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And every rock and every stone Bare witness that he was my own.

"O'Connor's child! I was the bud Of Erin's royal tree of glory;

But woe to them that wrapp'd in blood
The tissue of my story!

Still as I clasp my burning brain
A death-scene rushes on my sight;
It rises o'er and o'er again,

The bloody feud --the fatal night,
When, chafing Connocht Moran's scorn,
They called my hero basely born;
And bade him choose a meaner bride
Than from O'Connor's house of pride.
Their tribe, they said, their high degree,
Was sung in Tara's psaltery;1
Witness their Eath's victorious brand,
And Cathal of the bloody hand;
Glory (they said) and power and honour
Were in the mansion of O'Connor:
But he, my loved one, bore in field
A humbler crest, a meaner shield.
"Ah, brothers! what did it avail
That fiercely and triumphantly
Ye fought the English of the Pale,
And stemm'd De Bourgo's chivalry?
And what was it to love and me
That barons by your standard rode,
Or beal-fires for your jubilee
Upon a hundred mountains glow'd?
What though the lords of tower and dome
From Shannon to the North Sea foam,--
Thought ye your iron hands of pride
Could break the knot that love had tied?
No: let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom;
But ties around this heart were spun
That could not, would not be undone!

"At bleating of the wild watch-fold
Thus sang my love:-Oh! come with me:
Our bark is on the lake; behold

Our steeds are fasten'd to the tree.
Come far from Castle-Connor's clans:
Come with thy belted forestere,
And I, beside the lake of swans,
Shall hunt for thee the fallow-deer;

And build thy hut, and bring thee home
The wild-fowl and the honey-comb;
And berries from the wood provide,
And play my clarshech3 by thy side.
Then come, my love.' How could I stay?
Our nimble stag-hounds track'd the way,
And I pursued, by moonless skies,
The light of Connocht Moran's eyes.

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"And fast and far, before the star

Of day-spring, rush'd we through the glade,
And saw at dawn the lofty bawn
Of Castle-Connor fade.

Sweet was to us the hermitage

Of this unplough'd, untrodden shore,
Like birds all joyous from the cage,
For man's neglect we loved it more.
And well he knew, my huntsman dear,
To search the game with hawk and spear;
While I, his evening food to dress,
Would sing to him in happiness.
But oh! that midnight of despair,
When I was doom'd to rend my hair:
The night, to me, of shrieking sorrow!
The night, to him, that had no morrow!
"When all was hush'd, at eventide

I heard the baying of their beagle:
Be hush'd! my Connocht Moran cried,
'Tis but the screaming of the eagle.
Alas! 'twas not the eyrie's sound;
Their bloody bands had track'd us out;
Up-list'ning starts our couchant hound-
And hark! again that nearer shout
Brings faster on the murderers.
Spare-spare him-Brazil-Desmond fierce!
In vain-no voice the adder charms;
Their weapons cross'd my sheltering arms:
Another's sword has laid him low-
Another's and another's;

And every hand that dealt the blow-
Ah me! it was a brother's!

Yes, when his moanings died away,
Their iron hands had dug the clay,
And o'er his burial turf they trod,
And I beheld--Oh God! oh God!
His life-blood oozing from the sod!

"Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred,
Alas! my warrior's spirit brave
Nor mass nor ulla-lulla heard,
Lamenting, soothe his grave.
Dragg'd to their hated mansion back,
How long in thraldom's grasp I lay
I knew not, for my soul was black,
And knew no change of night or day.
One night of horror round me grew;
Or if I saw, or felt, or knew,
"Twas but when those grim visages,
The angry brothers of my race,
Glared on each eye-ball's aching throb,
And check'd my bosom's power to sob,
Or when my heart with pulses drear
Beat like a death-watch to my ear.

"But Heaven, at last, my soul's eclipse
Did with a vision bright inspire:

I woke and felt upon my lips

A prophetess's fire.

4 Ancient fortification.

5 The Irish lamentation for the dead.

THE LOST CHILD.

Thrice in the east a war-drum beat,
I heard the Saxon's trumpet sound,
And ranged, as to the judgment-seat,
My guilty, trembling brothers round.
Clad in the helm and shield they came;
For now De Bourgo's sword and flame
Had ravaged Ulster's boundaries,
And lighted up the midnight skies.
The standard of O'Connor's sway
Was in the turret where I lay;
That standard, with so dire a look,
As ghastly shone the moon and pale,
I gave, that every bosom shook
Beneath its iron mail.

