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Which brightly look through prison-bars,

And sweetly sound in caves.
Yet is it noblest, godliest known,
When righteous triumph swells its tone.

A nation's flag, a nation's flag,
If wickedly unrolled,
May foes in adverse battle drag
Its every fold from fold,
But in the cause of liberty,

Guard it 'gainst earth and hell;
Guard it till death or victory-

Look you, you guard it well!
No saint or king has tomb so proud
As he whose flag becomes his shroud.

A nation's right, a nation's right,

God gave it, and gave, too, A nation's sword, a nation's might, Danger to guard it through. "T is freedom from a foreign yoke, 'Tis just and equal laws, Which deal unto the humblest folk,

As in a noble's cause.

On nations fixed in right and truth,
God would bestow eternal youth.

May Ireland's voice be ever heard
Amid the world's applause!
And never be her flagstaff stirred,
But in an honest cause!
May freedom be her every breath,
Be justice ever dear;
And never an ignoble death
May son of Ireland fear.
So the Lord God will ever smile,
With guardian grace upon our isle.

Better lie in pain,

And rise in pain to-morrow,. Than o'er millions reign

While those millions sorrow.

'Tis sweet to own a quiet hearth,
Begirt by constancy and mirth;
'T were sweet to feel your dying clasp
Returned by friendship's steady grasp;
And sad it is to spend your life
Like sea-bird in the ceaseless strife,
Your lullaby the ocean's roar,
Your resting-place a foreign shore.
But 't were better live,

Like ship caught by Lofoden,
Than your spirit give

To be by chains corroden;

Best of all to yield

Your latest breath when lying On a victor field,

With the green flag flying.

Human joy and human sorrow,
Light or shade from conscience borrow,
The tyrant's crown is lined with flame;
Life never paid the coward's shame;
The miser's lock is never sure;
The traitor's home is never pure;
While seraphs guard and cherubs tend
The good man's life and brave man's end.
But their fondest care

Is the patriot's prison,
Hymning through its air,
"Freedom hath arisen
Oft from statesmen's strife,
Oft from battle's flashes,
Oft from hero's life,
Oftenest from his ashes!"

SWEET AND SAD.

'Tis sweet to climb the mountain's crest,
And run like deer-hound down its breast;
'Tis sweet to snuff the taintless air,
And sweep the sea with haughty stare;
And sad it is, when prison-bars
Keep watch between you and the stars;
And sad to find your footstep stayed
By prison-wall and palisade.

But 't were better be

A prisoner for ever,

With no destiny

To do, or to endeavor

Better life to spend

A martyr or confessor,

Than in silence bend

To alien and oppressor.

"T is sweet to rule an ample realm,
Through weal and woe to hold the helm;
And sweet to strew, with plenteous hand,
Strength, health, and beauty, round your land;
And sad it is to be unprized,
While dotards rule, unrecognized;
And sad your little ones to see
Writhe in the grip of poverty.
But 't were better pine

In rags and gnawing hunger,
While around you whine

Your elder and your younger

THE RIGHT ROAD.

LET the feeble-hearted pine,
Let the sickly spirit whine,
But work and win be thine,

While you've life.

God smiles upon the bold;
So, when your flag 's unrolled,
Bear it bravely till you 're cold
In the strife.

If to rank or fame you soar,
Out your spirit frankly pour;
Men will serve you and adore,
Like a king.

Woo your girl with honest pride
Till you 've won her for your bride,
Then to her, through time and tide,
Ever cling.

Never under wrougs despair:
Labor long, and everywhere;
Link your countrymen, prepare,
And strike home.

Thus have great men ever wrought;
Thus must greatness still be sought;
Thus labored, loved, and fought

Greece and Rome.

AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE was born in Limerick County, Ireland, in 1814. He is the third son of Sir Aubrey De Vere, Bart., and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. His poetical publications are: "The Waldenses, a Lyrical Tale," 1842; "The Search after Proserpine, and other Poems," 1843; "Poems, Miscellaneous and Sacred," 1856; "May Carols," 1857; "The Sisters, Innisfail, and other Poems," 1861; "The Infant Bridal, and other Poems," 1864; “Irish

Odes, and other Poems” (including some of the preceding), 1869; "The Legends of St. Patrick," 1872; and "Alexander the Great, a Dramatic Poem," 1874. In prose he has published: "English Misrule and Irish Misdeeds," 1848; "Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey," 1850; "The Church Settlement of Ireland, or Hibernia Pacanda," 1866; "Ireland's Church Property and the Right Use of it," 1867; and “Pleas for Secularization," 1867.

THE YEAR OF SORROW-IRELAND

1849.

I. SPRING.

ONCE more, through God's high will, and grace
Of hours that each its task fulfils,
Heart-healing Spring resumes her place,

The valley throngs and scales the hills;

In vain. From earth's deep heart o'ercharged The exulting life runs o'er in flowers;

The slave unfed is unenlarged:

In darkness sleep a Nation's powers.

By streams released that singing flow
From craggy shelf through sylvan glades
The pale narcissus, well I know,
Smiles hour by hour on greener shades.
The honeyed cowslip tufts once more

The golden slopes; with gradual ray
The primrose stars the rock, and o'er
The wood-path strews its milky way.

From ruined huts and holes come forth
Old men, and look upon the sky!
The Power Divine is on the earth:
Give thanks to God before ye die!

blows

Her breath, that Spring is come indeed? The swallow doubts not; nor the rose That stirs, but wakes not; nor the weed.

