he common observer, and too frequently pass half unnoticed and
unfelt even by those whose temperament is susceptive of their inspiring
influences, but whose thoughts are occupied with the cares and business
of living. But it is especially as the poet of Ireland, and of the Roman
Church, that Mr. De Vere presents himself to us in this last volume;
and while, consequently, the subject and treatment of many of the poems
contained in it give to them a special rather than a universal interest,
the patriotic spirit and the fervor of faith manifest in them appeal
powerfully to the sympathies of readers in other countries and of other
creeds. "'Inisfail' may be regarded as a sort of National Chronicle,
cast in a form partly lyrical, partly narrative.... Its aim is to record
the past alone, and that chiefly as its chances might have been sung by
those old bards, who, consciously or unconsciously, uttered the voice
which comes from a people's heart." In this attempt Mr. De Vere has had
an uncommon measure of success. The strings of the Irish harp sound with
the cadences of fitting harmonies under his hand, as he sings of the
sorrows and the joys of Ireland, of the wild storms and the rare
sunshine of her pathetic history,--as he denounces vengeance on her
oppressors, or blesses the saints and the heroes who have made the land
dear and beautiful to its children. The key-note of the series of poems
which form this poetic chronicle is struck in the fine verses with which
it begins, entitled "History," and of which our space allows us to quote
but the opening stanza:--

"At my casement I sat by night, while the wind far off in dark valleys
Voluminous gathered and grew, and waxing swelled to a gale;
An hour I heard it, or more, ere yet it sobbed on my lattice:
Far off, 't was a People's moan; hard by, but a widow's wail.
Atoms we are, we men: of the myriad sorrow around us
Our littleness little grasps; and the selfish in that have no part:
Yet time with the measureless chain of a world-wide mourning hath
wound us;
History but counts the drops as they fall from a Nation's heart."

One of the most vigorous poems in the volume is that called "The Bard
Ethell," and which represents this bard of the thirteenth century
telling in his old age of himself and his country, of his memories, and
of the wrongs that he and his land had alike suffered:--

"I am Ethell, the son of Conn;
Here I live at the foot of the hil