"And go! (I cried), the combat seek,
Ye hearts that unappalled bore
The anguish of a sister's shriek,
Go!-and return no more!
For sooner guilt the ordeal brand
Shall grasp unhurt, than ye shall hold
The banner with victorious hand,
Beneath a sister's curse unroll'd.
O stranger! by my country's loss!
And by my love! and by the cross!
I swear I never could have spoke
The curse that sever'd nature's yoke;
But that a spirit o'er me stood

And fired me with the wrathful mood;
And frenzy to my heart was given
To speak the malison of Heaven.

Dire was the look that o'er their backs
The angry parting brothers threw :
But now, behold! like cataracts,
Come down the hills in view
O'Connor's plumed partisans;
Thrice ten Kilnagorvian clans
Were marching to their doom:
A sudden storm their plumage toss'd,
A flash of lightning o'er them cross'd,
And all again was gloom!

"Stranger! I fled the home of grief,
At Connocht Moran's tomb to fall;
I found the helmet of my chief,
His bow still hanging on our wall,
And took it down, and vow'd to rove
This desert place a huntress bold;
Nor would I change my buried love
For any heart of living mould.
No! for I am a hero's child;
I'll hunt my quarry in the wild;
And still my home this mansion make,
Of all unheeded and unheeding,
And cherish, for my warrior's sake-
"The flower of love lies bleeding.

THE LOST CHILD.2

Lucy was only six years old, but bold as a fairy; she had gone by herself a thousand times

"They would have cross'd themselves, all about the braes, and often upon errands to mute;

They would have pray'd to burst the spell;
But at the stamping of my foot
Each hand down powerless fell!
And go to Athunree!1 (I cried),
High lift the banner of your pride:
But know that where its sheet unrolls
The weight of blood is on your souls!
Go where the havoc of your kerne
Shall float as high as mountain fern!
Men shall no more your mansion know;
The nettles on your hearth shall grow!
Dead, as the green oblivious flood
That mantles by your walls, shall be
The glory of O'Connor's blood!
Away! away to Athunree!

Where, downward when the sun shall fall,
The raven's wing shall be your pall!

And not a vassal shall unlace

The vizor from your dying face!

"A bolt that overhung our dome Suspended till my curse was given, Soon as it pass'd these lips of foam, Peal'd in the blood-red heaven.

1 Athunree, the battle fought in 1314, which decided the fate of Ireland.

What had houses two or three miles distant. her parents to fear? The footpaths were all firm, and led through no places of danger, nor are infants of themselves incautious, when alone in their pastimes. Lucy went singing into the coppice-woods, and singing she reappeared on the open hill-side. With her small white hand on the rail, she glided along the wooden-bridge, or lightly as the owzel tripped from stone to stone across the shallow streamlet. The creature would be away for hours, and no fears be felt on her account by any one at home -whether she had gone with her basket under her arm to borrow some articles of household use from a neighbour, or merely for her own solitary delight wandered off to the braes to play among the flowers, coming back laden With a bonnet of with wreaths and garlands.

her own sewing to shade her pretty face from the sun, and across her shoulders a plaid in which she could sit dry during an hour of the heaviest rain beneath the smallest beild, Lucy passed many long hours in the daylight, and thus knew, without thinking of it, all the

2 From The Foresters, by Professor Wilson (Christopher North). Blackwood and Sons.

topography of that pastoral solitude, and even something of the changeful appearances in the air and sky.

The happy child had been invited to pass a whole day, from morning to night, at Ladyside (a farm-house about two miles off), with her playmates, the Maynes; and she left home about an hour after sunrise. She was dressed, for a holiday, and father and mother, and Aunt Isobel, all three kissed her sparkling face before she set off by herself, and stood listening to her singing, till her small voice was lost in the murmur of the rivulet. During her absence the house was silent but happy; and the evening being now far advanced, Lucy was expected home every minute, and Michael, Agnes, and Isobel went to meet her on the way. They walked on and on, wondering a little, but in no degree alarmed, till they reached Ladyside; and heard the cheerful din of the imps within, still rioting at the close of the holiday. Jacob Mayne came to the door-but on their kindly asking why Lucy had not been sent home before daylight was over, he looked painfully surprised, and said that she had not been at Ladyside.

Agnes suddenly sat down, without speaking one word, on the stone seat beside the door, and Michael, supporting her, said, 'Jacob, our child left us this morning at six o'clock, and it is now near ten at night. God is merciful, but perhaps Lucy is dead.' Jacob Mayne was an ordinary, commonplace, and rather ignorant man, but his heart leaped within him at these words, and by this time his own children were standing about the door. 'Yes, Mr. Forrester-God is merciful-and your daughter, let us trust, is not dead.

