When the Thracian breezes of winter descend on the marshy

meads;

So swept they along like music, and wildered Actæon stood Till the last of the maiden rangers was lost in the leaning wood.

DISILLUSION.

"Say a day without the ever."

-'As You Like It.'

Your proud eyes give me their wearied splendor;
Your cold loose touch and your colder smile
The truth to my jealous heart surrender:
You tire, having loved me a little while.
Ah! well, my sweet, I was sure you would,
For I knew you false when I saw you fair.

I have watched and watched for your altered mood,
And have schooled me so that I shall not care.

The knoll's blue bonnet, the dell's green mantle,
The mid-wood hollow where waters run,
The bare, stained shore, with its white surf-sandal,
The sudden smile of the gallant sun-
Will change not, be you or sweet or bitter:
A heart after all is hard to break;
But the world at sweetest were surely sweeter
If only sweet for your own sweet sake.

Yea, I know right well, if our love were sterling
We had drained the earth and the skies of joy;
But I-God wot-and you too, my darling,

No rare fair flower of girl and boy:

How should we rise to such exaltation

As climbs from a cloud a splendid star?
How live-how love with such perfect passion,
We who are only what others are?

RICHARD DALTON WILLIAMS.

(1822-1862.)

RICHARD DALTON WILLIAMS was born in Dublin; the date of his birth is uncertain, but is usually said to be October 8, 1822. At an early age he was removed to Grenanstown, near the Devil's Bit, one of the most romantic spots in Tipperary. He was first sent to school to St. Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, and afterward to Carlow College. While there he sent 'The Munster War Song' to The Nation. His school-boy days over, he went to Dublin to prepare for the medical profession. In his leisure hours he amused himself by writing a series of poems full of grotesque humor under the title The Misadventures of a Medical Student.' On May 26, 1848, Mitchel was convicted, and on the following day his paper, The United Irishman, was suppressed. New revolutionary journals at once rose to fill the vacant place: John Martin started The Irish Felon; and Williams, with his friend, Kevin Izod O'Doherty, established The Irish Tribune. Of course the new journals went the same way as the old; Martin was convicted and transported, so was O'Doherty; but Williams escaped.

In 1851 he came to this country, and after a while settled down in New Orleans as a medical man. After this came two flittings, his last residence being Thibodeaux in Louisiana. Here he was when the civil war broke out. He took advantage of the occasion to write 'Song of the Irish-American Regiments.' While his pen was attaining its full vigor, Williams himself had begun to decay; consumption had seized hold of his frame, and on July 5, 1862, he died. His resting-place had been marked by nothing better than a rude deal board bearing his name and the date of his death, until shortly after his death some companies of Irish-American soldiers happened to pass through the locality; resolving that the spot where a countryman so gifted and so faithful lay should be properly marked, they raised by subscription a monument of Carrara marble, inscribed with a brief but eloquent epitaph.

Alike in his humorous, patriotic, and pathetic verse he writes with facility-never quite achieving greatness, however, although 'The Dying Girl' comes very near to it.

THE MUNSTER WAR-SONG.

Battle of Aherlow, A. D. 1190.

Can the depths of the ocean afford you not graves,
That you come thus to perish afar o'er the waves-
To redden and swell the wild torrents that flow
Through the valley of vengeance, the dark Aherlow? 1
1 Aherlow Glen, County Tipperary.

The clangor of conflict o'erburthens the breeze,
From the stormy Slieve Bloom to the stately Galtees;
Your caverns and torrents are purple with gore,
Slievenamon, Glen Colaich, and sublime Galtee Mor!

The Sunburst that slumbered, enbalmed in our tears,
Tipperary! shall wave o'er thy tall mountaineers!
And the dark hill shall bristle with saber and spear
While one tyrant remains to forge manacles here.

The riderless war-steed careers o'er the plain
With a shaft in his flank and a blood-dripping mane;
His gallant breast labors, and glare his wild eyes;
He plunges in torture-falls-shivers-and dies.

Let the trumpets ring triumph! The tyrant is slain!
He reels o'er his charger deep-pierced through the brain;
And his myriads are flying, like leaves on the gale-
But who shall escape from our hills with the tale?

For the arrows of vengeance are showering like rain,
And choke the strong rivers with islands of slain,
Till thy waves, lordly Shannon, all crimsonly flow,
Like the billows of hell, with the blood of the foe.

Ay! the foemen are flying, but vainly they fly-
Revenge with the fleetness of lightning can vie;

And the septs of the mountains spring up from each rock
And rush down the ravines like wolves on the flock.

And who shall pass over the stormy Slieve Bloom,

To tell the pale Saxon of tyranny's doom,

When, like tigers from ambush, our fierce mountaineers
Leap along from the crags with their death-dealing spears?

They came with high boasting to bind us as slaves,

But the glen and the torrent have yawned on their graves.
From the gloomy Ardfinnan to wild Temple Mor-
From the Suir to the Shannon-is red with their gore.

By the soul of Heremon! our warriors may smile,
To remember the march of the foe through our isle;
Their banners and harness were costly and gay,
And proudly they flashed in the summer sun's ray;

The hilts of their falchions were crusted with gold,
And the gems of their helmets were bright to behold;

By Saint Bride of Kildare! but they moved in fair show— To gorge the young eagles of dark Aherlow!

THE DYING GIRL.

From a Munster vale they brought her,
From the pure and balmy air;
An Ormond peasant's daughter,
With blue eyes and golden hair-
They brought her to the city,

And she faded slowly there.
Consumption has no pity

For blue eyes and golden hair.

When I saw her first reclining

Her lips were moved in prayer,
And the setting sun was shining
On her loosened golden hair.
When our kindly glances met her,
Deadly brilliant was her eye;
And she said that she was better,
While we knew that she must die.

She speaks of Munster valleys,
The pattern, dance and fair,
And her thin hand feebly dallies
With her scattered golden hair.
When silently we listened

To her breath with quiet care

Her eyes with wonder glistened

And she asked us, "What was there?"

The poor thing smiled to ask it,
And her pretty mouth laid bare,

Like gems within a casket,

A string of pearlets rare.
We said that we were trying
By the gushing of her blood
And the time she took in sighing
To know if she were good.

Well, she smiled and chatted gaily
Though we saw in mute despair
The hectic brighter daily,

And the death-dew on her hair.
And oft her wasted fingers
Beating time upon the bed:
O'er some old tune she lingers,
And she bows her golden head.

At length the harp is broken;
And the spirit in its strings,
As the last decree is spoken,

To its source exulting springs.
Descending swiftly from the skies,
Her guardian angel came,

He struck God's lightning from her eyes,
And bore Him back the flame.

Before the sun had risen

Thro' the lark-loved morning air,
Her young soul left its prison,

Undefiled by sin or care.

I stood beside the couch in tears

Where pale and calm she slept,
And tho' I've gazed on death for years,
I blush not that I wept.

I checked with effort pity's sighs
And left the matron there,

To close the curtains of her eyes
And bind her golden hair.

THE LEGEND OF STIFFENBACH.

One day the Baron Stiffenbach among his fathers slept,
And his relict o'er his ashes, like a water goddess, wept,
Till her apparatus lachrymal required so many "goes
From certain flasks, that soon there shone a ruby on her nose.

The Dowager of Stiffenbach was fair enough to view, And having her dead husband's wealth, could touch the rhino too;

But yet of all the neighboring nobs not one would e'er propose, Because she wore a ruby, a large ruby on her nose.