Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of

earth,

The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered

stone

Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,

And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low; And the pearl-pale Niam lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;

And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan flow;

Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our

rest.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled;

How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's

plot;

And the names of the demons whose hammers made armour for Conhor of old.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of ozier and hide;

How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spear-head's burning spot;

How the slow blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,

Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;

Came by me the canns of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter

and songs,

Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.

Came Blanid, MacNessa, tall Fergus, who feastward of old time

slunk,

Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry,

Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death-making eye.

And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams, And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone. So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams,

In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.

BOOK VI

SIR AUBREY DE VERE

SIR AUBREY DE VERE, among whose schoolfellows at Harrow were Byron and Sir Robert Peel, was, like his friend Wordsworth, from childhood a lover of the mountains and the woods, and the Rotha was for him a stream of inspiration more sweet than Castaly. An Irishman by birth, his natural sympathies found expression in the fine series of sonnets described by Wordsworth as the most perfect of our age 'dealing with events in Irish history and scenes of Irish landscape; while to the country of his earlier ancestors he paid a noble poetic tribute in MARY TUDOR, a drama worthy comparison with the Histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the delineation of Queen Mary we possess a portrait the most arresting that the modern drama has to offer a portrait at once human and royal, at once tragic and convincing. 'The author of MARY TUDOR,' says Mr. De Vere, 'used to affirm that most of the modern historians had mistaken a part, and that the smaller part, of the sad Queen's character for the whole of it.' Presented by Sir Aubrey de Vere, the contrasted figures of the lonely Mary, distraught indeed, but no impossible Fury, and of the gentle-hearted Jane Grey, innocent victim of an unkind destiny, must take their place in the gallery of English Queens painted by the masters. Since no room can be found for selections from the De Vere dramas, a single passage from MARY TUDOR may rightly be given here. Lady

Jane, a few moments before her execution, takes her last farewell of her weeping mother.

What shall I give thee?—they have left me little—
What slight memorial through soft tears to gaze on?
This bridal ring- the symbol of past joy?

I cannot part with it; upon this finger
It must go down into the grave Perchance
After long years some curious hand may find it,
Bright, like our better hopes, amid the dust,
And piously, with a low sigh, replace it.
Here, take this veil, and wear it for my sake.
And take this winding-sheet to him, and this
Small handkerchief, so wetted with my tears,

To wipe the death-damp from his brow. This kiss-
And this--my last - print on his lips, and bid him
Think of me to the last, and wait my spirit.
Farewell, my mother! Farewell, dear, dear mother!
These terrible moments I must pass in prayer-

For the dying -for the dead! Farewell! farewell!

Sir Aubrey de Vere in this play-and it is no slight dramatic achievement-enlists our sympathies for Jane Grey, yet gives us to feel that with Mary we visit higher heights and lower depths of tragedy. Both in MARY TUDOR and Mr. Aubrey de Vere's ALEXANDER THE GREAT the weight of a great subject is fully sustained, the action is spaciously planned, the verse moves with stately grace. But our age has set its face against the drama, and it may perhaps be counted fortunate that in a literary form so popular as the sonnet the De Veres have graven for themselves a lasting memorial. There are sonnets by father and by son that anthologies centuries hence will reproduce. Sonnets like Sir Aubrey's entitled 'The Shannon,' or 'Spanish Point,' or 'The Rock of Cashel,' or Mr. De Vere's 'Sorrow' or 'The Sun God,' must remain among our permanent poetical treasures.

W. MACNEILE DIXON.

Sir Aubrey de Vere, Bart., born 1788, was the eldest son of Sir Vere Hunt, of Curragh Chase, County Limerick, Ireland. His father afterwards took the name of De Vere as a descendant of De Vere, fifteenth Earl of

Oxford. He published JULIAN THE APOSTATE, a drama, 1822; THE DUKE OF MERCIA, an historical drama, and THE LAMENTATIONS OF IRELAND, 1823 THE SONG OF FAITH, DEVOUT EXERCISES AND SONNETS, 1842. MARY TUDOR, an historical drama (written 1844), was published after the author's death, and without his final revision, in 1847. He died in 1846.

GOUGANE BARRA

NOT beauty which men gaze on with a smile,
Not grace that wins, no charm of form or love,
Dwelt with that scene. Sternly upon my view
And slowly--as the shrouding clouds awhile
Disclosed the beetling crag and lonely isle-
From their dim lake the ghostly mountains grew,
Lit by one slanting ray. An eagle flew
From out the gloomy gulf of the defile,
Like some bad spirit from Hades. To the shore
Dark waters rolled, slow-heaving, with dull moan ;
The foam-flakes hanging from each livid stone
Like froth on deathful lips; pale mosses o'er
The shattered cell crept, as an orphan lone
Clasps his cold mother's breast when life is gone.

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS

SOME laws there are too sacred for the hand
Of man to approach: recorded in the blood'
Of patriots, before which, as the Rood
Of faith, devotional we take our stand;
Time-hallowed laws! Magnificently planned
When Freedom was the nurse of public good,
And Power paternal laws that have withstood
All storms, unshaken bulwarks of the land!
Free will, frank speech, an undissembling mind,
Without which Freedom dies and laws are vain,
On such we found our rights, to such we cling;
In them shall power his surest safeguard find.
Tread them not down in passion or disdain ;

Make man a reptile, he will turn and sting.