Parnell

TEARS will betray all pride, but when ye mourn him,

Be it in soldier wise;

As for a captain who hath greatly borne him,

And in the midnight dies.

Fewness of words is best; he was too great

For ours or any phrase.

Love could not guess, nor the slipped hound of hate Track his soul's secret ways.

Signed with a sign, unbroken, unrevealed,

His Calvary he trod;

So let him keep, where all world-wounds are healed The silences of God.

Yet is he Ireland's, too: a flaming coal

Lit at the stars, and sent

To burn the sin of patience from her soul
The scandal of content.

A name to be a trumpet of attack;

And, in the evil stress,

For England's iron No! to fling her back

A grim, granatic Yes.

He taught us more, this best as it was last:
When comrades go apart

They shall go greatly, cancelling the past,
Slaying the kindlier heart.

Friendship and love, all clean things and unclean,
Shall be as drifted leaves,

Spurned by our Ireland's feet, that queenliest Queen
Who gives not, but receives.

So freedom comes, and comes no other wise;

He gave "The Chief" gave well;

Limned in his blood across your clearing skies
Look up and read: Parnell!

THOMAS KETTLE.

Synge's Grave

MY grief! that they have laid you in the town

Within the moidher of its thousand wheels

And busy feet that travel up and down.

They had a right to choose a better bed
Far off among the hills where silence steals
In on the soul with comfort-bringing tread.

The curlew would have keened for you all day,
The wind across the heather cried Ochone
For sorrow of his brother gone away.

In Glenmalure, far off from town-bred men,
Why would they not have left your sleep alone
At peace there in the shadow of the glen?

To tend your grave you should have had the sun, The fraughan and the moss, the heather brown And gorse turned gold for joy of Spring begun.

You should have had your brothers, wind and rain,
And in the dark the stars all looking down
To ask, "When will he take the road again?"

The herdsmen of the lone back hills, that drive The mountain ewes to some far distant fair, Would stand and say, "We knew him well alive,

That God may rest his soul!" then they would pass Into the silence brooding everywhere,

And leave you to your sleep below the grass.

But now among these alien city graves,

What way are you without the rough wind's breath You free-born son of mountains and wild waves?

Ah! God knows better-here you've no abode,
So long ago you had the laugh at death,

And rose and took the windswept mountain road.
WINIFRED LETTS.

To a Dead Poet

SPEAK your name—a magic thing—

Jocund April takes my hand,

Golden birds begin to sing,
Laughter fills the silver land.

I speak your name—a Matin bell—
Buoyant, godlike, you arise-
Flinging far the slumber-spell
Laid upon your heart and eyes.

I speak your name-and Summer's here-
Glad beyond all Summers gone-

And you are shining like the spear

God fashioned in His first day's dawn.

ELEANOR ROGERS COX.