Too mournful sounds my heart now-he is not by to hear; I want his voice to praise me-for no other praise is dear. I played to him one evening, in the light so soft and dimOh! he was fond of music, but I was fond of him.

No more I seek the cool shades he used to seek with me;
No more I love the green woods-too lonely they would be;
But I watch the waves roll onward, and wail along the shore,
Because my King is gone away, I ne'er shall see him more.
MARY.

THE PEAK OF DARRA.

BY B. SIMMONS.

GAUNT Peak of Darra! lifting to the sky

Thy height scorch'd barren by the howling North-
Still toss the tempest, as it hurtles by

From that jagg'd rampart scornfully forth!
Still let the growing Thunder o'er thee brood,
Gathering from each stray cloud its sulphurous food,
Till in some midnight of oppressive June,
When under Clare affrighted drops the Moon,
Out bursts the horror-brattling wide, and rending
Each lesser mountain with a single blow;

Whilst thou unscarr'd, unstagger'd, hear'st descending
The loosen'd ruin on the Vale below.

Oh, soaring Peak! as now I watch at eve
The rising stars rest on thee one by one,

In their bright journey upwards, Thought would cleave
(Boldly as thou) the mist reposing on

The track-ways of a past and pleasant time,
When up thy rifted height were seen to climb

Two white-robed children, gladsome sparkling things—
As stars that bless thee with their visitings,

A gentle pair-the little Maiden's eyes

Borrowing the blue of their unclouded gleam:

The Boy, his laugh of beautiful surprise,

From that deep Valley's ever-jocund stream.

Kindred in love, though not in race, were they-
From separate homes amid those humble walls
That stud the glen, they came each holiday

To weave together wild-flower coronals,
And, hand in hand, (the bolder-hearted boy
Cheering his partner's steps of timid joy,
Oft pausing to recruit her efforts weak,)
To clamber up and up the desolate Peak,
And hang their chaplets on its topmost stone,
The nearest to the moon; then crouching, weary,
Laugh down the day, upon that granite-throne,
Till evening's breeze blew chillingly and dreary.

Within the shelter of that sterile hill

Nor shadowy bower nor arching grove was seen, Their only song the warbling of the rill,

The bank that border'd it their only green;
And so their childhood, ripening into youth,

Made play-ground, bower, and trysting-place, in sooth,
Of that precipitous crag, where o'er them bent,
As if in love, the lonely firmament;

Until the stars from ocean's azure field

Familiar friends to PAUL and BERTHA grew-
Till the cloud-scattering Eagle, as he wheel'd
Against the sun, their very voices knew.

Gentle but wealthless was their parents' lot,
And youth's gay idlesse may not always last;
The Boy has vanish'd from his native cot,

The Maiden's shadow from the stream has past.
Like one pure rill that sudden shocks divide
In separate channels, they have parted wide,
To seek and fret their way into the main,
But till they reach it never meet again.
Yet long as Memory's trembling hand unrolls
To them the records of Life's early day,
Gray cliff of Darra! thou upon their souls
Hast left a shade that shall not pass away.

*

*

The day is burning over India's land!
Lo, tall white fane and colonnaded hall,
And glorious dome, like snowy frostwork, stand
Amid the noontide of superb Bengal !

No breezy balm as yet is floating there,

To cool the fervid suffocating air,

The palms that lift their light green tufts so high
Seem solid emerald carved upon the sky,

No sound is heard that Land's luxuriance through;
The mighty River, glowing in the trance
Fringed with bright palaces sleeps broadly blue,
Untouched by oar throughout its vast expanse!

At such an hour, within a stately room,
Through whose silk screens and open lattices
Struggled the freshness of the mat's perfume,
Lay Beauty sinking under slow disease.
Dusk-featured slaves like spectres watch'd the doors,
And mournful women o'er the marble floors
Gliding, with folded arms, in silence gazed
Where, on a couch of downiest pillows raised,
The Lady of that proud pavilion lay;

While on her broad and yet unwrinkled brow,
And purest cheek consuming fast away,
Keen Fever redden'd and Delirium now.

