PARNELL.
Hz forged the blade that might have struck the blow !
And yet not thus would I have seen him low—
The scornful mind that ever held apart,
The brief success and then the broken heart—
He builds on sand who only builds on hate.
But still the lonely man had something great, Unfevered 'mid the fever of debate, Ready where'er the battle swayed or turned, To stab with that cold steel whose chillness burned, Inscrutable by nature or device While all men doubted whether he might be Profoundly frigid like the bitter sea Or a volcano lapped in arctic ice.
He knew and held unswerving to the goal : Now Irish earth weighs on the fallen head Heavy indeed ; we gain since he is dead,
And yet it shames me to the very soul,—
The meanness of the tragedy, the spite, The factions shivered in the crowning fight, All tongues, the bathos and the fall, The dying actor from the closing scene of all Unkindly hissed How strange the ways of Fate, Undone by love, who so much wrought with hate !
R. J. ALEXANDER.
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