My Mother.

For him who sends never a word

To the hearts that by hopes still are stirred,
'Tis years since his bark went to sea;
Poor wanderer, tho' all should forget,
The mother's love waits for thee yet,
And bends an unwearying knee.

At home, by the Shannon's blue wave,
The sunbeams slant over a grave,

The angels their watch by it keeping;
Ah! mother-thy grief who might know,
When they told thee thy boy was laid low!
Yet bethink thee our God heard thy weeping.

There's another lone spot by the sea,
Where the forms of two fair children be,
The three are together in glory;

God took them while life was yet new,

E're the world's hand had brushed off the dew,
To teach them eternity's story.

Would'st thou keep them, my mother, to know
The bitter tales learned here below,

When a beautiful home was before them?

Ah, no! they are safer above,

In the arms of a heavenly love,

No rude billows there can break o'er them.

And we, who are left thee-oh fain
Would we chase from thy life every pain,

Would we strew all thy pathway with flowers;
From the broad skies that over us bend,
May our Maker, Protector, and Friend,
Add His love everlasting to ours.

II

J

SEA-SIDE MEMORIES.

STOOD upon the wild sea beach, and watched the billows play

Like living creatures, joyously, while oft their hissing spray Fell like a dew upon my brow; and as I, musing stood, Like ocean's waves came surging in of memories a flood : Old times, old scenes, old faces came that come in dreams

to me,

And voices I no more may hear, were murmuring with the

sea.

Voices I loved, that now are changed, or silent in the grave, Spake as they spoke in life's young day, with every dashing

wave;

And one, whose tender cadence could my heart with rapture thrill,

Seemed, with its sweet familiar tones, my listening ear to fill, Giving me back the joy, the glow, the happiness of old, That once seemed boundless as the sea whose waters towards me rolled ;

Giving me back the ecstasy that nought but love can give, The scattered dust regathering, bidding it breathe and live. "And cease," I cried, "Thy restless song, thou melancholy sea, For thou hast opened by thy moan the graves of memory: Called from the chambers of the heart, as from a silent tomb, A train of vanished forms; and lo! at thy command they

come.

The hopes, the longings, and the dreams of happy hours gone by,

When not a single cloud obscured the glory of life's sky-Yes, joys long shrouded, cold and dead, thou hast recalled

again,

Making my eyes-unused to weep-drop tears like summer rain

Salt tears, that only sear my cheek, yet cannot ease my heart, Invoked by thy sad murmuring, from heavy eyelids start. The loveliness of long ago floods all my soul once moreI've lived a lifetime, standing lone, upon this wild sea shore !”

Deaf and Dumb.

13

DEAF AND DUMB.

HAT is it flushes thy soft cheek, my child? What thought is swelling in thine heaving breast? Alas! the prison'd bird, with struggles wild, May beat against the bars, stricken, represt, Make its sad moan; but never, never more In the free air of heaven its wing shall soar.

So thou, all caged and panting, feel'st within
The thousand promptings of our human kind,
But never on this earth the goal shalt win,

Nor burst the chain around thy being twined.
Deaf to all sounds of mourning or of mirth,
Alone thou art upon the wide, wide earth.

Doomed to unbroken silence, on thine ear
No tender words of love may softly fall;
But through thy weary round, from year to year,
Thou walkest as beneath some dark'ning pall.
Fair, bright-haired boy, how blighted-sad thy state!
How lonely art thou, child! how desolate !

By thee, at summer morn, the gladsome song,
The tuneful chanting of the warbling birds,
Shall ne'er be heard the leafy woods among;

And sweeter far than this, the loving words
Of fond affection pouring from some heart,
Kindred to thine, ne'er tell how dear thou art.

Perchance a mother's kiss is on thy brow,

But ah! her sweet "My Son " thou can'st not hear, Adown her channel'd cheek salt drops may flow,

It is for thee, my boy, she sheds that tear-
Yet in her mute caress is love not spoken?
And well thy warm heart knows the silent token.

Thou can'st not hear the murm'ring of the rills,
Thou can'st not hear the thunder of the sea,
Its pealing anthem ne'er thy spirit fills

With a glad burst of voiceless ecstasy.
Stern silence winds round thee her double chain,
And all that chorus grand for thee is vain.

The music of the earth, the air, the sky,

The sounds whereby earth's hymn of praise is given ; Pass thee unheeded, all unvalued, by,

And yet mayhap the melodies of heaven Are sometime granted to thy spirit's ear,

While songs thou hear'st, that none save thee may hear.

There is a strange, sad brightness in thine eye,
As if an unseen angel talked with thee

Of that celestial world-where by, and bye,

In God's good time we trust thy home shall be. There, there, the deaf shall hear, the dumb shall sing Eternal hallelujahs to Heaven's King.

Clarence Mangan.

15

CLARENCE MANGAN.

(Written on seeing Burton's Picture in the National Gallery, taken after Death.)

"Tell it, my harp, when my bones lie whitening
In the last home of youth and eld-

That there was once one whose veins ran light'ning,
No eye beheld!

Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,
Deep in men's bosoms let him dwell,
He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble,
Here or in Hell!"

The Nameless One.-J. CLARENCE MANGAN.

J

GIVE thee tears, I give thee tears,
"Tis all I have to give,

Thy soul, perchance, my mourning hears,
Where thou at last dost live;

Here, on a sea of storm and strife,
Thy life was but a death in life.

Oh, God! it maddens me to think
Of all thy wretched fate,

The cup once offered thee to drink,
Starving at plenty's gate.

The want, the tyranny, the wrong,
That wrung thy spirit into song.

I kneel before thee, as before
Some pallid, martyr'd saint,
And muse thy chequer'd story o'er,
With anguish'd heart and faint;
To think of all the sorrow prest
Into one fated human breast.