'Twas then, when fail'd all wealth and life afford, A Hindoo Girl stood forth that hopeless hour, (Like her who, to the Syrian Leper-lord,

Proclaim'd the Prophet's sanatory power ;) And told how, in the neighbouring city dweltIn the same home where she a child had kneltA man from Land, 'twas thought, beyond the seas, In magic versed and healing mysteries,

A traveller he, now waiting to depart

With the first sail that swell'd for Europe's shore, Would he were summon'd that his wondrous art Her Lady's dread disorder might explore!

No voice responsive a reproval show'dE'en as she spoke a messenger had flown (The sorrowing slaves of that serene abode

Their early widow'd mistress served, alone;) The summon'd stranger came, a grave-eyed man, Travel or Time had touch'd his temples wan, Deepening his gracious features; but the stamp Of thought shone through them like a lighted lamp.

Not much enquiry of th' attendant throng,
To the sick chamber guiding him, he made,
But entering there, with deep emotion, long
That Lady's aspect silently survey'd.

On the hot azure of her aching eyes

His shadow fell; but she regarded not,-
He touch'd the pillows where her fair head lies,
Nor stirr'd its drooping from that downy spot,-
He pressed her passive hand, but from his own
Released, it dropp'd down heavily as stone.
The breathing only of her parted lips
Showed life not wholly in its last eclipse.
Bending at length unto her vacant ear,

As if some potent spell-word he would speak,
"Dear one!" he said, in tend'rest accents clear-
"Rememberest thou cold Darra's distant Peak?"

Some change like that which shakes an exile's sleeping
When mournful music his lost home recalls-
Or thrills the famish'd Arab when the leaping
He hears afar of rocky waterfalls—

Was seen to lighten through that Lady's frame,
And slowly, sob by sob, volition came,
Along her brow twice pass'd her lifted hand,
As if to free some overtighten'd band;
Then all at once, as from a sultry heaven
Sweeps in an instant the collected rain,
The loosen'd waters of the fountain riven,

Rush'd in wild tears from her long-clouded brain.

Mysterious Memory !—by what silver Key,

Through years of silence tuneless and unshaken, Can thy sweet touch, forgotten melody

In the dim Spirit once again awaken?

Long fell the freshness of those tears, and fast,
Melting to slumber on her lids at last.

So waned the night, and with the morning came
Healing and hope to her recruited frame,

Day after day health's roses round her head

More brightly bloom'd beneath the STRANGER'S care,

Who, though for Europe many a sail was spread,
Was still a dweller in that palace fair.

*

In the stern shade of Darra's northern peak

A summer-bower has risen like a dream,
From whose white porch, when Evening's rosy cheek
Rests on yon crag above the dancing stream,
Two pensive friends, at times, are seen to glide
Winding together up the mountain side,

With looks less radiant and with steps more slow
Than when they trode it long, long years ago:
But steadfast light of calmer joy is round them,

And PAUL and BERTHA therefore come to bless,
In the old haunts where first Affection bound them,
Their lot of later holier happiness.

SOGGARTH AROON.

BY JOHN BANIM.

(AUTHOR OF "TALES OF THE O'HARA FAMILY," &c.)

[I read a very interesting little volume of "Irish Ballad Poetry," published by that poor Duffy of the Nation, who died so prematurely the other day. There are some most pathetic, and many most spirited, pieces, and all, with scarcely an exception, so entirely national. Do get the book and read it. I am most struck with Soggarth Aroon, after the two first stanzas; and a long, racy, authentic, sounding dirge for the Tyrconnel Princes. But you had better begin with The Irish Emigrant, and The Girl of Loch Dan, which immediately follows, which will break you in more gently to the wilder and more impassioned parts. It is published in 1845, and as a part of "Duffy's Library of Ireland." You see what a helpless victim I still am to these enchanters of the lyre. I did not mean to say but a word of this book, and here I am furnishing you with extracts. But God bless all poets! and you will not grudge them a share even of your Sunday benedictions.-Lord Jeffrey's Letter to Mrs. Empson, in Lord Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey.]

Am I a slave they say,
Soggarth Aroon?*
Since you did show the way,

Soggarth Aroon,

Their slave no more to be,

While they would work with me

Ould Ireland's slavery,

Soggarth Aroon?

* Soggarth Aroon, means Priest dear.