Please write to Ireland, mister,

Jist a little, little bit, And ask if Mis' Maloney

Is alive, and if she's writ. Say, since the dreadful famine

That my heart has been like lead, Say "write to your son Patrick, If it's thrue that you are dead."

HOW NICE!

How nice it is when men must rave
That in his home each has a slave
(A safety valve, or so to speak),

On whom he can his vengeance wreak.
How nice it is!

A man can't always feel the same;
To think he must is quite a shame.
Then what's to do, I'd like to know,
But go right to his wife and blow!
How nice it is!

It wouldn't do to use men so;

A man might up and fight, you know.
The plan is perfect, seems to me,
In this I'm sure you'll all agree.
How nice it is!

Yes, beautiful is nature's plan,
That woman must submit to man;
The unit he, the cipher she,

Makes ten, not one, of him, you see.
How nice it is!

Of course we didn't court 'em so;
It wouldn't do to let 'em know
That all we men want of a wife
Is thus to smooth the path of life.
How nice it is!

THE PATHOS OF THE PAST.

We stand and look the ages in the face,

The gaunt, worn ages that will ever be.
'Mid proud, majestic lines we yet can trace
The pathos of the past; as plainly see
The sacrificial waste of blood and race

For us. They for us. For unborn races we.
While we have lights set all along the way,

Their past in thick tradition folds was hid, Though in each soul there gleamed one forceful ray, They knew not why it gleamed, nor why it chid Their evil deeds. But we know and see to-day

That when He said, they knew not what they did, Forgiven were the people of the past,

While time was set to bring the Good at last.

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT was born at

WILFRID

Crabbet Park, Crawley, Sussex, in the year 1840. Educated at Stoneyhurst and St. Mary's College, Oscot, he entered the diplomatic service, and acted as attaché to British embassies at various European courts from 1858 to 1869, in which latter year he married Lady Anne Isabella Noel, daughter of the Earl of Lovelace and grand-daughter of Lord Byron. Leaving the diplomatic service, Mr. Blunt now devoted himself to travel in Spain, Algiers, Egypt, the Holy Land, Mesopotamia, and the Syrian Desert. A result of these travels was Lady Anne Blunt's "Bedouins of the Euphrates." Mr. Blunt then visited Arabia, and published “The Future of Islam," after which he returned to Egypt and championed the cause Arabi Pasha. It was at this time that his name came prominently before the public, and in this connection that he published "The Wind and the Whirlwind." During the Egyptian war he was much abused for want of patriotism, and for love of disorder and vanity. Lord Houghton used to say, "The fellow knows he has a handsome head, and wants it to be seen on Temple Bar." His reputation as the writer of lovesonnets scarcely helped him in this connection. People would not believe that a love poet could be a serious politician. After the war, when Arabi was in prison, and apparently on the eve of execution, Mr. Blunt sent counsel from England to defend him, taking upon himself the whole expense of the defence. Mr. Blunt's early education in a strict Catholic school, and the subsequent reaction, are described in one of his prose works, "Proteus and Amadeus," (1878). His mind regained its faith and reverence while living amongst the Arab tribes of the East, and a feeling of gratitude to them was mixed with his natural sympathy for oppressed nationalities.

This same sympathy for a national cause sent him to Ireland, where he took part in a prohibited meeting at Woodford, and did not shrink from the consequences for his defiance of what he believed to be unjust laws. He claims the honor of having been the first Englishman put in prison for the sake of Ireland. He spent two months in Galway and Kilmainham gaols, where most of the "In Vinculis" sonnets were written. Galway was made tolerable by the friendliness of the warders and of the visiting justices, who were won by his personal charm and his cheerful acquiescence in the prison rules. He daily went through his task of picking oakum, and was far from shrinking from the prison dress. Mr. Blunt's contributions to poetic literature are

"Sonnets and Songs," (1875); "The Love-Sonnets of Proteus," (1881); "The Wind and the Whirlwind," (1883); "In Vinculis," (1889); "The New Pilgrimage," (1889.) The "Love-Sonnets of Proteus" are dedicated to Lord Lytton, who was the first to tell Mr. Blunt, when they were in the diplomatic service together, that he was a poet. An article by Lord Lytton in the Nineteenth Century, November, 1881, on "A New Love Poet," drew a good deal of attention to Mr. Blunt's work. With reference to the ballad of "Sancho Sanches" in the "New Pilgrimage," it will be interesting to record that a visitor, many years ago, on going to a bullfight at Madrid, was struck by the extraordinary good looks of the matadore awaiting the rush of the bull in the arena, and, on inquiry, was told that he was an amateur bull-fighter, a young man from the English Embassy, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt..