I feel her near, but see her not;

For these with pain uplifted eyes Fall back repulsed, and vapors blot The vision of the earth and skies.

I see her not-I feel her near,
As, charioted in mildest airs,
She sails through yon empyreal sphere,
And in her arms and bosom bears

That urn of flowers and lustral dews

Whose sacred balm, o'er all things shed, Revives the weak, the old renews,

And crowns with votive wreaths the dead.

Once more the cuckoo's call I hear; I know, in many a glen profound, The earliest violet of the year

Rise up like water from the ground

The thorn I know once more is white;
And, far down many a forest-dale,
The anemones in dubious light
Are trembling like a bridal-veil.

Who care no more with flowers to play,
Lean on the grass your cold, thin cheek,
And those slight hands, and, whispering, say,
"Stern Mother of a race unblest,

In promise kindly, cold in deed—
Take back, O Earth, into thy breast,
The children whom thou wilt not feed."

II. SUMMER.

APPROVED by works of love and might,

The Year, consummated and crowned, Has scaled the zenith's purple height, And flings his robe the earth around.

Impassioned stillness-fervors calm-
Brood, vast and bright, o'er land and deep:
The warrior sleeps beneath the palm;
The dark-eyed captive guards his sleep.

The Iberian laborer rests from toil;
Sicilian virgins twine the dance;
Laugh Tuscan vales in wine and oil;
Fresh laurels flash from brows of France.

Far off, in regions of the North,

The hunter drops his winter fur: Sun-stricken babes their feet stretch forth; And nested dormice feebly stir.

But thou, O land of many woes!

What cheer is thine? Again the breath Of proved Destruction o'er thee blows, And sentenced fields grow black in death.

In horror of a new despair

His blood-shot eyes the peasant strains, With hands clenched fast, and lifted hair, Along the daily-darkening plains.

"Why trusted he to them his store?

Why feared he not the scourge to come? Fool! turn the page of History o'er

The roll of Statutes-and be dumb!
Behold, O People! thou shalt die!
What art thou better than thy sires?
The hunted deer a weeping eye
Turns on his birthplace, and expires.

Lo! as the closing of a book,

Or statue from its base o'erthrown, Or blasted wood, or dried-up brook, Name, race, and Nation, thou art gone.

The stranger shall thy hearth possess ; The stranger build upon thy grave; But know this also-he no less

His limit and his term shall have.

Once more thy volume, open cast,

In thunder forth shall sound thy name;

Thy forest, hot at heart, at last

God's breath shall kindle into flame.

Thy brook dried up a cloud shall rise,

And stretch an hourly-widening hand,

In God's good vengeance, through the skies, And onward o'er the Invader's land."

Of thine, one day, a remnant left

Shall raise o'er earth a Prophet's rod, And teach the coasts of Faith bereft The names of Ireland, and of God.

III.-AUTUMN,

THEN die, thou Year-thy work is done:
The work ill done is done at last.
Far off, beyond that sinking sun

Which sets in blood, I hear the blast

That sings thy dirge, and says: "Ascend,
And answer make amid thy peers
(Since all things here must have an end),
Thou latest of the famine years!"

I join that voice. No joy have I In all thy purple and thy gold; Nor in that ninefold harmony

From forest on to forest rolled:

Nor in fuat stormy western fire,

Which burns on ocean's gloomy bed, And hurls, as from a funeral-pyre,

A glare that strikes the mountain's head;

And writes on low-hung clouds its lines Of cyphered flame, with hurrying hand; And flings amid the topmost pines

That crown the steep, a burning brand.

Make answer, Year, for all thy dead, Who found not rest in hallowed earth; The widowed wife, the father fled,

The babe age-stricken from his birth.

Make answer, Year, for virtue lost;
For courage proof 'gainst fraud and force
Now waning like a noontide ghost;

Affections poisoned at their source.
The laborer spurned his lying spade;

The yeoman spurned his usless plough; The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid, Obtruded once, exhausted now.

The roof-trees fall of hut and hall,

I hear them fall, and falling cry, "One fate for each, one fate for all;

So wills the Law that willed a lie."

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Dread power of Man! what spread the waste
In circles hour by hour more wide,
And would not let the past be past ?-

The Law, that promised much, and lied.

Dread power of God! whom mortal years Nor touch nor tempt; who sitt'st sublime In night of night-O bid thy spheres

Resound at last a funeral-chime!

Call up at last the afflicted race,

Whom man, not God, abolished-sore, For centuries, their strife: the place

That knew them once shall know no more!

IV.-WINTER.

FALL, snow, and cease not! Flake by flake
The decent winding-sheet compose.
Thy task is just and pious; make
An end of blasphemies and woes.

Fall flake by flake! by thee alone,

Last friend, the sleeping draught is given: Kind nurse, by thee the couch is strewnThe couch whose covering is from heaven. Descend and clasp the mountain's crest: Inherit plain and valley deep: This night on thy maternal breast

A vanquished nation dies in sleep. Lo; from the starry Temple Gates

Death rides, and bears the flag of peace: The combatants he separates;

He bids the wrath of ages cease.

Descend, benignant Power! But oh, Ye torrents, shake no more the vale: Dark streams, in silence seaward flow: Thou rising storm, remit thy wail.

Shake not, to-night, the cliffs of Moher,
Nor Brandon's base, rough sea! Thou Isle,
The Rite proceeds! From shore to shore,

Hold in thy gathered breath the while.

Fall, snow! in stillness fall, like dew, On church's roof and cedar's fan; And mould thyself on pine and yew; And on the awful face of man.