Let

us trust that she yet liveth-and without delay let us go to seek the child.' Michael trembled from head to foot, and his voice was gone; he lifted up his eyes to heaven, but it seemed not as if he saw either the moon or the stars. "Run over to Raeshorn, some of you," said Jacob, "and tell what has happened. Do you Isaac, my good boy, cross over to a' the towns on the Inverlethen-side, and—oh! Mr. Forrester Mr. Forrester, dinna let this trial overcome you sae sairly"-for Michael was leaning against the wall of the house, and the strong man was helpless as a child. "Keep up your heart, my dearest son," said Isobel, with a voice all unlike her usual, "keep up your heart, for the blessed bairn is beyond doubt somewhere in the keeping of the great God, yea, without a hair of her head being hurt. A hundred things may have happened her, and death not among the number.-Oh! no-no

surely not death-that would indeed be too dreadful a judgment." And Aunt Isobel, oppressed by the power of that word, now needed the very comfort that she had in vain tried to bestow.

Within two hours a hundred people were traversing the hills in all directions, even to a distance which it seemed most unlikely that poor Lucy could have reached. The shepherds and their dogs all night through searched every nook-every stony and rocky place—every little shaw-every piece of taller heatherevery crevice that could conceal anything alive or dead, but no Lucy was there. Her mother, who for a while seemed inspired with supernatural strength, had joined in the search, and with a quaking heart looked into every brake, or stopped and listened to every shout and hollo reverberating among the hills, if she could seize on some tone of recognition or discovery. But the moon sank, and then all the stars, whose increased brightness had for a short time supplied her place, all faded away, and then came the gray dawn of morning, and then the clear brightness of the day, and still Michael and Agnes were childless. "She has sunk into some mossy or miry place," said Michael to a man near him, into whose face he never looked. "A cruel, cruel death for one like her! The earth on which my child walked has closed over her, and we shall never see her more!"

H

At last a man who had left the search and gone in a direction towards the high-road, came running with something in his arms towards the place where Michael and others were standing beside Agnes, who lay apparently exhausted almost to dying on the sward. approached hesitatingly; and Michael saw that he carried Lucy's bonnet, clothes, and plaid. It was impossible not to see some spots of blood upon the frill that the child had worn round her neck. "Murdered-murdered-" was the one word whispered or ejaculated all around; but Agnes heard it not, for, worn out by that long night of hope and despair, she had fallen asleep, and was perhaps seeking her lost Lucy in her dreams.

Isobel took the clothes, and narrowly inspecting them with eye and hand, said with a fervent voice, that was heard even in Michael's despair, "No-Lucy is yet among the living. There are no marks of violence on the garments of the innocent-no murderer's hand has been here. These blood-spots have been put there to deceive. Besides, would not the murderer have carried off these things? For what else would he have murdered her? But oh! foolish

despair! What speak I of? For wicked as but little for his own fireside. "O speak, this world is-ay, desperately wicked-there speak," said Agnes, "yet why need you. is not, on all the surface of the wide earth, a speak? All this has been but a vain belief, hand that would murder our child! Is it not and Lucy is in heaven."-"Something like a plain as the sun in heaven that Lucy has been trace of her has been discovered-a woman stolen by some wretched gipsy-beggar, and with a child that did not look like a child of that, before that sun has set, she will be saying hers was last night at Clovenford-and left it her prayers in her father's house, with all of by the daw'ing-"Do you hear that, my beus upon our knees beside her, or with our faces loved Agnes?" said Isobel, "she'll have tramped prostrate upon the floor?" away with Lucy up into Ettrick or Yarrow, but hundreds of eyes will have been upon her, for these are quiet but not solitary glens, and the hunt will be over long before she has crossed down upon Hawick. I knew that country in my young days. What say ye, Mr. Mayne? there's the light o' hope on your face." "There's nae reason to doubt, ma'am, that it was Lucy. Everybody is sure o't. If it was my ain Rachel, should ha'e nae fear o' seeing her this blessed nicht."

Agnes opened her eyes and beheld Lucy's bonnet and plaid lying close beside her, and then a silent crowd. Her senses all at once returned to her, and she rose up-"Ay, sure enough drowned-drowned-drowned-but where have you laid her? Let me see our Lucy, Michael, for in my sleep I have already seen her laid out for burial. The crowd quietly dispersed, and horse and foot began to scour the country. Some took the high-roads, others all the by-paths, and many the trackless hills. Now that they were in some measure relieved from the horrible belief that the child was dead, the worst other calamity seemed nothing, for hope brought her back to their arms. Agnes had been able to walk to Bracken-Braes, and Michael and Isobel sat by her bed-side. Lucy's empty little crib was just as the child had left it in the morning before, neatly made up with her own hands, and her small red Bible was lying on her pillow.

