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"NEVER IN LIFE TO PROSPER MORE."
And so, from life sequestered,
With dim forebodings brooding o'er
The shafted fate that festered
Deep in the white depths of her soul,
The patient girl awaited

Ill's viewless train-her days to pain
And duty consecrated.

At times she deemed the coming woe
Through others' hearts would reach her,
Till every tie that twined her low,
Upon the lap of Nature

Her once-loved head unwatched, unknown
Should sink in meek dejection,

Hushed as some Quiet carved in stone
Above entombed affection.

E'en her young heart's instinctive want.
To be beloved and loving,

Inexorably vigilant,

She checked with cold reproving.
For still she saw, should tempests frown,
That treacherous anchor sever,

And Hope's whole priceless freight go down
A shipwrecked thing for ever.

So pined that gracious form away,
Her bliss-fraught life untasted;
A breeze-harp whose divinest voice
On lonely winds is wasted.
And such the tale to me conveyed
In laughing tones or lowly,

As still that rosy crowd was swayed
By mirth or melancholy.

I've seen since then the churchyard nook,
Where Judith Lee lies sleeping;
The wild ash loves it, and a brook
Through emerald mosses creeping;
For that lost maiden ever there
A low sweet mass is singing,
While all around, like nuns at prayer,
Pale water-flowers are springing.

Poor Girl! I've thought, as there reclined,

I drank the sunset's glory

Thy tale to meditative mind

Is but an allegory;

Once shatter inborn Truth divine,

The soul's transparent mirror,

Where Heaven's reflection loved to shine,

And what remains but terror?

Terror and Woe;

-Faith's holy face

No more our hearts relieving-
Fades from the past each early grace
The future brings but grieving;
However fast life's blessings fall
In lavish sunshine o'er us,

That Broken Glass distorts them all
Whose fragments glare before us.

THE FAIRIES OF KNOCKSHEGOWNA.

BY R. D. WILLIAMS.

[Knockshegowna is the name of a fairy Hill in Lower Ormond, and in English means Oonagh's Hill, so called from being the fabled residence of Una, the Fairy Queen of Spenser.]

A RUSTLING, whirling sound sweeps by,
Like leaves on an Autumn breeze,

Tho', since sunset fled, there was scarce a sigh
To stir the slumbering trees;

And a troop comes forth from the moonlit glen,
With such mist-like motion on,

That you may not find an injur'd flower
Where their coursers' hoofs have gone.

They glide along o'er the dewy banks,
On their viewless, filmy wings,

And anon and again from their restless ranks
The merry fairy laughter rings.

In lonely dells, where the starbeams fall
But on fern, and lake and tree,

Nor eye profane the mirth may mar,
I have heard their minstrelsie.

To the fitful song of the haunted stream

The aerial numbers flow;

And their tiny spears, in the starlight gleam
To the burden to and fro.

Away! quick march! through the ruined arch,
At the sound of the nutshell gong-

And here shall we halt at the Viking's vault,
And chant him a battle-song.

Now, left and right, in the moon's pale light,
Low'r your flags as the monarch comes.
In the Elfin ring is the Elfin king-
Ding-a-ding go the Elfin drums!

With the glow-worm's gem is his diadem,
For this festal pageant, lit;

The beetle booms through the hawthorn blooms,
And the bats through the branches flit.

Advance! advance! for a farewell dance,
Ere the nightly pomp is o'er:

From a mushroom's cone shall our pipers drone,
The sward our elastic floor:

While the Phooka-horse holds his frantic course
Over wood and mountain-fall,

And the Banshees croon a rhythmic rune
From the crumbling, ivied wall !—

In the noon of night, o'er the stormy hills,
The fairy minstrels play,

And the strain, replete with fantastic dreams,
On the wild gust flits away.

Then the sleeper thinks, as the dreamful song
On the blast to his slumber comes,

That his nose as the church's spire is long,
And, like its organ hums!

And when they spread their filmy wings
In the dim Moon's waning ray,

Strange meteors dance, and the glittering rills
Seem show'ring fiery spray.

And deep when booms the solemn toll

Of the distant cloister bells,

The clang, and the clash, and the tambour roll Of their midnight music swells.

Their beamy spears, and crests, and shields,
The lated wanderer sees,

And their blazon'd banners flap and fly,

And rattle on the breeze.
'Tis thus in martial panoply,

The Genii of the Wold
With Elfin pomp and minstrelsy
Their nightly revels hold.

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[The pass of Céim-an-eich (the path of the deer) lies to the south-west of Inchageela, in the direction of Bantry Bay. The tourist will commit a grievous error if he omit to visit it. Perhaps in no part of the kingdom is there to be found a place so utterly desolate and gloomy. A mountain has been divided by some convulsion of nature; and the narrow pass, about two miles in length, is overhung on either side by perpendicular masses clothed in wild ivy and underwood, with, occasionally, a stunted yew tree or arbutus growing among them. At every step advance seems impossible-some huge rock jutting out into the path; and, on sweeping round it, seeming to conduct only to some barrier still more insurmountable; while from all sides rush down the "wild fountains," and, forming for themselves a rugged channel, make their way onward-the first tributary offering to the gentle and fruitful Lee:

"Here, amidst heaps

Of mountain wrecks, on either side thrown high,
The wide-spread traces of its watery might,
The tortuous channel wound."

Nowhere has nature assumed a more appalling aspect, or manifested a more stern resolve to dwell in her own loneliness and grandeur undisturbed by any living thing; for even the birds seem to shun a solitude so awful, and the hum of bee or chirp of grasshopper is never heard within its precincts.— Hall's Ireland, vol. i. p. 117.]

AH! the pleasant time hath vanished, ere our wretched doubtings banished

All the graceful spirit-people, children of the earth and seaWhom in days now dim and olden, when the world was fresh and golden,

Every mortal could behold in haunted rath, and tower, and treeThey have vanished, they are banished-ah! how sad the loss for thee,

Lonely Céim-an-eich!

Still some scenes are yet enchanted by the charms that Nature granted,

Still are peopled, still are haunted, by a graceful spirit band. Peace and beauty have their dwelling where the infant streams are welling,

Where the mournful waves are knelling on Glengariff's coral strand,*

Or where, on Killarney's mountains, Grace and Terror smiling stand,

Like sisters, hand in hand!

Still we have a new romance in fire-ships, through the tamed seas glancing,

And the snorting and the prancing of the mighty engine steed; Still, Astolpho-like, we wander thro' the boundless azure yonder, Realizing what seemed fonder than the magic tales we readTales of wild. Arabian wonder, where the fancy all is freed— Wilder far, indeed!

Now that Earth once more hath woken, and the trance of Time is broken,

And the sweet word-Hope-is spoken, soft and sure, though none know how,

Could we—could we only see all these, the glories of the Real, Blended with the lost Ideal, happy were the old world nowWoman in its fond believing-man with iron arm and browFaith and Work its vow!

Yes! the Past shines clear and pleasant, and there's glory in the
Present;

And the Future, like a crescent, lights the deepening sky of Time;
And that sky will yet grow brighter, if the Worker and the Writer-
If the sceptre and the Mitre join in sacred bonds sublime.
With two glories shining o'er them, up the coming years they'll
climb

Earth's great evening as its prime!

* In the bay of Glengariff, and towards the N.W. parts of Bantry Bay, they dredge up large quantities of coral sand.-Smith's Cork, vol. i. p. 286.

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