I had mourned thee, hadst thou perished
With the foremost of his name,
When the valiant and the noble

Died around the dauntless Græme!
But I will not wrong thee, husband,
With my unavailing cries,
Whilst thy cold and mangled body
Stricken by the traitor lies;
Whilst he counts the gold and glory
That this hideous night has won,
And his heart is big with triumph
At the murder he has done.
Other eyes than mine shall glisten,
Other hearts be rent in twain,
Ere the heathbells on thy hillock
Wither in the autumn rain.

Then I'll see thee where thou sleepest,
And I'll veil my weary head,
Praying for a place beside thee,
Dearer than my bridal-bed:
And I'll give thee tears, my husband,
If the tears remain to me,

When the widows of the foeman

Cry the coronach for thee!

WILLIAM E. AYTOUN.

I

The Hills of my Country.

"I came," said an Irishman returned from his exile, "to see the hills."

CAME to my country, but not with the hope

That brightened my youth, like the cloud-lighting bow;

For the vigor of soul that was mighty to cope

With time and with fortune hath fled from me now. And Love, that illumined my wanderings of yore,

Hath perished, and left but a weary regret

For the star that can rise on my midnight no more-
But the hills of my country, they welcome me yet!

The hue of their verdure was fresh with me still
When my path was afar by the Tanais' lone track;
From the wide-spreading deserts and ruins that fill

The lands of old story, they welcome me back.
They rose on my dreams through the shades of the West;
They breathed upon sands which the dew never wet:
For the echoes were hushed in the home I loved best-
But I knew that the mountains would welcome me yet!

The dust of my kindred is scattered afar;

They lie in the desert, the wild, and the wave:

For, serving the strangers through wandering and war,
The isle of their memory could grant them no grave.
And I, I return with the memory of years

Whose hope rose so high, though in sorrow it set ;—
They have left on my soul but the trace of their tears;
But our mountains remember their promises yet!

O where are the brave hearts that bounded of old?
And where are the faces my childhood hath seen?
For fair brows are furrowed, and hearts have grown cold;
But our streams are still bright, and our hills are still

green;

Ay, green as they rose to the eyes of my youth,

When, brothers in heart, in their shadows we met; And the hills have no memory of sorrow or ruth; For their summits are sacred to liberty yet!

Like ocean retiring, the morning mists now

Roll back from the mountains that girdle our land;

And sunlight encircles each heath-covered brow

For which Time hath no furrow, and Tyrants no brand. O, thus let it be with the hearts of the isle !

Efface the dark seal that oppression hath set!
Give back the lost glory again to the soil,-
For the hills of my country remember it yet!

FRANCES BROWN.

WHEN

The Present Crisis.

THEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to

west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him

climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and

fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with
God

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod!

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or

wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame ;

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil

side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the

right,

And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness and that light!

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong;

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Obliv

ion's sea;

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth for ever on the scaffold, Wrong for ever on the

throne,

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his

own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate;

But the soul is still oracular: amid the market's din

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave

within,—

"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earthborn Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey :— Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched

crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to

be just;

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands

aside,

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Count me o'er Earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious

stone ;