancient Nature sings,

That keeps the stars in cadence for all time,
And echoes thro' all things!

Whether he sees thee thus, or in his dreams,
Thy light makes all lights dim ;

An aching solitude from henceforth seems
The world of men to him.

Thy luring song, above the sensuous roar,

He follows with delight,

Shutting behind him Life's last gloomy door,
And fares into the Night.

THE KING'S SON

WHO rideth thro' the driving rain
At such a headlong speed?
Naked and pale he rides amain
Upon a naked steed.

Nor hollow nor height his going bars,
His wet steed shines like silk;
His head is golden to the stars,
And his limbs are white as milk.

But lo, he dwindles as a light

That lifts from a black mere!

And as the fair youth wanes from sight
The steed grows mightier.

What wizard by the holy tree

Mutters unto the sky,

Where Macha's flame-tongued horses flee

On hoofs of thunder by?

Ah, 'tis not holy so to ban

The youth of kingly seed;
Ah, woe, the wasting of a man
That changes to a steed!

Nightly upon the Plain of Kings
When Macha's day is nigh

He gallops; and the dark wind brings
His lonely human cry.

LIONEL JOHNSON

If I were asked to say what distinguishes the little school of contemporary Irish poets, I would say they believe, with a singular fervour of belief, in a spiritual life, and express this belief in their poetry. Contemporary English poets are

HH

interested in the glory of the world, like Mr. Rudyard Kipling ; or in the order of the world, like Mr. William Watson; or in the passion of the world, like Mr. John Davidson ; or in the pleasure of the world, like Mr. Arthur Symons. Mr. Francis Thompson, who has fallen under the shadow of Mr. Coventry Patmore, the poet of an older time and in protest against that time, is alone preoccupied with a spiritual life; and even he, except at rare moments, has less living fervour of belief than pleasure in the gleaming and scented and coloured symbols that are the footsteps where the belief of others has trodden. Ireland, which has always believed in a spiritual life, is creating in English a poetry which, whatever be its merits, is as full of spiritual ardour as the poetry that praised in Gaelic the EverLiving Living Ones,' and 'the Country of the Two Mists,' and 'the Country of the Young,' and 'the Country of the Living Heart.'

'A. E.' has written an ecstatic pantheistic poetry which reveals in all things a kind of scented flame consuming them from within. Miss Hopper, an unequal and immature poet, whose best verses are delicate and distinguished, has no clear vision of spiritual things, but makes material things as frail and fragile as if they were already ashes, that we stirred in some mid-world of dreams, as the gossips' in her poem 'stir their lives' red ashes.' Mrs. Hinkson, uninteresting at her worst, as only uncritical and unspeculative writers are uninteresting, has sometimes expressed an impassioned and instinctive Catholicism in poems that are, as I believe, as perfect as they are beautiful, while Mr. Lionel Johnson has in his poetry completed the trinity of the spiritual virtues by adding Stoicism to Ecstasy and Asceticism. He has renounced the world and built up a twilight world instead, where all the colours are like the colours in the rainbow that is cast by the moon, and all the people as far from modern tumults as the people upon fading and dropping tapestries. He has so little interest in our pains and pleasures, and is so wrapped up in his own world, that one comes from his books wearied and exalted, as though one had posed for some noble action in a