Mr. Blunt has twice contested metropolitan constituencies for Parliament, but without success. In 1885 he stood for North Camberwell as a Conservative Home Ruler, and in 1888, while confined in Kilmainham gaol, he contested Deptford as a Radical candidate.

Mr. Blunt makes it his boast that his work belongs rather to the literature of energy that of form. R. L. G.

IN THE NIGHT.

WHERE art thou, thou lost face,

Which, yet a little while, wert making mirth
At these new years which seemed too sad to be?
Where art thou fled, which, for a minute's space,
Shut out the world, and wert my world to me?
And now a corner of this little Earth,
A broken shadow by the day forgot,
Is wide enough to be thy hiding-place;
And thou art shrunk away, and needest not
The darkness of this night to cover thee.
Where art thou hidden? In the boundless air
My hands go forth to thee, and search and feel
As through the universe. I hold the night
Caught in my arms; and yet thou art not there.
Where art thou? What if I should strike a light
So suddenly that thou could'st never steal
Back to thy shadows? What if I should find
Thee stading close to me, with all thy hair
Trailing about me, and with eyes grown blind
With looking at me vainly through the night?

There are three rings upon thy hand to-night,
One with a sapphire stone; and one there is
Coiled like a snake; and one on which my name
Is written with strange gems. By this dim light
I cannot read if it be writ the same.

See, I have worn no other ring but this!
-Why dost thou look at me with eyes estranged?
Is it not thine?-Ah, God! thou readest right!
And it is changed, and thou and I are changed,
And I have written there another name.

Oh happiness, how has it slipped away!
We who once lived and held it in our hand!
What is the rest that these new years can bring?
Did we not love it in our loves to-day,
And pleasure, which was so divine a thing,
The sweetest and most strange to understand?
And that is why it left regret behind,

As though a wild bird suddenly should stay
A moment at our side, and we should find,
When we look up, that it had taken wing.

And thou, hast thou forgotten how to love?
Hast thou no kissing in thy lips?- thy tongue,
Has it no secret whisper for my ear?

I have been watching thee to see thee move
A little closer to my side, in fear

Of the cold night.—Oh there is room among
The pillows for thy head, if thou would'st sleep:
And thou art cold, and I would wrap my love
To my breast, and so my vigil keep
And be alone with darkness and with her.

Thou standest with thy hand upon my heart,
As once thou used to stand, to feel it beat.
Doth it beat calmer now than in those days?
Thy foolish finger-tips will leave a smart,
If they so press upon my side. Thy gaze
Is burning me. Oh speak a word and cheat
This darkness into pain, if pain must be,
And wake me back to sorrow with a start;
For I am weary of the night and thee,
And thy strange silence and thy stranger face.

Can'st thou not speak? Thy tale was but begun.
How can I answer thee a tale untold?
Whisper it quick before the morning break,
How loud thou weepest! Listen, there is one
Dreaming beside me who must not awake.
Close in my ear!-Ah, child, thy lips are cold,
Because thou art forsaken. -Misery!

Is there not room enough beneath the sun
For her, and thee, and me?

AT A FUNERAL.

I LOVED her too, this woman who is dead.
Look in my face. I have a right to go
And see the place where you have made her bed
Among the snow.

I loved her too, whom you are burying. I have a right to stand beside her bier, And too, my handful of the dust I fling, That she may hear.

I loved her; and it was not for the eyes Which you have shut, nor for her yellow hair, Nor for the face which in your bosom lies,— Let it lie there,—

Nor for the wild-bird's music of her voice,
Which we shall hear in dreams till we too sleep;
Nor for the rest, which made the world rejoice,
The angels weep.

It was not for the payment of sweet love,
Though love is often straightened for a kiss;
Nor for the hope of other joys above,
But only this,

That she had laid her hand upon my heart
Once, in the summer time when we were young
And that her finger-tips had left a smart,

And that my tongue

Had spoken words which might not be unspoken,
Lest they should make a by-word of love's truth,
And I had sworn that love should be the token
Of my youth.

And so I gave her all, and long ago

The treasure of my youth was put in pawn;
And she was a little richer that I know
When that was gone.

