"O HEART OF MAN! THE CENTRE OF A BOUNDLESS PLAN,-(THOMAS AIRD)

REVERENCE THYSELF, O MAN, AND FEAR TO SHAME

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THOMAS AIRD.

My punishment, that I was far
When God unloosed thy weary star!
My name was in thy faintest breath,
And I was in thy dream of death;
And well I know what raised thy head,
When came the mourner's muffled tread!

Alas! I cannot tell thee now

I could not come to hold thy brow.
And wealth is late, nor aught I've won
Were worth to hear thee call thy son
In that dark hour when bands remove,
And none are named but names of love.

Alas for me, I missed that hour;
My hands for this shall miss their power!
For thee the sun, and dew, and rain,
Shall ne'er unbind thy grave again,
Nor let thee up the light to see,
Nor let thee up to be with me!

Yet sweet thy rest from care and strife,
And many pains that hurt thy life!
Turn to thy God-and blame thy son-
To give thee more than I have done;
Thou God, with joy beyond all years,
Fill up the channel of her tears!—
Thou car'st not now for soft attire,
Yet wilt thou hear my soul's desire :
To Earth I dare not call thee more,
But speak from off thy awful shore:
Oh, ask this heart for monument,

And mine shall be a large content!

[From the "Poetical Works of Thomas Aird," 4th edit., 1863.]

THY GODLIKE NATURE WITH DEBASING SIN."-T. AIRD.

INFINITE OF JOY AND WOE, THE GREATEST OF GOD'S WORKS BELOW."-AIRD.

"O NOW THE SUMMER WOODS! O NOW THE JOY TO HAUNT THEIR TANGLED DEPTHS,

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UPHELD FOR JESUS' SAKE, THIS FRAME OF THINGS-AIRD)

SHALL PERISH NOT UNTIL HIS OWN GREAT DAY."-T. AIRD.

WITH CURIOUS EYE WATCHING THE WILD FOLK OF THE LEAFY WORLD."-T. AIRD.

"SPIRITUAL IN THE DEPTH OF TIME,-VIVID RISE THE HEADS SUBLIME-THOMAS AIRD)

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"EARTH SENDS HER SOFT WARM INCENSE UP TO HEAVEN."-AIRD.

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

And mellow shine, o'er day's decline,
The sun to light thee home!
What can molest thy airy nest ?-

Sleep till the morrow come.

The river blue that lapses through

The valley hears thee sing,

And murmurs much beneath the touch

Of thy light-dipping wing.

The thunder-cloud, over us bowed,
In deeper gloom is seen,
When quick relieved it glances to
Thy bosom's silvery sheen.

The silent Power that brings thee back
With leading-strings of love

To haunts where first the summer sun
Fell on thee from above,

Shall bind thee more to come aye to

The music of our leaves;

For here thy young, where thou hast sprung,
Shall glad thee in our eaves.

[From the "Poetical Works of Thomas Aird," 4th edit., 1863.]

LARGE OF FRONT, WITH LUMINOUS EYES, THE LORDS OF THOUGHT AND PURPOSE RISE."-AIRD.

William Allingham.

[WILLIAM ALLINGHAM was born about 1828 at Ballyshannon, in Ireland. He commenced his literary career at an early age, by contributing to various periodicals, and in 1850 published his first volume of "Poems," which met with a favourable reception. The appearance of his "Day and Night Songs," in 1854, confirmed and extended his reputation as a sweet singer capable both of pathos and fire. In 1864 he published his "Laurence Bloomfield," a poem on the condition of Ireland, which contains much

66 THE WORLD IS FLOODED WITH THE DAZZLING DAY." —T. AIRD.

"LIFE THAT IS NOT PURE AND BOLD DOTH TARNISH EVERY MORNING'S GOLD."-WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

66

EARTH'S COMMON PLEASURES, NEAR THE GROUND LIKE GRASS,

LADY ALICE.

vigorous descriptive writing. He has also been a frequent contributor to
Fraser's Magazine, the Athenæum, Household Words, and All the Year
Round. His ballads have a wild strange beauty of their own, and
of his songs are gems of melody."]

66

many

LADY ALICE.

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"SORROW AND PAIN, AS WELL AS HOPE AND LOVE, STRETCH OUT OF VIEW INTO THE HEAVENS ABOVE."-ALLINGHAM.

I.

JOW what doth Lady Alice so late on the turret stair,
Without a lamp to guide her but the diamond in her

hair;

When every arching passage overflows with shallow gloom,
And dreams float through the castle into every silent room?
She trembles at her footsteps, although they fall so light;
Through the turret loopholes she sees the wild midnight;
Broken vapours streaming across the stormy sky;
Down the empty corridors the blast doth moan and cry.
She steals along the gallery, she pauses by a door;
And fast her tears are dropping down upon the oaken floor;
And thrice she seems returning, but thrice she turns again;
Now heavy lie the cloud of sleep on that old father's brain!

ARE BEST OF ALL; NOR DIE, ALTHOUGH THEY FADE."-ALLINGHAM.

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66 AND SO IT IS, THE SWEETEST BLOSSOM DIES:

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

Oh, well it were that never shouldst thou waken from thy sleep!
For wherefore should they waken, who waken but to weep?
No more, no more beside thy bed doth peace a vigil keep;
But woe-a lion that awaits thy rousing for its leap.

"DEATH O'ER TIME'S BROAD DIAL CREEPS, WITH NEVER-HALTING PACE, FROM MARK TO MARK."-W. ALLINGHAM.

II.

An afternoon of April, no sun appears on high,

But a moist and yellow lustre fills the deepness of the sky,
And through the castle gate-way, left empty and forlorn,
Along the leafless avenue an honoured bier is borne.

They stop. The long line closes up like some gigantic worm;
A shape is standing in the path, a wan and ghost-like form,
Which gazes fixedly, nor moves, nor utters any sound,
Then, like a statue built of snow, sinks down upon the ground.

And though her clothes are ragged, and though her feet are
bare,

And though all wild and tangled falls her heavy silk-brown
hair-

Though from her eyes the brightness, from her cheeks the
bloom is fled-

They know their Lady Alice, the darling of the dead.

With silence, in her own old room the fainting form they lay,
Where all things stand unaltered since the night she fled away;
But who-but who shall bring to life her father from the clay?
But who shall give her back again her heart of a former day?

[From the "Day and Night Songs," ist edit., 1854.]

THE WRINKLED LEAF HANGS ON."-ALLINGHAM.

"E'ER GREATEST TURNS ON LEAST; LIKE EARTH'S OWN WHIRL TO ATOM-POLES DECREAST."-WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.