GERALD GRIFFIN.

Ah, love! ah, love! be kind to me;
For by this breaking heart you see,
How dearly I have purchased thee!
O wirra-sthru! O wirra-sthru !

THE BRIDAL WAKE.

THE priest stood at the marriage board,
The marriage cake was made,

With meat the marriage chest was stored,
Decked was the marriage bed.

The old man sat beside the fire,
The mother sat by him,

The white bride was in gay attire,

But her dark eye was dim,

Ululah! Ululah!

The night falls quick-the sun is set,

Her love is on the water yet.

I saw a red cloud in the west,

Against the morning light,

Heaven shield the youth that she loves best

From evil chance to-night.

The door flings wide! Loud moans the gale, Wild fear her bosom fills,

It is, it is the Banshee's wail!

Over the darkened hills.

Ululah! Ululah!

The day is past! the night is dark!
The waves are mounting round his bark.

The guests sit round the bridal bed,

And break the bridal cake,

But they sit by the dead man's head,
And hold his wedding wake.

THE MOTHER'S LAMENT.

The bride is praying in her room,
The place is silent all!

A fearful call! a sudden doom!

Bridal and funeral!

Ululah! Ululah!

A youth to Kilficheras' ta'en
That never will return again.

THE MOTHER'S LAMENT.

My darling, my darling, while silence is on the moor,
And lone in the sunshine, I sit by our cabin-door;
And 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 churchyard 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 agèd 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 again—
And my heart may be broken, but ne'er shall my will complain.

THERE stood a city along Cyprus' side,

Lavish of palaces, an arched tide

Of unrolled rocks; and, where the deities dwelled,

Their clustered domes pushed up the noon, and swelled

With the emotion of the god within,

As doth earth's hemisphere, when showers begin

To tickle the still spirit at its core,

Till pastures tremble and the river-shore

THE PALACE OF PYGMALION.

Squeezes out buds at every dewy pore.

And there were pillars, from some mountain's heart,
Thronging beneath a wide, imperial floor

That bent with riches; and there stood apart

A palace, oft accompanied by trees,

That laid their shadows in the galleries
Under the coming of the endless light,
Net-like; who trod the marble, night or day,
By moon, or lamp, or sunless day-shine white,
Would brush the shaking, ghostly leaves away,
Which might be tendrils or a knot of wine,
Burst from the depth of a faint window-vine,
With a bird pecking it: and round the hall
And wandering staircase, within every wall
Of sea-ward portico, and sleeping chamber,
Whose patient lamp distilled a day of amber,
There stood, and sate, or made rough steeds their throne
Immortal generations wrung from stone,

Alike too beautiful for life and death,

And bodies that a soul of mortal breath
Would be the dross of.

Such a house as this

Within a garden hard by Salamis,

(Cyprus' city-crown and capital

Ere Paphos was, and at whose ocean-wall
Beauty and love's paternal waves do beat
That sprouted Venus;) such a fair retreat
Lonely Pygmalion self inhabited,

Whose fiery chisel with creation fed

The shipwrecked rocks; who paid the heavens again
Diamonds for ice; who made gods who make men.
Lonely Pygmalion: you might see him go
Along the streets where markets thickest flow,
Doubling his gown across his thinking breast,

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.

And the men fall aside; nor only pressed
Out of his elbows' way, but left a place

A sun-room for him, that his mind had space

And none went near; none in his sweep would venture,

For you might feel that he was but the centre

Of an inspired round, the middle spark
Of a great moon, setting aside the dark
And cloudy people. As he went along
The chambered ladies silenced the half-song,
And let the wheel unheeded whirl and skim,
To get their eyes blest by the sight of him.
So locks were swept from every eye that drew
Sun for the soul through circles violet-blue,
Mild brown, or passionate black.

ALPINE SPIRIT'S SONG.

O'ER the snow, through the air, to the mountain,
With the antelope, with the eagle, ho!
With a bound, with a feathery row,

To the side of the icy fountain,
Where the gentians blue-belled blow.
Where the storm-sprite, the rain-drops counting,
Cowers under the bright rainbow,
Like a burst of midnight fire,
Singing shoots my fleet desire,
Winged with the wing of love,
Earth below and stars above.

Let me rest on the snow, never pressed
But by chamois light and by eagle fleet,
Where the hearts of the antelope beat