THE WAKE OF THE ABSENT.

GERALD GRIFFIN.

It is a custom among the peasantry in some parts of Ireland, when any member of a family has been lost at sea (or in any other way which renders the performance of the customary funeral rite impossible), to celebrate the "wake," exactly in the same way as if the corpse were actually present.

THE dismal yew, and cypress

tall,

Wave o'er the churchyard lone,

Where rest our friends and fathers all,
Beneath the funeral stone.

Unvexed in holy ground they sleep,
Oh, early lost! o'er thee

No sorrowing friend shall ever weep,
Nor stranger bend the knee,

Mo Chuma!* lorn am I!
Hoarse dashing rolls the salt sea wave,
Over our perished darling's grave—

The winds the sullen deep that tore,
His death-song chanted loud,
The weeds that line the clifted shore
Were all his burial shroud.
For friendly wail and holy dirge,
And long lament of love,

Around him roared the angry surge,
The curlew screamed above,

Mo Chuma! lorn am I!
My grief would turn to rapture now,
Might I but touch that pallid brow.

The stream-born bubbles soonest burst
That earliest left the source:
Buds earliest blown are faded first,
In nature's wonted course:

With guarded pace her seasons creep,
By slow decay expire;

The young above the aged weep,

The son above the sire:

Mo Chuma! lorn am I!

That death a backward course should hold,

To smite the young, and spare the old.

*Mo Chuma-My grief; or, woe is me!

GRACE NUGENT.

CAROLAN. Translated by SAMUEL FERGUSON, M.R.I.A.

BRIGHTEST blossom of the spring,
Grace, the sprightly girl, I sing;
Grace who bore the palm of mind
From all the rest of womankind:
Whomsoe'er the fates decree,
Happy fate for life to be,

Day and night my Coolun* near,
Ache or pain need never fear.

Her neck outdoes the stately swan,
Her radiant face the summer dawn;
Ah, happy thrice the youth for whom
The fates design that branch of bloom!
Pleasant are your words benign,
Rich those azure eyes of thine;
Ye who see my queen, beware

Those twisted links of golden hair!

* Coolun means a fine head of hair, and the term is often used as one of endearment. The Irish bards loved to praise fine hair (for which, by the way, the Irish are remarkable), both in poetry and music. There is a sweet Irish air, called “Nancy of the branching tresses."

Hardiman, in his "Irish Minstrelsy," remarks that "our Irish poets, like the Arabians, have delighted in description of female hair," and he alludes to Byron, in his "Giaour,” maintaining the oriental character of his poem by celebrating the beauty of his heroine's hair

"Her hair in hyacinthian flow,
When left to roll its folds below;
As midst her handmaids in the hall

She stood superior to them all;

Hath swept the marble where her feet
Gleamed whiter than the mountain sleet,
Ere from the cloud that gave it birth

It fell and caught one stain of earth."

Hardiman gives a further example of this Arabian admiration by quoting a translation from the Arabic by Professor Carlyle

"Thro' midnight gloom my Leila stray'd,

Her ebon locks around her play'd;

So dark they waved-so black they curl'd,
Another night o'erspread the world."

Pretty well for dark hair!-But our Irish bards are not easily outdone; and here is one who thus celebrates the blackness of his mistress's hair, even at the risk of wounding "ears polite:"

"Your talk is so quare,

And your sweet curly hair
Is as black as the Divil."

This is what I fain would say
To the bird-voiced lady gay +—
Never yet conceived the heart
Joy that Grace cannot impart:
Fold of jewels, case of pearls!
Coolun of the circling curls!
More I say not, but no less

Drink your health and happiness.

+ This "bird-voiced lady" (how sweet the epithet!) was a fair daughter of the Nugent of Castle Nugent, Columbre, By the way, I knew a certain bird-voiced lady, who, in giving evidence before a magistrate on the subject of a burglary, complained that, on hearing the thieves in the house, she opened a window, and called for "the watch," but they neglected her call. "Madam," said the gallant magistrate, "I suppose they mistook your call for the voice of the nightingale."

Oh! long the dark winter
In ice chains hath bound us,
But now the fair hand

Of the spring tide is round us."

We're glancing away,

From the height of the mountain
We're leaving our spray,

On the calm valley fountain;
Through the depth of the glen,
In the shade of the woods,
We're murmuring our music,
And mingling our floods.

We're sparkling along,
Over granite and green;
We're heard but in song,

And, in light, we are seen;
The brushwood is stemming,
Our tides as they flow;

And the young flowers are gemming,
Wherever we go.

Hark to the sounds

Of our waters afar,

As they break through the bounds
Where the wild willows are;

Oh! fresh from the chain

Of the winter wind gushing,
In the beauty of spring tide,
We're rushing, we're rushing!

* Goethe, in "Faustus," employs a pleasing image to indicate the action of Spring in overcoming the power of Winter.

"The warm and vivifying glance of Spring

Has melted the cold fetters of the brooks."

GLENFINNISHK.

JOSEPH O'LEARY.

GLENFINNISHK,* where thy waters mix with Arraglen's wild tide, 'Tis sweet, at hush of evening, to wander by thy side!

'Tis sweet to hear the night-winds sigh along Macrona's wood, And mingle their wild music with the murmur of thy flood!

* Glenfinnishk (the glen of the fair waters), in the county of Cork.

'Tis sweet, when in the deep blue vault the morn is shining bright,
To watch where thy clear waters are breaking into light;
To mark the starry sparks that o'er thy smoother surface gleam,
As if some fairy hand were flinging diamonds on thy stream!

Oh! if departed spirits e'er to this dark world return,
'Tis in some lonely, lovely spot like this they would sojourn;
Whate'er their mystic rites may be, no human eye is here,
Save mine, to mark their mystery—no human voice is near.

At such an hour, in such a scene, I could forget my birth-
I could forget I e'er have been, or am, a thing of earth;
Shake off the fleshly bonds that hold my soul in thrall, and be
Even like themselves, a spirit, as boundless and as free!

Ye shadowy race! if we believe the tales of legends old,
Ye sometimes hold high converse with those of mortal mould:
Oh! come, whilst now my soul is free, and bear me in your train,
Ne'er to return to misery and this dark world again!

THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE.*

Translated from the Irish, by E. WALSH.

WHAT mortal conflict drove me here to roam,
Though many a maid I've left behind at home;
Forth from the house where dwelt my heart's dear hope,
I was turned by the hag at the twisting of the rope!

If thou be mine, be mine both day and night,
If thou be mine, be mine in all men's sight,
If thou be mine, be mine o'er all beside-
And oh, that thou wert now my wedded bride!

In Sligo first I did my love behold,

In Galway town I spent with her my gold—
But by this hand, if thus they me pursue,

I'll teach these dames to dance a measure new!

This song is of no intrinsic value, but becomes interesting from the following note appended to it by the translator:

"This is said to be the original song composed to that delightful tune, The Twisting of the Rope.' Tradition thus speaks of its origin. A Connaught harper having once put up at the residence of a rich farmer, began to pay such attentions to the young woman of the house as greatly displeased her mother, who instantly conceived a plan for the sum