No spirit in truth! yet it seemed, as while in dreams I

stood,

That a music more than earthly had swept through the darkening wood.

And it seemed that the Day to the Morrow bequeathed in that solemn strain

The whole world's hope and labor, its love and its ancient pain.

SONG OF MAELDUIN

HERE are veils that lift, there are bars that fall, There are lights that beckon, and winds that call

Good-bye!

There are hurrying feet, and we dare not wait,
For the hour is on us- -the hour of Fate,
The circling hour of the flaming gate-

Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

Fair, fair they shine through the burning zone—
The rainbow gleams of a world unknown;
Good-bye!

And oh ! to follow, to seek, to dare,
When, step by step, in the evening air
Floats down to meet us the cloudy stair!
Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

The cloudy stair of the Brig o' Dread
Is the dizzy path that our feet must tread
Good-bye!

O children of Time-O Nights and Days,
That gather and wonder and stand at gaze,
And wheeling stars in your lonely ways,
Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

The music calls and the gates unclose,
Onward and onward the wild way goes -
Good-bye!

We die in the bliss of a great new birth,
O fading phantoms of pain and mirth,
O fading loves of the old green earth

Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye!

THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOIS

N a quiet watered land, a land of roses,

IN

Stands Saint Kieran's city fair :

And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations

Slumber there.

There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest

Of the clan of Conn,

Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham And the sacred knot thereon.

There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbre sleep —

Battle-banners of the Gael, that in Kieran's plain of

crosses

Now their final hosting keep.

And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh ;

Deep the sod above Clan Creidé and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.

Many and many a son of Conn, the Hundred-Fighter,
In the red earth lies at rest;

Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast.

THE LAST DESIRE

HEN the time comes for me to die,

WHEN To-morrow, or some other day,

If God should bid me make reply, "What wilt thou?" I shall say:

"O God, thy world was great and fair!
Have thanks for all my days have seen;
Yet grant me peace from things that were
And things that might have been.

"I loved, I toiled; throve ill and well;

-Lived certain years, and murmured not. Now give me in that land to dwell

Where all things are forgot.

"I seek not, Lord,. thy purging fire,

The loves re-knit, the crown, the palm;

Only the death of all desire

In deep, eternal calm."

TO MY BICYCLE

N the airy whirling wheel is the springing strength of steel,

IN

And the sinew grows to steel day by day,

Till you feel your pulses leap at the easy swing and

sweep

As the hedges flicker past upon your way.

Then it's out to the kiss of the morning breeze
And the rose of the morning sky,

And the long brown road where the tired spirit's
load

Slips off as the leagues go by!

Black-and-silver, swift and strong, with a pleasant undersong

From the steady rippling murmur of the chain, Half a thing of life and will, you may feel it start and

thrill

With a quick elastic answer to the strain,

As you ride to the kiss of the morning breeze
And the rose of the morning sky,

And the long brown road where the tired spirit's
load

Slips off as the leagues go by.

Miles a hundred you may run from the rising of the

sun,

To the gleam of the first white star.

You may ride through twenty towns, meet the sun upon the downs,

Or the wind on the mountain scaur.