The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1890-03-15
4 RARE TREAT


My Mary. kind and true
But I'll not forget you darling,
Int land I'm going to:
They say there's bread and work for all,
And the sun shines always there;
But III not forget old Ireland
We're it fifty times as fairl
Who can forget the pathos Of Katy q
Letter. one of Lady Dufferin's songs ?
Och, girls, and did you ever hear,
I wrote my love letter,
And altho he cannot read
thought twas all the better;l
For why should he be puzzled
With hard spelling in the matter,
When the manin' was SO plain
That loved him faithfully.
And he knows it-oh. he knows 1t,
Without one word from ME.
OF all modern Irish poets, only a few
have succeeded in writing songs or
poems that the whole people have &C.
cepted. Let me read for you little
song by man vine has written two or
three songs, nearlv every one of which
has become acceptable to the mass of
the Irish people, like the Wearing of
the Green and the "Colleen Bawn."
1t IS the lament Of an Irish wife III
America, who is mourning in a pathe-
tic way fol a dead child in Ireland:
am very happy in my home far, far across the
say,
am very happy, far from home in North
America.
It il only in the night, when Pat is sleeping by
my side,
1 lie awake and no one knows the big tears that
Icry,
For little voice still calls me back to my far,
far country,
And nobody can hear it speak, All nobody but
Many of the selections from the Irish
are sad IN this collection, but it is not
true that they were always so. Since
the Conquest they have all been pitched
in low tone, but before the Conquest
when Ireland was free country and
her people the teachers and leaders Of
Europe, the poetry of the Irish was not
sad even when tender. Here is the
'Boatman's Hymn
Bark that bears me through foam and squat,
You in the storm are my castle wall;
Though the sea should redden from bottom to
top,
From tiller to mast she takes no DROP
On the tide-top, the tide top.
WherrY aroon my land and store,
On the tide-top. the tide-top,
She is the boat can sail galore.
She dresses herself and goes gliding on T.
Like dame in her robes of Indian lawn;
For God has bless'd her, gunnel and whale.
And OF if you saw her stretch out to the Gale.
On the tide.top, the tide-top, etc.
Whiilan, ahoy! old heart of stone,
STOPPING so black DER the beach alone.
Answer me well on the bursting brine,
Saw you ever bark like mine?
On the tide-top the tide-top, etc.
Says William: "since first was made of
1 have looked abroad DER the beach alone,
But till today on the bursting brine.
Saw never bark like thine"
On the tide-top, the tide-top, etc.
"God of the air." the seamen shout.
When they see us tossing the brine about,
Give us the shelter of strand or rock.
Or through and through us she goes like a
shock!
On the tide-top, the tide-top etc.
The future world wants artists and
art above all, and the Gael is an artist
in spirit. The future world wants poetry
even more than it wants cotton or iron,
and the Gael is a spiritual poet. Ma
tions live therefore by the abstract
part. Cities decay, laws are forgotten,
governments pass away. but the song
of The poet and the art of the artist live
forever. ''Those who are most dear to
men, says Emerson, are not of the
class which the economist calls produc
ers; they have nothing in their hands; !
lhsy have not laid out colony nor in
vented lamp.
There is danger Of death in all imita-
ton. The native thing lives, aud that
only. The language of the Gael is dead,
but the Gael never dies, ana he shall
sing this English tongue of the future |
not only with his lips, but hissoul when
the foreign yoke Is removed from Ire
land. When her valleys ring with hap
by voices; when the long silence IS
broken by the whirr of busy wheels;
when treasures are dug from the earth |!
and fashioned into lovely art; when the
uets of the fishers in lough, river and !
ocean are burdened with heaping life; !
when the ships sail in aud out; when
Irish marblesand porphyries are carved
into precious fo1msof beauty or worked
into shapes of loneliness and use, then
there shall come poets to Ireland with
songs more sweet, and the voice OF tbs
el shall be heard through a thous-
ana years of triumph as it has been
heard through a thousand years of
pain.
Wedding Anniversaries.
The wedding anniversaries are named
IS follows: First year. cotton wedding;
second year, paper wedding; third year, |