And now unseen along the shrouded mead
One went under the hill;
He blew a cadence on his mellow reed,
That trembled and was still.
It seemed as if a line of amber fire
Had shot the gathered dusk,
As if had blown a wind from ancient Tyre
Laden with myrrh and musk.
He gave his luring note amid the fern;
Its enigmatic fall
Haunted the hollow dusk with golden turn
And argent interval.
I could not know the message that he bore,
The springs of life from me
Hidden; his incommunicable lore
As much a mystery.
And as I followed far the magic player
He passed the maple wood;
And, when I passed, the stars had risen there,
And there was solitude.
The Celtic Cross.
THOMAS D’ARCY M‘CGEE
Through storm and fire and gloom, I see it stand
Firm, broad, and tall,
The Celtic Cross that marks our Fatherland,
Amid them all!
Druids and Danes and Saxons vainly rage
Around its base;
It standeth shock on shock, and age on age,
Star of our scatter’d race.
O Holy Cross! dear symbol of the dread
Death of our Lord,
Around thee long have slept our martyr dead
Sward over sward.
An hundred bishops I myself can count
Among the slain:
Chiefs, captains, rank and file, a shining mount
Of God’s ripe grain.
The monarch’s mace, the Puritan’s claymore,
Smote thee not down;
On headland steep, on mountain summit hoar,
In mart and town,
In Glendalough, in Ara, in Tyrone,
We find thee still,
Thy open arms still stretching to thine own,
O’er town and lough and hill.