Song.

SOME go smiling through the gray time,
Under naked, songless bowers;
Some go mourning all the May time,
Mid the laughing leaves and flowers.
Why is this,

Rosy Bliss

Comes to kiss Winter gray?

Why, ah! why

Doth Sorrow sigh

On the lap of lovely May?

Happy Love with song and smiling
Through the withered woodland goes;
Hapless Love hath no beguiling
From the redbreast or the rose.
This is why

Woods may sigh,

Flowers die and hearts be gay;

This, alas!

The piteous pass

That leaves us mourning all the May.

The Magic Mist.

DREAD bard out of Desmond deep-valleyed,
Whence comest thou chanting to-night,
From thy brow to thy bosom death pallid,
Thine eyes like a seer's star-bright?
And whence, o'er thy guest seat allotted,
These strange, sudden eddies of air,
And why is the quickan flower clotted
Like foam in the flow of thy hair?

"To and fro in high thought on the mountains
I strode in my singing robe green,
Where Mangerton, father of fountains,
Starts sternly from lovely Loch Lene;
When around me and under and o'er me
Rang melody none may resist;
For rapture I swoon'd, while before me
Earth faded in magical mist.

"And there my dull body sank sleeping
'Neath quickans of quivering sway,
My soul in her song-robe went sweeping

Where Cleena holds court o'er the fay-
The land where all tears are with smiling,

The land where all smiles are with tears, Where years shrink to days of beguiling, Days yearn into long, blessed years."

Arch minstrel of Desmond, we dread thee,
Lest, lifted to-night in our hall,
The spell of lone music that led thee
To Faery, have fettered us all.
"Nay, fear not! though Cleena be calling,
I only her clairseach obey."

To earth the earth body is falling,
The soul soars exultant away.

The Bed-Ridden Peasant.

TO AN UNKNOWING GOD.

MUCH wonder I-here long low-laid

That this dead wall should be
Betwixt the Maker and the made,
Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,
He eyes it now and then

To know if better 'tis, or worse,
And if it mourn, and when.

But Thou, Lord, giv'st us men our day

In helpless bondage thus

To Time and Chance, and seem'st straightway To think no more of us!

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme

And tore us wide apart,

So that no cry can cross, I deem;
For Thou art mild of heart,

And wouldst not shape and shut us in
Where voice cannot be heard;

Plainly Thou meant'st that we should win
Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies

Like man's from clime to clime,

Thou wouldst not let me agonize

Through my remaining time;

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear-
Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind-
Thou'dst heal the ills with quickest care
Of me and all my kind.

Then, since Thou mak'st not these things be,
But these things dost not know,
I'll praise Thee as were shown to me
The mercies Thou wouldst show!