THOMAS AUBREY DE VERE.

DE VERE, THOMAS AUBREY, an Irish poet and political writer, third son of Sir Aubrey De Vere, Baronet, of Curragh Chase, in the county of Limerick, was born on the family estate, January 10, 1814; and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. At the age of twenty-eight he published a lyrical tale entitled "The Waldenses, or the Fall of Rora." De Vere's productions include a large number of works in verse. Among them are "The Search after Proserpine" (1843); "Poems, Miscellaneous and Sacred" (1853); "May Carols" (1857); "The Sisters, Inisfail, and Other Poems" (1861); "Irish Odes and Other Poems" (1869); "Legends of Saint Patrick" (1872); "Alexander the Great" (1874), a dramatic poem; "Saint Thomas of Canterbury" (1876), another dramatic poem; "Antar and Zara" (1877); "Legends of the Saxon Saints" (1879); "The Foray of Queen Meave, and other Legends of Ireland's Heroic Age" (1882); "Legends and Records of the Church and the Empire" (1887); "Saint Peter's Chains" (1888); "Poems" (1890). "English Misrule and Irish Misdeeds," published in 1848, produced a sensation in the political world; and among his works of this kind should also be mentioned "Ireland's Church Property and the Right Use of It" (1867); "Pleas for Secularization" (1867); "The Church Establishment of Ireland" (1867); "The Church Settlement of Ireland, or Hibernia Pacanda " (1868); "Constitutional and Unconstitutional Political Action" (1881). Of other prose writings are an excellent work on Turkey entitled "Sketches of Greece and Turkey," published in two volumes in 1850; a volume of letters and articles on philosophical and religious subjects entitled "Proteus and Amadeus" (1878); "Essays on Poetry" (1887); 'Essays Literary and Ethical" (1889).

THE ASCENT OF THE ALPS.

Up to lonelier, narrower valleys
Winds an intricate ravine

Whence the latest snow-blast sallies
Through black firs scarce seen.

I hear through clouds the hunter's hollo-
I hear, but scarcely dare to follow
'Mid chaotic rock and woods,

Such as in her lyric moods
Nature, like a Bacchante, flings
From half-shaped imaginings.

There lie two prostrate trunks entangled
Like intertwisted dragons strangled:
Yon glacier seems a prophet's robes,
While broken sceptres, thrones, and globes
Are strewn, as left by rival States
Of elemental potentates.

Pale floats the mist, a wizard's shroud:
There looms the broad crag from the cloud.
A thunder-graven Sphinx's head, half blind,
Gazing on far lands through the freezing wind.

Mount higher, mount higher!
With rock-girdled gyre

Behind each gray ridge

And pine-feathered ledge

A vale is suspended; mount higher, mount higher!

From rock to rock leaping

The wild goats, they bound;

The resinous odors

Are wafted around;

The clouds disentangled,

With blue gaps and spangled;

Green isles of the valley with sunshine are crowned.

The birches new-budded

Make pink the green copse;

From brier and hazel

The golden rain drops;

As he climbs, the bough shaking,
Nest-seeking, branch breaking,

Beneath the white ash-boughs the shepherd-boy stops,

How happy that shepherd!

How happy the lass!

How freshly beside them

The pure zephyrs pass!

Sing, sing! From the soil

Springs bubble and boil,

And sun-smitten torrents fall soft on the grass.

Mount higher, mount higher,
To the cloudland nigher;

To the regions we climb

Of our long-buried prime

In the skies it awaits us-Up higher, up higher!

Loud Hymn and clear Pæan
From caverns are rolled:
Far below is Summer-

We have slipped from her fold;

We have passed, like a breath,
To new life without death -

The Spring and our Childhood all round we behold.

What are toils to men who scorn them!

Peril what to men who dare?

Chains to hands that once have torn them
Thenceforth are chains of air!

The winds above the snow-plains fleet-
Like them I race with wingèd feet;
My bonds are dropped; my spirit thrills,
A freeman of the Eternal Hills!
Each cloud by turns I make my tent;
I run before the radiance sent
From every mountain's silver mail
Across dark gulfs from vale to vale:
The curdling mist in smooth career,
A lovely phantom fleeting by,
As silent sails through yon pale mere
That shrines its own blue sky.

Lo! like the foam of wintry ocean,
The clouds beneath my feet are curled;
Dividing snow with solemn motion

They give back the world.

No veil I fear, no visual bond

In this aërial diamond:

My head o'er crystal bastions bent,

'Twixt star-crowned spire and battlement

I see the river of green ice,

From precipice to precipice,

Wind earthward slow, with blighting breath

Blackening the vales below like death.

Far, far beneath in sealike reach,
Receding to the horizon's rim,

I see the woods of pine and beech,
By their own breath made dim: