6 DECEMBER 1890, Page 32

POETRY.

IRELAND.

IN the wild and lurid desert, in the thunder-travelled ways; 'Neath the night that ever hurries to the dawn that still delays,

There she clutches at illusions, and she seeks a phantom goal With the unattaining passion that consumes the unsleeping soul :

And calamity enfolds her, like the shadow of a ban, And the niggardness of Nature makes the misery of man : And in vain the hand is stretched to lift her, stumbling in the gloom, While she follows the mad fen-fire that conducts her to her