ing to die,

That old Gothic Pile,

With its nave and its aisle,

Its transepts, its chapels, and many

niched choir

Its traceried lights,

Its pinnacled heights,

life-blood congeal.

Like tempest-stirred waves,

They bound over graves,

See the pile at their knock all her portals unfold;

And now the fierce rout,

Within and without,

central spire,

The Porches, the doors,

The buttresses, scores

and bold.

The strong walls are battered, The images shattered,

Chapelle ;

The canopies rich,

The finely groined niche,

cery crushed,

Shaft, buttress, and crocket, Are torn from the socket,

great bell.

In that wall on the west,

Scarce the sight dares to rest

On yon fair gorgeous wheel, like a

bright, thoughtful eye;

For where'er the ray hits,

As from diamond it flits,

nacles pushed.

The font is dashed down,

The screen-work o'erthrown,

And shrines of old sanctity rudely

disgraced!

Not e'en the great altar · May cause them to falter

sanctified ground.

O near let us draw,

With love and with awe

reply.

See, see, how the fire

Entwines the tall spire,

tent soul

The House of Our Lord,

Whose name be adored,

prey;

With a quick crackling joy It delights to destroy,

And shed a deathless spell along Each grove's sweet gloom in Psyche's song!

In vain Barnane, the thunder-riven, Far northward cleft the summer heaven,

Or on the horizon stretched away,
A streak of light, slept Youghal bay.
We gazed but once, and gazing turned,
Filled with the love that round us
burned,

And spoke as speechless glances speak
The thoughts that kindle lip and cheek;
And that bright lady fair, with face
All pale, and darkly-glancing grace,
Cast to the gladdened earth her eyes,
And, faltering, took the purple seat
Boon Nature to her child supplies,

Whilst I sat duteous at her feet.

III.

We never met before, and knew

We never more should meet again'; For seaward at that moment blew

The breeze should bear her o'er the main,

O'er half hoarse Ocean's sounding foam,

To light with love another's home, And be to me, through years afar, Lone memory's deeply mirrored star. And yet we talked not sadly there,

But wished our barks of life had been

Together wafted earlier, ere

Dark Fate had heaved its gulf be

tween.

And still I asked, in trembling tone, Of him who claimed her as his own, And of those gorgeous Western skies, Whose glory lingered in her eyes. And when she murmured 'twas her

wont

In that far land, at fall of day, Lulled by cool breeze and tinkling font, To sleep the sultry eve away, I vowed, if minstrel spirit might

Spring from its earthly fetters free, That ever at that hour my sprite

Should in her bower attendant be, And whisper mid the odours shed By gathered roses round her head, Or mix my memory with the wail Of song from neighbouring nightingale,

Or babbling in the waters' fall,

To her hushed ear my name recall. And that sweet listener's sole reply

Was blushing cheek, and bended eye,
And heath-flower plucked all hastily,
Which well, she said, might emblem be
Of fickle Bard's inconstancy,
A truant tribe and light of faith,

Whose very life's essential bloom
Was fed by woman's fragrant breath,
It mattered not of whom ;
And much she feared the freshening
gale

Would hardly rustle in the sail
Which bears her hence when I, who

now

Low at her feet devoted bow,
Would, in the self-same spot so dear,
Pour the same tale to other ear.

IV.

Fast died the day-on Galty Peak Fair Evening leant her rosy cheek, And up that sky of bluest June Wheeled from the Deep the solemn

moon,

When gay companions thronging

round

Proclaimed the fugitives were found, And festive mirth rushed in between, And all was as it ne'er had been.

-We met no more-that revel past, Our first sweet meeting was the last.

V.

And years have gone-and Time has

stolen

Hope from the heart, light from the eye

And feelings then, all passion-swollen,
Now shrunk to arid darkness lie.
And that long-lost regretted one
Is-Angel of the Rainbow-gone,
And treads her path of woman's pain
In isles beyond the Western main.
How little deems the stranger who,
Amid the Carib's sparkling sea,
That pale and graceful One may view,
Shrined in her home tranquillity,
That she who there so sheltered dwells
In warm Bermuda's musky dells,
Once braved the breezes of the North,
And, from their wild hills looking forth,
Had loitered through the summer day
With mountain-bard as wild as they
In utmost Thulé far away.

VI.

And still that dreaming Bard will think
That, haply, on the silver brink
Of that clear sea, at vesper hour.