Shamrock Leaves

H! if for every tear

That from our exiled eyes
Has fallen, Erin dear,

A shamrock could arise,
We'd weave a garland green

Should stretch the ocean through,

All, all the way between

Our aching hearts and you.

A. P. Graves.

The Old Country

OT tasselled palm or bended cypress wooing
The languid wind on temple - crowned

heights,

Not heaven's myriad stars in lustre strewing
Smooth sapphire bays in hushed Ionian
nights,

Not the clear peak of dawn-encrimsoned snow,
Or plumage-lighted wood, or gilded pile
Sparkling amid the imperial city's glow,
Endears our Isle.

O fondling of the tempest and the ocean,
White with the sea-spray and the sea-birds' wings,
'Mid clangour loud of Nature's curbless motion,
The mist that to thy purple summits clings,

The sun-glint and the shadow as they rove
With rainbows fleeting o'er thy blustery plains,
Thou tanglest us thy children in thy love
With golden chains!

Thine the weird splendour of the restless billow
For ever breaking over lonely shores,

The reedy mere that is the wild-swan's pillow,
The crag to whose torn spire the eagle soars,
The moorland where the solitary hern

Spreads his grey wings upon the breezes cold,
The pink sweet heather's bloom, the waving fern,
The gorse's gold.

And we who draw our being from thy being,
Blown by the untimely blast about the earth,
Back in love's vision to thy bosom fleeing,

Droop with thy sorrows, brighten with thy mirth; O, from afar, with sad and straining eyes,

Tired arms across the darkness and the foam We stretch to thy bluff capes and sombre skies, Beloved home!

The nurslings of thy moorlands and thy mountains,
Thy children tempered by thy winter gales,
Swayed by the tumult of thy headlong fountains
That clothe with pasture green thy grassy vales,
True to one love in climes' and years' despite,
We yearn, in our last hour, upon thy breast,
When the Great Darkness wraps thee from our sight,
To sink to rest!

G. F. Savage-Armstrong.

The Passing of the Gael

HEY are going, going, going from the valleys and the hills,

They are leaving far behind them heathery moor and mountain rills,

All the wealth of hawthorn hedges where the brown thrush sways and trills.

They are going, shy-eyed colleens and lads so straight and tall,

From the purple peaks of Kerry, from the crags of wild

Imaal,

From the greening plains of Mayo and the glens of Donegal.

They are leaving pleasant places, shores with snowy sands outspread;

Blue and lonely lakes a-stirring when the wind stirs overhead;

Tender living hearts that love them, and the graves of kindred dead.

They shall carry to the distant land a tear-drop in the eye,

..

And some shall go uncomforted-their days an endless sigh

For Kathaleen Ní Houlihan's sad face, until they die.

Oh, Kathaleen Ní Houlihan, your road's a thorny way, And 't is a faithful soul would walk the flints with you

for aye,

Would walk the sharp and cruel flints until his locks grew grey. (B 838)

20

So some must wander to the East, and some must wander West;

Some seek the white wastes of the North, and some a Southern nest:

Yet never shall they sleep so sweet as on your mother breast.

The whip of hunger scourged them from the glens and quiet moors,

But there's a hunger of the heart that plenty never cures;

And they shall pine to walk again the rough road that is yours.

Within the city streets, hot, hurried, full of care,

A sudden dream shall bring them a whiff of Irish air— A cool air, faintly-scented, blown soft from otherwhere.

Oh, the cabins long-deserted!-Olden memories awakeOh, the pleasant, pleasant places!-Hush! the blackbird in the brake!

Oh, the dear and kindly voices!-Now their hearts are fain to ache.

They may win a golden store-sure the whins were golden too;

And no foreign skies hold beauty like the rainy skies they knew;

Nor any night-wind cool the brow as did the foggy dew.

They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them stay;

The fields are now the strangers' where the strangers' cattle stray.

Oh! Kathaleen Ni Houlihan, your way's a thorny way!

Ethna Carbery.

Corrymeela

VER here in England I'm helpin' wi' the hay,
An' I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong

day;

Weary on the English hay, an' sorra take the wheat!

Och! Corrymeela an' the blue sky over it.

There' a deep dumb river flowin' by beyont the heavy trees,

This livin' air is moithered wi' the bummin' o' the bees;

I wisht I'd hear the Claddagh burn go runnin' through the heat

Past Corrymeela, wi❞ the blue sky over it.

The people that's in England is richer nor the Jews, There' not the smallest young gossoon but thravels in his shoes!

I'd give the pipe between me teeth to see a barefut child, Och! Corrymeela an' the low south wind.

Here's hands so full o' money an' hearts so full o' care, By the luck o' love! I'd still go light for all I did go bare.

"God save ye, colleen dhas," I said: the girl she thought me wild.

Far Corrymeela, an' the low south wind.

D'ye mind me now, the song at night is mortial hard to raise,

The girls are heavy goin' here, the boys are ill to plase; When one'st I'm out this workin' hive, 't is I'll be back again

Ay, Corrymeela, in the same soft rain.