And would they tear thee out of Irish soil,
The guilty fools!
How time must mock their antiquated toil
And broken tools!
Cranmer and Cromwell from thy grasp retir’d,
Baffled and thrown;
William and Anne to sap thy site conspir’d,—
The rest is known.
Holy Saint Patrick, father of our faith,
Belov’d of God!
Shield thy dear Church from the impending scaith,
Or, if the rod
Must scourge it yet again, inspire and raise
To emprise high
Men like the heroic race of other days,
Who joyed to die.
Fear! wherefore should the Celtic people fear
Their Church’s fate?
The day is not—the day was never near—
Could desolate
The Destin’d Island, all whose clay
Is holy ground:
Its Cross shall stand till that predestin’d day
When Erin’s self is drown’d.
MARY C. G. BYRON
The Tryst of the Night.
(M. C. Gillington)
Out of the uttermost ridge of dusk, where the dark and the day are mingled,
The voice of the Night rose cold and calm—it called through the shadow-swept air;
Through all the valleys and lone hillsides, it pierced, it thrilled, it tingled—
It summoned me forth to the wild sea-shore, to meet with its mystery there.
Out of the deep ineffable blue, with palpitant swift repeating
Of gleam and glitter and opaline glow, that broke in ripples of light—
In burning glory it came and went,—I heard, I saw it beating,
Pulse by pulse, from star to star,—the passionate heart of the Night!
Out of the thud of the rustling sea—the panting, yearning, throbbing
Waves that stole on the startled shore, with coo and mutter of spray—
The wail of the Night came fitful-faint,—I heard her stifled sobbing:
The cold salt drops fell slowly, slowly, gray into gulfs of gray.
There through the darkness the great world reeled, and the great tides roared, assembling—
Murmuring hidden things that are past, and secret things that shall be;
There at the limits of life we met, and touched with a rapturous trembling—
One with each other, I and the Night, and the skies, and the stars, and sea.