Thus in the Golden and the Emerald stars:

"O Victory! Why gleams thy haughty brow So godlike, 'neath thy earthly diadem ?

Why, on the wings of eagles that grow young,
Claim'st thou thy high pavilion? Why proud kings
Adore thee, and ambition ever mounts

Thy steed, behind thee on the rubi'd track
Of glory's desolation? Thou dost sow
The conquerors; but on thy soil their fruit
Is not perennial; for their empires long
Are sepulcher'd, or thralldom on their necks
Insults the memory of thy gory feasts,

And the noon sweats they bore to sup with thee.
But thou art well descended, laurell'd Maid!
Discern thee who thou art; go teach the brave
Which world to conquer: only a little while
Earth's glory spurns the dust, and day is done.

"Aghast, she swoons, pierc'd in the mother's breast,

The nurse of saints and heroes: Oh! her wide,

Far wanderings! the world's cold charity

To house, and many a slanderous tongue to mock,
Her nakedness! Alas! who now shall care

Thy vineyard in the fruitage, Godly son

Of Calpruin! or forefend the winter blights?"
'Twas thus the golden and the emerald spheres,
As with one voice, sidereal music hymn'd;
Which thus, alone, the golden choir prolongs:

"Vain glory pass'd, to higher glory call'd;
He visit❜th them. How dark the sudden change
Ere light! O change, how seeming merciless!
God's retribution on Gadelas' sons,

The judgment of the fratricidal race,

From distant ages of remorseless guilt

So long delay'd, hath fall'n. Denounc'd they stand;

Who otherwise, in filial faith so meek,

And household worship to the Temple's Lord,

Their Father, early known and late rever'd,

Had fed the nations and God's table serv'd,

To fill the vacant thrones of Satan's fall
With human Seraphs; who, despite the flesh,
Replac'd essential spirits there that sate,

And their lost crowns put on. O Heaven! be Thou
Her staff and guide! and give to Eire's strife
The vict'ry of the spirit; whose tear floods
Outdeluge human woe!" Thus mourn'd the just:
But Calpruin's godly son, before the throne,

Mindful of Eire's trials, long and harsh,
On knees of adoration, with the Angel
Of the Great Council, silently commun'd
On grace and fortitude; and for the fold
And vineyard of his toil, a father's tears,
The dews of mercy, suppliant fill'd his eyes.
For now the landless Gael, dispersion guides;
And Scythian fates, that led great Miled's sons
To Inisfail, spir'ts, which good or ill,
Follow a noble race, lament aloud

By the round tower at eve, by Druid cirque,
By Rath and Brugh, and hero's lofty Cairn
And holy Shee, the venerable years;
Long memories, thick-cluster'd with the days
Of past nobility and fancy's lore,

Shaded for ever: nature mourns the jar,
Her first created harmonies impair'd.

Then guardian rivers' (1) foaming mouths gan roar:
Tonn Clinda on the Southern coast; to North,
Tonn Tuaithe, and East, Tonn Rury's waves,
Their direful larum bellow from the deep,
And war shouts, like encountering armies raise;
And the high mountains, on their darken'd tops,

Moan in dull thunder, that the bardic Gael

They nurs'd from memory's birth, are passing now;
And in the funeral knell, they fear their own
And time's decrepitude. There stood an isle (2)

Most sacred held, far in the Western foam

*

Of Lir's dominion, long the mystic seat

Of adoration, where this day, is found
The cyclopean ruins and the dust,

Left by the wanderers of the early world:
A place of fate and tombs. Thither repair'd
The Firbolg in defeat, and rais'd high piles,
Dun Angus and Ochaill, when later gods
Had spurn'd his altars; where in after years,
Bless'd Enda brought the cincture and the psalm,
And built where once the eremite had found
A burial site, and still the bones repose
Mid billowy strife and misty flaws, that waft
The sea fowl and the cloud. There on a cliff,
Imperious o'er the main, whose arrogance
Enrag'd the winds and the outlandish waves;
Uttermost bourn of the pursu'd, whose face
Bespake no sympathy with want that made
The Sea God.

His back her icy bed; yea, there lay one,

Who search'd in vain the Druid oracles,

Which fate had clos'd, and deep ancestral tombs,
To suage her agony. Her bodice sweet

Of water lily braids, and kirtle green

Of scented fern, grown on Loch Lena's shore,
Down mitr'd to the knee; her shoon of rush,
And round her neck, the wild ash berries beaded,
Upon her breast sun brown'd, once thought so fair,
Change like their seasons with her head so flat
Upon the pulseless earth; where with the dust,
Mingle her spreaded locks, like throdden gold
Under the footfalls of wayfaring feet,

When night obscures the treasure. Perish'd there,
Had the first form of nature's plastic grace;
Banba, the beauteous evergreen, whom Winter,

With Summer vied to please, and Spring's forethought
Assur'd of Summer's mirth and Autumn's store;
Gathered by Lir's reluctant waves to depths,

Oblivious and unseen, on earth replac'd

By none so fair. But there was one on foot,
For refuge on that isle of gods entomb'd

And cloisters wreck'd, who found her bed and look'd