Tell faith it's fled the city;

Tell how the country erreth;
Tell, manhood shakes off pity;
Tell, virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing,

Although to give the lie

Deserve no less than stabbing,
Yet stab at thee who will,
No stab the soul can kill.

WINIFREDA.

About the authorship of this beautiful address to conjugal love, there is also much uncertainty. Bishop Percy calls it a "Translation from the Antient British," probably to vail the real writer. We find it included among Gilbert Cooper's poems, a diamond among pebbles; he never could have written it. It has been claimed for Stevens, who did the world good service as one of the earliest restorers of Shakspeare's text; but who is almost as famous for his bitter and cynical temper, as for his acuteness as a verbal critic. Could this charming love-song, true in its tenderness as the gushing notes of a bird to his sitting mate, have been poured forth by a man whom the whole world agreed in hating? After all, we have no need to meddle with this vexed question. Let us be content to accept thankfully one of the very few purely English ballads which contradict the reproach of our Scottish and Irish neighbors, when they tell us that our love-songs are of the head, not of the heart. This poem, at least, may vie with those of Gerald Griffin in the high and rare merit of conveying the noblest sentiments in the simplest language.

Away! let naught to love displeasing,
My Winifreda, move your care;
Let naught delay the heavenly blessing,
Nor squeamish pride, nor gloomy fear.

What though no grant of royal donors
With pompous titles grace our blood?
We'll shine in more substantial honors,
And to be noble we'll be good.

Our name, while virtue thus we tender,

Shall sweetly sound where'er 'tis spoke;
And all the great ones, they shall wonder
How they respect such little folk.

What though from fortune's lavish bounty
No mighty treasures we possess?
We'll find within our pittance plenty,
And be content without excess.

Still shall each kind returning season
Sufficient for our wishes give;
For we will live a life of reason,
And that's the only life to live.

Through youth to age in love excelling,
We'll hand in hand together tread;
Sweet-smiling Peace shall crown our dwelling,
And babes, sweet-smiling babes, our bed.

How should I love the pretty creatures,
While round my knees they fondly clung;
To see them look their mother's features,
To hear them lisp their mother's tongue.

And when with envy, time transported,
Shall think to rob us of our joys,
You'll in your girls again be courted,
And I'll go wooing in my boys.

Surely this is the sort of poetry that ought to be popular-to be sung in our concert-rooms, and set to such airs as should be played on barrel-organs through our streets, suggesting the words and the sentiments as soon as the first notes of the melody make themselves heard under the window.

II.

IRISH AUTHORS.

THOMAS DAVIS-JOHN BANIM.

CONSIDERING his immense reputation in the Sister Island, the name of Thomas Davis has hardly found its due place in our literature. He was an Irish barrister; the most earnest, the most vehement, the most gifted, and the most beloved of the Young Ireland party. Until the spring of 1840, when he was in his twenty-sixth year, he had only been remarkable for extreme good-nature, untiring industry, and very varied learning. At that period he blazed forth at once as a powerful and brilliant political writer, produced an eloquent and admirable "Life of Curran," became one of the founders of the "Nation" newspaper, and carried his zeal in the cause of nationality to such excess, that he actually proposed to publish a weekly journal in the Irish tongue -an impracticable scheme which happily ended in talk.

To the newspaper which was established, and which the young patriots condescended to write in the language to use their own phrase-of the Saxons, we owe the beautiful lyrics of Thomas Davis. The editor of the "Nation" had faith in the well-known saying of Fletcher of Saltown, "Give me the writing of the ballads, and let who will make the laws;" and in default of other aid, the regular contributors to the new journal resolved to attempt the task themselves. It is difficult to believe, but the editor of his poems dwells upon it as a well-known fact, that up to this time the author of "The Sack of Baltimore" had never written a line of verse in his life, and was, indeed, far less sanguine than his coadjutors in the success of the experiment. How completely he succeeded there is no need to tell, although nearly all that he has written was the work of one hurried year, thrown off in the midst of a thousand occupations, and a thousand claims.

A very few years more, and his brief and bright career was cut short by a sudden illness, which carried him rapidly to the grave, beloved and lamented by his countrymen of every sect and of every party :

"His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes:
He had kept

...

The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept."

Oh that he had lived to love Ireland, not better, but more wisely, and to write volumes upon volumes of such lyrics as the two first which I transcribe, such biographies as his Life of Curran," and such criticism as his "Essay upon Irish Song !"

I will deal more tenderly than he would have done with printer and reader, by giving them as little as I can of his beloved Cymric words (such is the young Irish name for the old Irish language); and by sparing them altogether his beloved Cymric character, which I have before my eyes at this moment, looking exactly like a cross between Arabic and Chinese.

THE SACK OF BALTIMORE.

Baltimore is a small seaport, in the barony of Carberry, in South Munster. It grew up round a castle of O'Driscoll's, and was, after his ruin, colonized by the English. On the 20th of June, 1631, the crew of two Algerine galleys landed in the dead of the night, sacked the town, and bore off into slavery all who were not too old or too young, or too fierce, for their purpose. The pirates were steered up the intricate channel by one Hackett, a Dungarvon fisherman, whom they had taken at sea for that office. Two years after he was convicted and executed

for the crime.

The summer sun is falling soft on Carberry's hundred isles;
The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel's rough defiles;
Old Inisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a molting 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 labor 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 ruined 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 Dunashad that glide,
Must trust their oars, methinks not few, against the ebbing tide;
Oh! 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,

And these must be the lover's friends, with gently gliding 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 saber'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—
Oh, blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore !

Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword;
Then sprang the mother on the brand with which her son was gored;
Then sank the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching wild;
Then fled the maiden, moaning faint, and nestled with the child.
But see yon pirate strangled lies and crushed with splashing heel,
While o'er him, in an Irish hand, there sweeps his Syrian steel.
Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store,
There's one heart well avenged in the sack of Baltimore !

Midsummer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds begin to sing,
They see not now the milking-maids, deserted is the spring!
Midsummer day, this gallant rides from distant Bandon's town,
Those hookers crossed from stormy Skull, the skiff from Affadown,
They only found the smoking walls with neighbors' blood besprent,
And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went,
Then dashed to sea, and passed Cape Clear, and saw five leagues before,
The pirate galleys vanishing that ravaged Baltimore.

Oh! some must tug the galley's oar, and some must tend the steed,
This boy will bear a Scheik's chibouk, and that a Bey's jerreed.
Oh! 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 stabbed 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 sank the town beneath that bloody band,
And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand,
Where, high upon a gallows tree, a yelling wretch is seen,
'Tis Hackett of Dungarvon, he who steered the Algerine.