English

OLD STYLE .

As thro' the Town of Vanity I trod,
I heard one calling in the name of God,
And turning I beheld a wan-eyed wight,
Clad in a garment that had once been bright,
Who, while a few pale children gathered round,
Did plant his faded Peepshow on the ground.
Trembling the children peep'd; and lingering nigh,
E'en thus I heard the ragged Showman cry: —

I.

Now first your eye will here descry
How all the world begun:
The earth green-dight, the ocean bright,
The moon, the stars, the sun.

You saw the vision in the face of clay,
And fixed it through the magic of a hand
Obedient unto the will's command,
In forms impervious to Time's decay:
Historian of bloods that interplay
Confusedly within a cryptic land,
You've chiseled, and your work of art shall stand
To gem the archives of a better day.

Alone, far from the touch of kindred mind,
You've mounted with a grim, determined zeal,
Despite environment austere, unkind,
Or frozen-fingers clenched to your appeal,
You've held the ardor of your first ideal,

AN IRISH FIDDLE TUNE .

 To the wake of O'Connor
  What boy wouldn't go?
 To do him that honour
  Went lofty and low.
 Two nights was the waking,
 Till day began breaking,
 And frolics past spaking,
  To please him, were done;
 For himself in the middle,
 With stick and with fiddle,
Stretch'd out at his ease, was the King of the Fun.

With a dimity curtain overhead,
And the corpse-lights shining round his bed,
Holding his fiddle and stick, and drest

Far from the seried ranks you sway,
Firm in your own believing
In that frail brotherhood, who stray
Sore anguishing, sore grieving.
Such hands as yours, adown the years
Enchain a faith unbroken,
They stay the dreary waste of tears,
And lift to Hope a token!

Strange to a sensing motherhood,
Loved as a toy — not understood,
Child of a dusky father, bold;
Frail little captive, exiled, cold.

Oft when the brooding planets sleep,
You through their drowsy empires creep,
Flinging your arms through their empty space,
Seeking the breast of an unknown face.

Grandly isolate as the god of day —
Blazing an orbit through the dank and gloom
Of misty morning, far and fair you loom,
Flooding the dimness with your golden ray, —
Cheering the mantled on the thorn-set way,
Teaching of Faith and Hope o'er the tomb,
Where both, though buried, spring to newer bloom —
Strengthened and sweet from the mound of decay.

Soft! strains of Sanctus we lift on the air,
Ere Nunc Dimittus at last shall be sung,
Sing we our Sanctus to fitly declare
Blessings that well up from hearts sorely wrung.

Within the temple of our heart
Your sacred memory dwells apart,
Where ceaselessly a censor swings
Alight with fragrant offerings;
Nor time, nor tide, nor circumstance
Can dim this grand remembrance,
And all the blood of Afric hue
Beats in one mighty tide — for you!

We lift a song to you across the day
Which bears through travailing the seed you spread
In terror's morning, flung with fingers red
In blood of tyrants, who debarred the way
To Freedom's dawning. Hearken to the lay
Chanted by dusky millions, soft and mellow-keyed,
In minor measure, Martyr of the Freed,
A song of memory across the day.

Truth cannot perish though the earth erase
The royal signals, leaving not a trace,
And time still burgeoneth the fertile seed,
Though he is crucified who wrought the deed:

AN EPISODE OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR .

The fight is o'er, the day is done,
And thro' the clouds o'erhead
The fingers of the setting sun
Are pointing down blood-red, —
Beneath, on the white battlefield,
Lie strewn the drifts of dead.

No breath, no stir; but everywhere
The cold Frost crawleth slow,
And Frank and Teuton side by side
Lie stiffening in the snow, —
While piteously each marble face
Cleams in the ruby glow.

No sound; but yonder midst the dead
There stands one steed snow-white,

A BAGPIPE MELODY .

 To the wedding of Shon Maclean,
  Twenty Pipers together
 Came in the wind and the rain
  Playing across the heather;
 Backward their ribbons flew,
 Blast upon blast they blew,
 Each clad in tartan new,
  Bonnet, and blackcock feather:
 And every Piper was fou,
  Twenty Pipers together! …

He's but a Sassenach blind and vain
Who never heard of Shon Maclean—
The Duke's own Piper, called ‘Shon the Fair,’