PAPERSPAST

IRELAND AND THE RECORD REIGN.

A sound of revelry is in the air, The nations hasten from the East and West, And unto modern Babylon repair In such array as suits their humour best ; While Ireland, sore afflicted by the wave, Stamls lone and mute above her glory's grave. The ancient mother of a noble race A haploss serf, in cruel bondage bound, The agony of agas in her face, And her sad brow with rue and cypress crownest, Silent she stands, rejoicing lands among He tuneless harp beside her all unstrung. The pomp and show, the million tongued applause, The glory and the glamour of the pccne, The hymnal praise upraised to England's cause, The pompous Briton's boastings of his Queen — She heeds them not, this vaunted Record Reign Has been to her too prodigal of pain. The buried past to her gives up its dead ; She lifts the curtain and she gazes o'er The dreary way through which her path has led, Strewn with the wreck of shattered hopes. Before Her vision walks in misery and tears, The spectral shades of those sad sixty years. Famine and slaughter, plunder and rapine, The desolating pestilence, the hope Crushed in the bud by ruffian hand, and then The felon cell and the ensanguined rope, The prison and the poor-house — all is there Inbcribed upon the banner that they bear. The landlord and the bailiff — fiendish twain — Those hydra headed vampires that infest Her every valley, village, town and plain And drink the crimson current of her breast, March bravely on, rejoicing as they go, Leaving behind a wilderness of woe. The roofless home, the cold and cheerless hearth, The hapless victims jeered at and reviled, Cast out to starve upon their native earth. The agonising wail of wife and child For mercy vainly pleading on their knees — Oh God, the pity of such scenes as these. And this has been her portion who apart In dignified seclusion stands to-day. Bereft of hope and stricken to the heart, And heedless of the pageant and display, The rending shouts for England th.it ascend Her lMthle^s master and her laithle.ss friend. Then wonder, ye to whom the truth is clear, Who for the reign of justice watch and pray When love shall dry in misery's eye the tear, Why Ireland is not jubilant and gay ?—? — Why she should not applaud with loud acclaim Forgot the p.i>t and glory in her shame ? My native land, thongh fallen is thy state, Though bound and banned thou still art doomed to be, E'en in thy desolation thou art great, And Freedom sighs in sympathy a ich thee, Despite thy foo, despite thy gaoler's will, A nation-, dignity is left thee siill. South Dunedia.

Puo Patria.

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