The Repealer had his wish. The cable was cut. Ireland was adrift—and LEFT TO ITSELF. Order, law, justice, peace, trade, industry, money, prosperity, and—oh terrible truth!—Independence were gone away—quite away with the Saxon.
And the Milesian Republic endured—we blush to number the hours of its ephemeral and horrible existence. Every where the fair face of the beautiful Isle was hideously seamed with scars of civil war. Every where mounted upwards the smoke of roof-trees destroyed, and hearthstones desolated. Every where over the surface of the great surrounding ocean boomed the discordant wail of the land torn by the vultures of anarchy.
Again! at the harbours of sea-ports there was an unmistakeable noise. Over the rugged stones went the continual tramp and tread of armed men, who, with bursts of brutal insolence, marched from the ships. The clang of foreign arms again sounded in the cities, along the plains, and across the hills of Erin. Ireland had become the province of a foreign power which did not speak the English tongue. Ireland was that day trampled on by the iron heel of a new master.
Albion, from its white cliffs, saw the scene. But the ties had been long broken.
THE LAST WALK.
BY B. SIMMONS.
Oh lost Madonna, young and fair!
O'er-leant by broad embracing trees,
A streamlet to the lonely air
Murmurs its meek low melodies;
And there, as if to drink the tune,
And mid the sparkling sands to play,
One constant Sunbeam still at noon
Shoots through the shades its golden way.
My lost Madonna, whose glad life
Was like, that ray of radiant air,
The March-wind's violet scents blew rife
When last we sought that fountain fair.
Blythe as the beam from heaven arriving,
—Thy hair held back by hands whose gleam
Was white as stars with night-clouds striving—
Thy bright lips bent and sipp'd the stream.