e breeze of health is blowing!

DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY.

* * * * *

IRELAND.

A SEASIDE PORTRAIT.

A great, still Shape, alone,
She sits (her harp has fallen) on the sand,
And sees her children, one by one, depart:--
Her cloak (that hides what sins beside her own!)
Wrapped fold on fold about her. Lo,
She comforts her fierce heart,
As wailing some, and some gay-singing go,
With the far vision of that Greater Land
Deep in the Atlantic skies,
Saint Brandan's Paradise!
Another Woman there,
Mighty and wondrous fair,
Stands on her shore-rock:--one uplifted hand
Holds a quick-piercing light
That keeps long sea-ways bright;
She beckons with the other, saying "Come,
O landless, shelterless,
Sharp-faced with hunger, worn with long distress:--
Come hither, finding home!
Lo, my new fields of harvest, open, free,
By winds of blessing blown,
Whose golden corn-blades shake from sea to sea--
Fields without walls that all the people own!"

JOHN JAMES PIATT

* * * * *

EXILE OF ERIN.

There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill;
For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.
But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh.

Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger;
The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again in the green sunny bowers
Where my forefathers lived shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh!

Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,
In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;
But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,
And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!
O cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me
In a mansion of peace, where no perils can chase me?
Never again shall my brothers embrace me?
They died to defend me, or live to deplore!

Where is my cabin door, fast by the wildwood?
Sisters and sire, did ye weep for its fall?
Where is the mother that looked on my childh