THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY. 165

To thy full thoughts, gay or sad,
Sunny-hued or sober clad,
Something of my own I add ;

Well assured that thou wilt take
Even the offering which I make
Kindly for the giver's sake.

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY

THE proudest now is but my peer,

The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.

To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide

I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there's a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust

Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon's vilest dust,-
While there's a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man's a man to-day!

TRUST.

THE same old baffling questions! O, my friend
I cannot answer them. In vain I send
My soul into the dark, where never burn

The lamps of science, nor the natural light Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern The awful secrets of the eyes which turn

Evermore on us through the day and night With silent challenge and a dumb demand, Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown, Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone, Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!

I have no answer for myself or thee,

Save that I learned beside my mother's knee; “All is of God that is, and is to be

And God is good." Let this suffice us still,
Resting in child-like trust upon his will,

Who moves to his great ends unthwarted by the ill

KATHLEEN.

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KATHLEEN.18

O NORAH, lay your basket down,
And rest your weary hand,
And come and hear me sing a song
Of our old Ireland.

There was a lord of Galaway,
A might lord was he;
And he did wed a second wife,

A maid of low degree.

But he was old, and she was young,

And so, in evil spite,

She baked the black bread for his kin,

And fed her own with white.

She whipped the maids and starved the kern, And drove away the poor;

"Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,

"I rue my bargain sore!"

This lord he had a daughter fair,

Beloved of old and young,

And nightly round the shealing fires
Of her the gleeman sung.

"As sweet and good is young Kathleen

As Eve before her fall;"

So sang the harper at the fair,

So harped he in the hall.

"O, come to me, my daughter dear! Come sit upon my knee,

For looking in your face, Kathleen,

Your mother's own I see!"

He smoothed and smoothed her hair away,
He kissed her forehead fair;
"It is my darling Mary's brow,
It is my darling's hair!"

O, then spake up the angry dame,
“Get up, get up," quoth she,
"I'll sell ye over Ireland,

"I'll sell ye o'er the sea!"

She clipped her glossy hair away,
That none her rank might know,
She took away her gown of silk,
And gave her one of tow,

And sent her down to Limerick town,
And to a seaman sold

This daughter of an Irish lord

For ten good pounds in gold.

The lord he smote upon his breast,
And tore his beard so gray;
But he was old, and she was young,
And so she had her way.

Sure that same night the Banshee howled
To fright the evil dame,
And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen,
With funeral torches came.

She watched them glancing through the trees,
And glimmering down the hill;
They crept before the dead-vault door,
And there they all stood still!

"Get up, old man! the wake-lights shine!"
"Ye murthering witch," quoth he,
"So I'm rid of your tongue, I little care
If they shine for you or me."

KATHLEEN.

"O, whoso brings my daughter back,
My gold and land shall have!
O, then spake up his handsome page,
"No gold nor land I crave!

"But give to me your daughter dear,
Give sweet Kathleen to me,
Be she on sea or be she on land,
I'll bring her back to thee.”

My daughter is a lady born,
And you of low degree,

But she shall be your bride the day
You bring her back to me."

He sailed East, he sailed West,
And far and long sailed he,
Until he came to Boston town,
Across the great salt sea.

"O, have ye seen the young Kathleen,
The flower of Ireland?

Ye'll know her by her eyes so blue,
And by her snow-white hand!”

Out spake an ancient man, "I know
The maiden whom ye mean;
I bought her of a Limerick man,
And she is called Kathleen.

"No skill hath she in household work,
Her hands are soft and white,
Yet well by loving looks and ways
She doth her cost requite."

So up they walked through Boston town,
And met a maiden fair,

A little basket on her arm
So snowy-white and bare.

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