"Oh, no," I said,

"My own dear maid,

For me, though all forlorn for ever,
That heart of thine
Shall ne'er repine

O'er slighted duty-never,

From home and thee though, wandering far,
A dreary fate be mine, love;

I'd rather live in endless war,

Than buy my peace with thine, love,"
Sing Gille ma chree, &c,

FROM THE COLD SOD THAT'S O'ER YOU.

From the Irish. Translated by EDWARD WALSHE.

FROM the cold sod that's o'er you

I never shall sever

Were my hands twin'd in yours, love,
I'd hold them for ever-

My fondest, my fairest,

We may now sleep together,

I've the cold earth's damp odour,

And I'm worn from the weather!

This heart, fill'd with fondness,
Is wounded and weary;

A dark gulf beneath it

Yawns jet-black and dreary

When death comes, a victor,
In mercy to greet me,

On the wings of the whirlwind,
In the wild wastes you'll meet me!

When the folk of my household
Suppose I am sleeping,

On your cold grave, till morning,
The lone watch I'm keeping;
My grief to the night wind,
For the mild maid to render,
Who was my betrothed
Since infancy tender!

Remember the lone night

I last spent with you, love,
Beneath the dark sloe-tree,
When the icy wind blew, love-
High praise to the Saviour

No sin-stain had found

That your virginal glory

you,

Shines brightly around you!

The priests and the friars
Are ceaselessly chiding,
That I love a young maiden,
In life not abiding—
O! I'd shelter and shield you,
If wild storms were swelling,

And O! my wrecked hope,

That the cold earth's your dwelling!

Alas, for your father,

And also your mother,

And all your relations,

Your sister and brother,
Who gave you to sorrow,

And the grave 'neath the willow,
While I crav'd as your portion
But to share your chaste pillow!

THE MOTHER'S LAMENT.

GERALD GRIFFIN.

My darling, my darling, while silence is on the moor, And lone in the sunshine, I sit by our cabin door; When evening falls quiet and calm over land and sea, My darling, my darling, I think of past times and thee!

*

Here, while on this cold shore, I wear out my lonely hours,
My child in the heavens is spreading my bed with flowers,
All weary my bosom is
grown of this friendless clime,
But I long not to leave it; for that were a shame and crime;

They bear to the church-yard the youth in their health away,
I know where a fruit hangs more ripe for the grave than they,
But I wish not for death, for my spirit is all resigned,
And the hope that stays with me gives peace to my aged mind.

My darling, my darling, God gave to my

feeble age, A prop for my faint heart, a stay in my pilgrimage; My darling, my darling, God takes back his gift againAnd my heart may be broken, but ne'er shall my will complain.

This is but repeating a beautiful saying common among the Irish peasantry.

The expression of parental love and christian resignation in this song is most touching. How any man who was not a father, and did not experience all that is expressed in the last verse, could so truly describe what many a parent has felt, is only to be accounted for by the presence within him of the poetic spirit that "o'er-informs the tenement of clay," and can imagine reality.

OH! DON'T YOU REMEMBER?

SAMUEL LOver.

OH! don't you remember the beautiful glade,
Where in childhood together we playfully stray'd,
Where wreaths of wild-flowers so often I made,
Thy tresses so brightly adorning?

Oh! light of foot and heart were then

The happy children of the glen:-
The cares that shade the brows of men
Ne'er darken childhood's morning.

Oh! who can forget the young innocent hours

That were pass'd in the shade of our home's happy bow'rs,
When the wealth that we sought for was only wild flow'rs,
And we thought ourselves rich when we found them?
Oh! where's the tie that friends e'er knew,

So free from stain, so firm, so true,
As links that with the wild-flowers grew,
And in sweet fetters bound them?

Rt. Hon. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, Born 1751, Died 1816,

The name of Sheridan was distinguished in Ireland before the birth of Richard Brinsley, first by his grandfather, Doctor Sheridan, the friend and correspondent of Swift; next by his father, Mr. Thomas Sheridan, the competitor of Garrick; but the glory of the name culminated in Richard Brinsley. A dramatist of the highest order,-a charming lyric writer,a first-rate orator-his name sheds triple honour on Ireland. Mr. Hazlitt (that astute critic) says, "Mr. Sheridan has been justly called a dramatic star of the first magnitude; and, indeed, among the comic writers of the last century, he shines like Hesperus among the lesser lights. He has left four several dramas behind him, all different, or of different kinds, and all excellent in their way." He proceeds to a minute criticism on the various plays, too long for quotation, in a note, but it may be remarked that he calls "The Duenna," "a perfect work of art;" afterwards, in noticing other qualifications he possesses, he says, "Sheridan was not only an excellent dramatic writer, but a first-rate parliamentary speaker. His characteristics as an orator were manly unperverted good sense, and keen irony. * ** *No one was equal to him in replying, on the spur of the moment, to pompous absurdity, and unravelling the web of flimsy sophistry. He was the last accomplished debater of the House of Commons."-Lectures on the Comic Writers, p. 334,

DRY be that tear, my gentlest love,
Be hushed that struggling sigh;
Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove,
More fixed, more true, than I:
Hushed be that sigh, be dry that tear,
Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear-
Dry be that tear,