But I have lived a beggar since that day,
And hide my face if may be from men's eyes;
For often I have seen them shrink away,
As in surprise,

That such a loathsome cripple should be found
To walk abroad in daylight with the rest,
With scarce a rag to cover up the wound
Upon his breast.

Yet no man stopped to ask how this might be,
Or I had scared them, and let loose my tongue,—
How I had bought myself this misery

When I was young.

Yet I have loved her. This must be my pay:
The pension I have earned me with these tears;
The right to kneel beside her grave to-day,
Despite these years,

With all her kisses burning on my cheek,
As when I left her and our love was dead,
And our lips trembled, though they did not speak,
The night I fled;

LAUGHTER AND DEATH.

THERE is no laughter in the natural world
Of beast, or fish or bird, though no sad doubt
Of their futurity to them unfurled

Has dared to check the mirth-compelling shout.
The lion roars his solemn thunder out

To the sleeping woods. The eagle screams her cry.
Even the lark must strain a serious throat
To hurl his blest defiance at the sky.

Fear, anger, jealousy have found a voice.

Love's pain or rapture the brute bosoms swell. Nature has symbols for her nobler joys,

Her nobler sorrows. Who had dared foretell That only man, by some sad mockery, Should learn to laugh who learns that he must die.

THERE ARE WRONGS DONE IN THE FAIR FACE OF HEAVEN.

THERE are wrongs done in the fair face of Heaven Which cry aloud for vengeance, and shall cry; Loves beautiful in strength whose wit has striven Vainly with loss and man's inconstancy;

Dead children's faces watched by souls that die; Pure streams defiled; fair forests idly riven; A nation, suppliant in its agony, Calling on justice, and no help is given.

All these are pitiful. Yet, after tears,

Come rest and sleep and calm forgetfulness, And God's good providence consoles the years. Only the coward heart which did not guess, The dreamer of brave deeds that might have been, Shall cureless ache with wounds forever green.

FAREWELL, DARK GAOL.

FAREWELL, dark gaol. You hold some better hearts
Than in this savage world I thought to find.

I do not love you nor the fraudulent arts
By which men tutor men to ways unkind.
Your law is not my law, and yet my mind
Remains your debtor. It has learned to see

How dark a thing the earth would be and blind But for the light of human charity.

I am your debtor thus and for the pang

Which touched and chastened, and the nights of thought

Which were my years of learning. See, I hang
Your image here, a glory all unsought,
About my neck. Thus saints in symbol hold
Their tools of death and darings manifold.

ON THE SHORTNESS OF TIME.

IF I could live without the thought of death,
Forgetful of time's waste, thy soul's decay,

I would not ask for other joy than breath;
With light and sound of birds and the sun's ray,
I could sit on, untroubled day by day,
Watching the grass grow and the wild flowers

range

From blue to yellow and from red to gray,

In natural sequence as the season's change;

I could afford to wait but for the hurt
Of this dull tick of time which chides my ear.
But now I dare not sit with loins ungirt

And staff uplifted, for death stands too near.
I must be up and doing, ay, each minute;
The grave gives time for rest when we are in it.

TO JULIET, EXHORTING HER TO PATIENCE.

WHY do we fret at the inconstancy

Of our frail hearts, which cannot always love?
Time rushes onward, and we mortals move
Like waifs upon a river, neither free
To halt nor hurry. Sweet, if destiny
Throws us together for an hour, a day,
In the back-water of this quiet bay,
Let us rejoice. Before us lies the sea,
Where we must all be lost in spite of love.
We dare not stop to question. Happiness
Lies in our hand unsought, a treasure trove.
Time has short patience of man's vain distress;
And fate grows angry at too long delay;
And floods rise fast, and we are swept away.

TO ONE WHO WOULD MAKE A CONFESSION.

OH! leave the Past to bury its own dead.
The Past is naught to us, the Present all.
What need of last year's leaves to strew Love's
bed?

What need of ghosts to grace a festival?

I would not, if I could, those days recall,
Those days not ours. For us the feast is spread,
The lamps are lit, and music plays withal.
Then let us love and leave the rest unsaid.
This island is our home. Around it roar
Great gulfs and oceans, channels, straits and seas.
What matter in what wreck we reached the shore,
So we both reached it? We can mock at these.
Oh! leave the Past, if Past indeed there be.

I would not know it. I would know but thee.