myself to realise the fact that this face now looking so dead and unburied was young and bright and perhaps cheerful when he went wooing in Ranelagh.

Instead of saying anything wise and stupid and commonplace about either poets or women, let me quote here stanzas which must have been written some day when he saw sunshine ainong the clouds:

THE MARINER'S BRIDE.

Look, mother! the mariner's rowing
His galley adown the tide;
I'll go where the mariner's going,
And be the mariner's bride!

“I saw him one day through the wicket,
I opened the gate and we met-
As a bird in the fowler's net,
Was I caught in my own green thicket.
O mother, my tears are flowing,

I've lost my maidenly pride

I'll go if the mariner's going,

And be the mariner's bride!

"This Love the tyrant evinces,

Alas! an omnipotent might,

He darkens the mind like night,

He treads on the necks of Princes!

O mother, my bosom is glowing,
I'll go whatever betide,

I'll go where the mariner's going,
And be the mariner's bride!

"Yes, mother! the spoiler has reft me
Of reason and self-control;
Gone, gone is my wretched soul,

And only my body is left me!
The winds, O mother, are blowing,

The ocean is bright and wide;
I'll go where the mariner's going,
And be the mariner's bride."

This appears among the Apocrypha, and is credited by Mangan to the "Spanish;" but it is safe to assume when he is so vague that the poem is original. It is one of the most bright and cheerful he has given us. The only touch of sorrow we feel is for the poor mother who is about to lose so impulsive and vivacious a daughter. The time of this delightful ballad is not clearly defined, but we may be absolutely

certain that we of this moribund nineteenth century will never meet except at a function of a recondite spiritual medium even the great grandchild of the Mariner's Bride. How much more is our devout gratitude due to a good and pious spiritualist than to any riotous and licentious poet! The former can give us intercourse with the illustrious defunct of history; the latter can give us no more than the image of a figment, the phantom of a shade, the echo of sounds that never vibrated in the ear of man. All persons who believe the evidence adduced by poets are the victims of subornation.

A saw-mill does not seem a good subject for a copy of verses." Mangan died single and in poverty, and was buried by his friends. Listen :

THE SAW-MILL.

"My path lay towards the Mourne again,
But I stopped to rest by the hill-side
That glanced adown o'er the sunken glen
Which the Saw- and Water-mills hide,
Which now, as then,

The Saw- and Water-mills hide.

"And there, as I lay reclined on the hill,
Like a man made by sudden qualm ill,
I heard the water in the Water-mill,
And I saw the saw in the Saw-mill!
As I thus lay still

I saw the saw in the Saw-mill !

"The saw, the breeze, and the humming bees,
Lulled me into a dreamy reverie,

Till the objects round me-hills, mills, trees,
Seemed grown alive all and every-
By slow degrees

Took life as it were, all and every!

"Anon the sound of the waters grew

To a Mourne-ful ditty,

And the song of the tree that the saw sawed

through

Disturbed my spirit with pity,

Began to subdue

My spirit with tenderest pity!

"Oh, wanderer, the hour that brings thee back

Is of all meet hours the meetest.

Thou now, in sooth art on the Track,
And nigher to Home than thou weetest;
Thou hast thought Time slack,

But his flight has been of the fleetest !

"For this it is that I dree such pain

As, when wounded, even a plank will;
My bosom is pierced, is rent in twain,
That thine may ever bide tranquil.
May ever remain

Henceforward untroubled and tranquil.

"In a few days more, most Lonely One! Shall I, as a narrow ark, veil

Thine eyes

from the glare of the world and sun 'Mong the urns of yonder dark vale―

In the cold and dun

Recesses of yonder dark vale!

"For this grieve not! Thou knowest what thanks The Weary-souled and Meek owe

To Death!' I awoke, and heard four planks
Fall down with a saddening echo.

I heard four planks

Fall down with a hollow echo."

This was the epithalamium of James Clarence Mangan sung by himself.