For there the Infant Jesus stands, And holds my pearl upon his hands." He ended. The pearl-merchant said— Replied: "He found his daughter dead.”— He took the child: and He knew best. THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. THE SACK OF BALTIMORE. The summer sun is falling soft on Carbery's hundred isles, The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel's rough defiles; Old Inisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird; And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard ; The hookers lie upon the beach, the children cease their play, The gossips leave the little inn, the households kneel to pray; And full of love and peace and rest, its daily labour o'er, Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore. A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there; No sound except that throbbing wave in earth or sea or air! The massive capes and ruin'd towers seem conscious of the calm; The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm. So still the night, those two long barques round Dunashead that glide Must trust their oars, methinks not few, against the ebbing tide. O, some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the shore ! They bring some lover to his bride who sighs in Baltimore. All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky street; feet; A stifled gasp, a dreamy noise! "The roof is in a flame ! " From out their beds and to their doors rush maid and sire and dame, And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabre's fall, And o'er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl. The yell of "Allah!" breaks above the prayer and shriek and roar: O blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore. Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword; Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was gored; Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grandbabes clutching wild; Then fled the maiden, moaning faint, and nestled with the child. But see! yon pirate strangled lies, and crush'd with splashing heel, While o'er him in an Irish hand there sweeps the Syrian steel: Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store, There's one hearth well avengèd in the sack of Baltimore. Midsummer morn in woodland nigh the birds began to sing,— They see not now the milking maids,—deserted is the spring; Midsummer day this gallant rides from distant Bandon's town, These hookers cross from stormy Skull, this skiff from Affadown; They only found the smoking walls with neighbours' blood be sprent ; And on the strew'd and trampled beach awhile they wildly went, Then dash'd to sea and pass'd Cape Clear and saw, five leagues before, The pirate galleys vanishing that ravaged Baltimore. O, some must tug the galley's oar, and some must tend the steed; This boy shall bear a Sheik's chibouk, and that a Bey's jer reed; O some are for the arsenals by beauteous Dardanelles ; And some are in the caravan to Mecca's sandy dells! The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey: She's safe, she's dead; she stabb'd him in the midst of his Serai! And when to die a death of fire that noble maid they bore, She only smiled, O'Driscoll's child, she thought of Baltimore. 'Tis two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band, And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand, SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. 1810 THE HEALING OF CONALL CARNACH. O'er Slieve Few, with noiseless tramping through the heavy drifted snow, Beàlcu, Connacia's champion, in his chariot tracks the foe; And anon far off discerneth, in the mountain hollow white, Slinger Keth and Conall Carnach mingling hand to hand in fight. Swift the charioteer his coursers urged across the wintry glade; Hoarse the cry of Keth and hoarser seem'd to come, demanding aid; But through wreath and swollen runnel ere the car could reach anigh, Keth lay dead, and mighty Conall, bleeding, lay at point to die. Whom beholding spent and pallid, Beàlcu exulting cried— "O thou ravening wolf of Uladh! where is now thy Northern pride? What can now that crest audacious, what that pale defiant brow, Once the bale star of Connacia's ravaged fields, avail thee now?" "Taunts are for reviling women :" faintly Conall made reply; "Wouldst thou play the manlier foeman, end my pain, and let me die! Neither deem thy blade dishonour'd that with Keth's a deed it share, For the foremost two of Connaught feat enough, and fame to spare!" "No! I will not: bard shall never in Dunseverick hall make boast That to quell one Northern reiver needed two of Croghan's host; But because that word thou hast spoken, if but life enough remains, Thou shalt hear the wives of Croghan clap their hand above thy chains. "Yea! if life enough but linger that the leech may make thee whole, Meet to satiate the anger that beseems a warrior's soul, Best of leech-craft I'll purvey thee, make thee whole as healing can, And in single combat slay thee, Connaught man to Ullster man." Binding him in five-fold fetter, wrists and ankles, wrists and neck, To his car's uneasy litter Beàlcu upheaved the wreck Of the broken man and harness; but he started with amaze When he felt the Northern war-mace, what a weight it was to raise. Westward then through Breffny's borders, with his captive and his dead, Track'd by bands of fierce applauders, wives and shrieking widows, sped; And, the chain'd heroic carcase on the fair green of Moy Slaught Casting down, proclaim'd his purpose, and bade Lee, the leech, be brought. Lee, the gentle-faced physician, from his herb-plot came, and said: "Healing is with God's permission, health for life's enjoyment made; And, though I mine aid refuse not, yet, to speak my purpose I the healing art abuse not, making life inure to pain. |