Lament of the Scotch-Irish Exile

385

The routhie bield that gars the gear

Is gone where glint the pawky een.

And aye the stound is birkin lear

Where sconnered yowies wheeped yestreen,
The creeshie rax wi' skelpin' kaes

Nae mair the howdie bicker whangs,

Nor weanies in their wee bit claes

Glour light as lammies wi' their sangs.

Yet leeze me on my bonny byke!
My drappie aiblins blinks the noo,
An' leesome luve has lapt the dyke
Forgatherin' just a wee bit fou.
And Scotia! while thy rantin' lunt
Is mirk and moop with gowans fine,

I'll stowlins pit my unco brunt,

An' cleek my duds for auld lang syne.

Unknown.

LAMENT OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH EXILE

Он, I want to win me hame

To my ain countrie,

The land frae whence I came

Far away across the sea;

Bit I canna find it there, on the atlas anywhere,
And I greet and wonder sair

Where the deil it can be?

I hae never met a man,
In a' the warld wide,

Who has trod my native lan'

Or its distant shores espied;

But they tell me there's a place where my hypothetic race

Its dim origin can trace

Tipperary-on-the-Clyde.

But anither answers: "Nae,

Ye are varra far frae richt; Glasgow town in Dublin Bay

Is the spot we saw the licht."

But I dinna find the maps bearing out these pawkie chaps, And I sometimes think perhaps

It has vanished out o' sight.

Oh, I fain wad win me hame
To that undiscovered lan'

That has neither place nor name

Where the Scoto-Irishman

May behold the castles fair by his fathers builded there

Many, many ages ere

Ancient history began.

James Jeffrey Roche.

A SONG OF SORROW 1

A LULLABYLET FOR A MAGAZINELET

WAN from the wild and woful West

Sleep, little babe, sleep on!

Mother will sing to-you know the rest

Sleep, little babe, sleep on!

Softly the sand steals slowly by,

Cursed be the curlew's chittering cry;

By-a-by, oh, by-a-by!

Sleep, little babe, sleep on!

Rosy and sweet come the hush of night-
Sleep, little babe, sleep on!

(Twig to the lilt, I have got it all right)
Sleep, little babe, sleep on!

Dark are the dark and darkling days
Winding the webbed and winsome ways,
Homeward she creeps in dim amaze-
Sleep, little babe, sleep on!

(But it waked up, drat it!)

Charles Battell Loomis.

BACK in the years when Phlagstaff, the Dane, was monarch Over the sea-ribb'd land of the fleet-footed Norsemen, Once there went forth young Ursa to gaze at the heavensUrsa-the noblest of all the Vikings and horsemen.

Musing, he sat in his stirrups and viewed the horizon, Where the Aurora lapt stars in a North-polar manner, Wildly he started, for there in the heavens before him Flutter'd and flam'd the original Star Spangled Banner.

My Native Land, thy Puritanic stock

Still finds its roots firm-bound in Plymouth Rock,
And all thy sons unite in one grand wish-

To keep the virtues of Preserved Fish.

Preserved Fish, the Deacon stern and true,
Told our New England what her sons should do,
And if they swerve from loyalty and right,
Then the whole land is lost indeed in night.

III

BY DR. OLVR W-ND-L H-LMES

A DIAGNOSIS of our hist'ry proves
Our native land a land its native loves;
Its birth a deed obstetric without peer,

Its growth a source of wonder far and near.

To love it more behold how foreign shores
Sink into nothingness beside its stores;
Hyde Park at best-though counted ultra-grand-
The "Boston Common" of Victoria's land.

SOURCE immaterial of material naught,
Focus of light infinitesimal,

Sum of all things by sleepless Nature wrought,
Of which the normal man is decimal.

Refract, in prism immortal, from thy stars To the stars bent incipient on our flag, The beam translucent, neutrifying death, And raise to immortality the rag.

THE sun sinks softly to his Ev'ning Post,
The sun swells grandly to his morning crown;
Yet not a star our Flag of Heav'n has lost,
And not a sunset stripe with him goes down.

So thrones may fall, and from the dust of those New thrones may rise, to totter like the last; But still our Country's nobler planet glows While the eternal stars of Heaven are fast.

VI

BY N. P. W - LL - IS

ONE hue of our Flag is taken

From the cheeks of my blushing Pet,

And its stars beat time and sparkle
Like the studs on her chemisette.

Its blue is the ocean shadow

That hides in her dreamy eyes,

It conquers all men, like her,

And still for a Union flies.

The Editor's Wooing

VII

BY THM-SB-IL Y ALD - - CH

THE little brown squirred hops in the corn,
The cricket quaintly sings,

The emerald pigeon nods his head,
And the shad in the river springs,
The dainty sunflow'r hangs its head
On the shore of the summer sea;
And better far that I were dead,
If Maud did not love me.

I love the squirrel that hops in the corn,
And the cricket that quaintly sings;
And the emerald pigeon that nods his head,
And the shad that gaily springs.

I love the dainty sunflow'r, too,

And Maud with her snowy breast;

I love them all;—but I love—I love—
I love my country best.

389

Robert H. Newell

THE EDITOR'S WOOING

WE love thee, Ann Maria Smith,
And in thy condescension

We see a future full of joys
Too numerous to mention.

There's Cupid's arrow in thy glance,
That by thy love's coercion

Has reached our melting heart of hearts,
And asked for one insertion.

With joy we feel the blissful smart;

And ere our passion ranges,

We freely place thy love upon

The list of our exchanges.