She's death to all things living, Since the November eve; And when she dies in autumn No living thing shall grieve. THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOIS. In a quiet watered land, a land of roses, Stands Saint Kieran's city fair: And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara, Battle-banners of the Gael, that in Kieran's plain of crosses And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia, And right many a lord of Breagh; Deep the sod above Clan Creidé and Clan Conaill, Many and many a son of Conn, the Hundred-Fighter, Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers, THE LAST DESIRE. When the time comes for me to die, "What wilt thou?" I shall say: "O God, thy world was great and fair! "I loved, I toiled; throve ill and well; Where all things are forgot. "I seek not, Lord, thy purging fire, In deep, eternal calm." SONG OF MAELDUIN. There are veils that lift, there are bars that fall, There are hurrying feet, and we dare not wait, The circling hour of the flaming gate- Fair, fair they shine through the burning zone Good-bye! And oh! to follow, to seek, to dare, The cloudy stair of the Brig o' Dread O children of Time-O Nights and Days, The music calls and the gates unclose, We die in the bliss of a great new birth, Good-bye-good-bye-good-bye! WENTWORTH DILLON, EARL OF ROSCOMMON. (1633-1684.) WENTWORTH DILLON, EARL OF ROSCOMMON, born about 1633, was nephew and godson to the Earl of Stafford. He was at the Protestant College at Caen when, by the death of his father, he became Earl of Roscommon, at the age of ten. He remained abroad, traveled in Italy till the Restoration, when he came in with King Charles the Second, became captain of the Band of Pensioners, took for a time to gambling, married, indulged his taste in literature, which was strongly under the French influence, and had a project for an English academy like that of France. He translated into verse Horace's 'Art of Poetry,' Virgil's sixth Eclogue, one or two Odes of Horace, and a passage from Guarini's 'Pastor Fido.' Of his original writing the most important piece is 'An Essay on Translated Verse,' carefully polished in the manner of Boileau, sensible, and often very happy in expression. He died Jan. 17, 1684, after a fervent utterance of two lines from his own version of 'Dies Irae '— "My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in my end"— and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Johnson says "that he is perhaps the only correct writer in verse before Addison," and Pope wrote: "To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known, And every author's merit but his own." FROM THE ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE. Each poet with a different talent writes, One praises, one instructs, another bites, Horace did ne'er aspire to epic bays, Nor lofty Maro stoop to lyric lays. You grow familiar, intimate, and fond; Your thoughts, your words, your styles, your souls agree, Immodest words admit of no defense For want of decency is want of sense. Yet 't is not all to have a subject good, It must delight as when 't is understood. |