When you speak it awakens my pain, And my eyelids by sleep are forsaken,

And I seek for my slumber in vain.

But were I on the fields of the ocean

I should sport on its infinite room,

I should plow through the billows' commotion Though my friends should look dark at my doom. For the flower of all maidens of magic

Is beside me where'er I may be,

And my heart like a coal is extinguished,
Not a woman takes pity on me.

How well for the birds in all weather,
They rise up on high in the air,
And then sleep upon one bough together
Without sorrow or trouble or care;

But so it is not in this world

For myself and my thousand-times fair, For, away, far apart from each other, Each day rises barren and bare.

Say, what dost thou think of the heavens
When the heat overmasters the day,
Or what when the steam of the tide
Rises up in the face of the bay?
Even so is the man who has given
An inordinate love-gift away,
Like a tree on a mountain all riven
Without blossom or leaflet or spray.

THE RED MAN'S WIFE

Translated by Douglas Hyde in "Love Songs of Connacht"

'T

IS what they say,

Thy little heel fits in a shoe, 'Tis what they say,

Thy little mouth kisses well, too. 'Tis what they say,

Thousand loves that you leave me to rue; That the tailor went the way

That the wife of the Red man knew.

Nine months did I spend

In a prison closed tightly and bound;
Bolts on my smalls1

And a thousand locks frowning around;
But o'er the tide

I would leap with the leap of a swan,
Could I once set my side

By the bride of the red-haired man.

I thought, O my life,

That one house between us love would be ; And I thought I would find

You once coaxing my child on your knee;

But now the curse of the High One

On him let it be,

And on all of the band of the liars

Who put silence between you and me.

1 There are three "smalls," the wrists, elbows, and ankles. In Irish romantic literature we often meet mention of men being bound "with the binding of the three smalls."

There grows a tree in the garden

With blossoms that tremble and shake,
I lay my hand on its bark

And I feel that my heart must break.
On one wish alone

My soul through the long months ran,
One little kiss

From the wife of the Red-haired man.

But the day of doom shall come,

And hills and harbors be rent;
A mist shall fall on the sun

From the dark clouds heavily sent;
The sea shall be dry,

And earth under mourning and ban;
Then loud shall he cry

For the wife of the Red-haired man.

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS FOREVER

I came across this religious poem in Irish among the manuscripts of William Smith O'Brien, the Irish Leader, at Cahermoyle. It was attributed to a Father O'Meehan.-Douglas Hyde in "Religious Songs of Connacht."

ROM the foes of my land, from the foes of my faith,

FR

From the foes who would us dissever,

O Lord, preserve me in life, in death,

With the Sign of the Cross forever.

By death on the Cross was the race restored,
For vain was our endeavor;

Henceforward blessed, O blessed Lord,
Be the Sign of the Cross forever.

Rent were the rocks, the sun did fade
The darkening world did quiver,
When on the tree our Saviour made
The Sign of the Cross forever.

Therefore I mourn for him whose heart
Shall neither shrink nor shiver,
Whose tears of sorrow refuse to start
At the Sign of the Cross forever.

Swiftly we pass to the unknown land,

Down like an ebbing river,

But the devils themselves cannot withstand
The Sign of the Cross forever.

When the hour shall come that shall make us dust,

When the soul and the body sever,

Fearful the fear if we may not trust
In the Sign of the Cross forever.

THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD

HO fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?

WHO

Who blushes at the name?

When the cowards mock the patriot's fate,

Who hangs his head for shame? He's all a knave or half a slave

Who slights his country thus:
But a true man, like you, man,
Will fill your glass with us.

We drink the memory of the brave,
The faithful and the few-
Some lie far off beyond the wave,
Some sleep in Ireland, too;
All, all are gone-but still lives on
The fame of those who died;
And true men, like you, men,
Remember them with pride.

Some on the shores of distant lands
Their weary hearts have laid,
And by the stranger's heedless hands
Their lonely graves were made;
But though their clay be far away
Beyond the Atlantic foam,
In true men, like you, men,

Their spirit's still at home.