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Jacob Mayne now took a chair, and sat down, with even a smile upon his countenance. "I may tell you, noo, that Watty Oliver kens it was your bairn, for he saw her limping after the limmer at Galla-Brigg, but ha'eing nae suspicion, he did na tak' a second leuk o' her -but ae leuk is sufficient, and he swears it was bonny Lucy Forrester." Aunt Isobel by this time had bread and cheese, and a bottle of her own elder-flower wine, on the table. 'You have had a long and hard journey, "Oh! my husband-this is being indeed wherever you have been, Mr. Mayne-tak' some kind to your Agnes, for much it must have refreshment," and Michael asked a blessing. cost you to stay here; but had you left me, my Jacob saw that he might now venture to reveal silly heart must have ceased to beat altogether, the whole truth. "No-no-Mrs. Irvine, for it will not lie still even now that I am well I'm ower happy to eat or to drink. — You are nigh resigned to the will of God." Michael a' prepared for the blessing that awaits youput his hand on his wife's bosom, and felt her your bairn is no far aff-and I myself-for heart beating as if it were a knell. Then ever it was I mysel' that faund her,—will bring and anon the tears came gushing, for all her her by the han' and restore her to her parents.' strength was gone, and she lay at the mercy of Agnes had raised herself up in her bed at these the rustle of a leaf or a shadow across the win-words, but she sunk gently back on her pillow. dow. And thus hour after hour passed on till it was again twilight.

"I hear footsteps coming up the brae," said Agnes, who had for some time appeared to be slumbering; and in a few moments the voice of Jacob Mayne was heard at the outer door. It was no time for ceremony, and he advanced into the room where the family had been during all that trying and endless day. Jacob wore a solemn expression of countenance, and he seemed, from his looks, to bring them no comfort. Michael stood up between him and his wife, and looked into his heart. Something there seemed to be in his face that was not miserable. If he has heard nothing of my child, thought Michael, this man must care

33

Aunt Isobel was rooted to her chair, and Michael, as he rose up, felt as if the ground were sinking under his feet.

There was a dead silence all around the house for a short space, and then the sound of many joyful yoices, which again by degrees subsided. The eyes of all then looked, and yet feared to look towards the door. Jacob Mayne was not so good as his word, for he did not bring Lucy by the hand to restore her to her parents; but, dressed again in her own bonnet, and her gown, and her own plaid, in rushed their child, by herself, with tears and sobs of joy, and her father laid her within her mother's bosom.

PROFESSOR WILSON.

160

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS."

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX."1 [16]

[Robert Browning, born in Camberwell, London, 1812. His first important publication was Paracelsus, 1836. In the following year his tragedy of strafford was performed at Drury Lane, and the Blot in the 'Scutcheon about six years later; King Victor and King Charles and Colombe's Birth-day were subsequently produced at the Haymarket Theatre; but none of them obtained much favour from general play goers. Since the appearance of Paracelsus he has produced many poems of high value, and which-in spite of the quaint and often obscure, although always suggestive, mode of expression Mr. Browning has, it must be presumed deliber ately, adopted-have won for him a large measure of popularity. The Edinburgh Review says Mr. Browning "is a man of rare accomplishments, with a singularly original mind capable of sympathizing with a multiplicity of tastes and characters very far removed from every day experience." Another critic, in the Examiner, says: "He is equally a master of thought and emotion, and joins to a rare power of imaginative creation that which is still more rarely found in union with it-the subtlest power of mental reasoning and analysis. Sordello; Belts and Pomegranates; Christmas Ece; Men and Women; the Ring and the Book; and Prince HohenstielSchwangau may be given as the titles of his principal works. Balaustion's Adventure, one of his latest, is also one of his most powerful productions, because it is one of his clearest. A collected edition of his poems appeared in 1868 in six volumes; and a very admirable

selection from his works has been issued under the care of J. Foster and B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall).]

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gatebolts undrew;

"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great

pace

Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,

Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew

near

Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned

clear;

1 From Dramatic Lyrics, by Robert Browning. London: Chapman & Hall.

At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Duffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,

So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every

one,

To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;

And one eye's black intelligence, -ever that glance

O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance !

And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and

anon

His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!

Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,

We'll remember at Aix"-for one heard the quick wheeze

Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,

And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"-and all in a moment

his roan

Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone, And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight

Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,

With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,

And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,

Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,

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