15.

Oh! rather bear beyond the date of stars
All torments heap'd that nerve and soul can feel,
Than but one hour believe destruction mars

Without a hope the life our breasts reveal.

16.

Bold is the life and deep and vast in man,
A flood of being pour'd uncheck'd from Thee;
To Thee return'd by thine eternal plan,
When tried and train'd thy will unveil'd to see.

17.

The spirit leaves the body's wondrous frame,
That frame itself a world of strength and skill;
The nobler inmate new abodes will claim,
In every change to Thee aspiring still.

18.

Although from darkness born, to darkness fled,
We know that light beyond surrounds the whole;
The man survives, though the weird-corpse be dead,
And He who dooms the flesh, redeems the soul.

SONG OF A RETURNED EXILE.

BY B. SIMMONS.

1.

SWEET Corrin! how softly the evening light goes,
Fading far o'er thy summit from ruby to rose,
As if loth to deprive the deep woodlands below
Of the love and the glory they drink in its glow:
Oh, home-looking Hill! how beloved dost thou rise
Once more to my sight through the shadowy skies;
Shielding still, in thy sheltering grandeur unfurl'd,
The landscape to me that so long was the world.
Fair evening-blest evening! one moment delay
Till the tears of the pilgrim are dried in thy ray-
Till he feels that through years of long absence not one
Of his friends the lone rock and grey ruin-is gone.

2.

Not one:-as I wind the sheer fastnesses through,
The valley of boyhood is bright in my view!
Once again my glad spirit its fetterless flight

May wing through a sphere of unclouded delight,

O'er one maze of broad orchard, green meadow, and slope-
From whose tints I once pictured the pinions of hope;
Still the hamlet gleams white-still the church yews are weeping,
Where the sleep of the peaceful my fathers are sleeping;
The vane tells, as usual, its fib from the mill,
But the wheel tumbles loudly and merrily still,
And the tower of the Roches stands lonely as ever,
With its grim shadow rusting the gold of the river.

3.

My own pleasant River, bloom-skirted, behold,
Now sleeping in shade, now refulgently roll'd,
Where long through the landscape it tranquilly flows,
Scarcely breaking, Glen-coorah, thy glorious repose!
By the Park's lovely pathways it lingers and shines,
Where the cushat's low call, and the murmur of pines,
And the lips of the lily seem wooing its stay
'Mid their odorous dells;-but 'tis off and away,
Rushing out through the clustering oaks, in whose shade,
Like a bird in the branches, an arbour I made,
Where the blue eye of Eve often closed o'er the book,
While I read of stout Sinbad, or voyaged with Cook.

4.

Wild haunt of the Harper!† I stand by thy spring,
Whose waters of silver still sparkle and fling
Their wealth at my feet, and I catch the deep glow,
As in long-vanish'd hours, of the lilacs that blow

* The picturesque mountain of Corrin, (properly Cairn-thierna, i. e. the Thane or Lord's cairn,) is the termination of a long range of hills which encloses the valley of the Blackwater and Funcheon, (the Avonduff and Fanshin of Spenser,) in the county of Cork, and forms a striking feature of scenery, remarkable for pastoral beauty and romance.

† One of the most beautiful bends of the Funcheon is taken through the demesne of Moorepark, near Kilworth, close to a natural grotto or cavern, called from time immemorial the cave of Thiag-na-fibah-(Tim or Teague the Bard.)

By the low cottage-porch and the same crescent moon
That then plough'd, like a pinnace, the purple of June,
Is white on Glen-duff, and all blooms as unchanged
As if years had not pass'd since thy greenwood I ranged-
As if ONE were not fled, who imparted a soul
Of divinest enchantment and grace to the whole,
Whose being was bright as that fair moon above,
And all deep and all pure as thy waters her love.

5.

Thou long-vanish'd Angel! whose faithfulness threw
O'er my gloomy existence one glorified hue !
Dost thou still, as of yore, when the evening grows dim,
And the blackbird by Douglass is hushing its hymn,
Remember the bower by the Funcheon's blue side
Where the whispers were soft as the kiss of the tide ?
Dost thou still think, with pity and peace on thy brow,
Of him who, toil-harass'd and time-shaken now,
While the last light of day, like his hopes, has departed,
On the turf thou hast hallow'd sinks down weary-hearted,
And calls on thy name, and the night-breeze that sighs
Through the boughs that once blest thee is all that replies ?

6.

But thy summit, far Corrin, is fading in grey,
And the moonlight grows mellow on lonely Cloughlea;
And the laugh of the young, as they loiter about,
Through the elm-shaded alleys rings joyously out:
Happy souls! they have yet the dark chalice to taste,
And like others to wander life's desolate waste-
To hold wassail with sin, or keep vigil with woe;
But the same fount of yearning wherever they go,
Welling up in their heart-depths to turn at the last
(As the stag when the barb in his bosom is fast)
To their lair in the hills on their childhood that rose,
And find the sole blessing I seek for-REPOSE!*

*"Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments at Bologna. For instance, 'Martini Luighi implora pace. Can any thing be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought; the dead had had enough of life-all they wanted was rest, and this they implore." - LORD BYRON.

WELLINGTON.

While so much is praised untruly, Scarce his fame can struggle forth;

Years to come shall reverence duly All the Man's unboastful worth.

[TRADITION does not inform us who was the author of the following poem nor is it known in what age it was composed. It is obviously to be in.. ferred, however, from internal evidence, that it is of great antiquity. It is the only Gaelic lyric extant which professes to have been composed previous to the fifteenth century; for the reputed works of Ossian and other contemporary bards, and the imperfect poem entitled Mordu, all belong to the class of heroic poetry. Two translations have already appeared, one in measured prose, by John Clark, author of The Caledonian Bards, the other in rhyme, by Mrs Grant of Laggan. Both these were made from incorrect copies; and this, with the translators' ignorance of old Gaelic, led them to misunderstand the whole tenor of the poem, besides committing many minor mistakes. Clark further imitated Macpherson's Ossian, though the style of that celebrated work is very different from that of our Bard. The following version is literal-almost verbal_except in a few instances where the Gaelic idiom is so different, that a very close rendering would not convey the true sense of the original. The Gaelic consists throughout of quatrains in iambic dimeters, the third line rhyming with the first, and the fourth with the second.]