"

'Holy Irish hills are bare,

Sunshine makes their only gold,
Flower and grass their jewels be,
Their sad music's the wild sea.
Purple lieth in their fold
Only of the mystic air!

"Tender Lady-Queen, the world
Ne'er will track thee to that shrine
Where the sea-birds sing thy praise,
And the windy_clouds upraise
Banners wove of rain and shine,
Star and moonbeam, never furled !"

Sayeth Mary: "Anywhere

I can draw the world at will,
Through the lonely singing sea,
Singing love perpetually,

To the blue 'tween hill and hill,

And the world shall praise me there.

AND still Good Friday brings you to my mind,
Cold, sunny, with the snow-flakes in the wind,
And you and I together listening

In the dim, crowded church to the solemn story
Of how He died for us, our Lord and King.
Year after year we were together, Dear,
Through the Good Friday sadness. Transitory
Are all things, only God: I linger here,
And you who kept His Passion keep His feast,
His happy Easter, with Him in His rest.

We used to go, when the Three Hours were done,
To your bright home, where there was always sun,
Under the hills, silent, a little grave,

But glad it was always good to be together,
You were so sweet to me, constant and brave.

Do you remember how we used to talk

In your flowering garden in the cold, bright weather?
And how the anemones sprang in the Dark Walk
Like the spring sky? This year nor any year
I shall not see them. Oh, my Dear, my Dear!

Little we thought on those Good Fridays past,
The bright days with the snow-flakes in the blast,
How your Good Friday nearer and nearer stole,
The day when you should bear Him company
With anguished body, desolated soul,

Should carry His cross with Him up Calvary Hill.
Now, from the anguish and the pain set free,
Remember me, who loved you, weep you still!
I know not round what turn o' the road may be
My own Good Friday and its beckoning Tree.

Oh, may I run to meet it with such faith,
Such heart-uplifting towards the painful death,
As yours, dead darling, whom we only knew
As a soft, tender woman! Who could tell
That He had given a hero's heart to you
To endure what He should lay upon you yet?
You who have fought the fight and fought it well,
Them who have yet to fight do not forget.
And still Good Friday brings you to my mind,
Cold, sunny, with the snow-flakes in the wind.

KATHARINE TYNAN.

245

MARGARET DREW

HE village of Kilbeg stands on a sloping eminence that commands a wide view of the surrounding country. It

TH

consists of two long streets, or what may be called streets for want of a more appropriate name, for the road contractor is a person unknown in this district. As far as my memory goes I have no recollection of ever having seen a single repair done in this forgotten, remote spot, where the poor cottages are left to decay and fall in over the heads of their inhabitants, and the children swarm along the straggling roadway that breasts the steep incline of this, the noisiest and dirtiest village I have ever beheld.

On the top of the hill stands the ruin of an old church that may have been famous long ago, and from its name would seem to have been of small proportions,-the word Kilbeg signifying "little church "—and which now consists of one roofless gable and the stout fragments of three walls in which the very openings for windows have been robbed of their finely chiselled stones, so that we cannot trace their former shape and are left to conjecture from the masonry alone to what period of architecture it belongs. Surrounding this grim ruin stand scattered tombstones, crooked, shapeless, broken and disfigured; a cross fallen from its socket, an image dismembered and presenting only a ludicrous appearance. Small mounds disclose the fact of recent burial, and here and there a mortuary wreath, hideous in its stiff parody of nature, still bespeaks remembrance of the mouldering dust beneath. The down of thistles and dandelions float lazily in the soft summer air, and sinks slowly where it will to propagate its species. There is no protecting wall to save these beds of death from the desecration of animals, and where our feet reverently stay their steps we see the hoof-marks of the lower creation that have all unwittingly trespassed on this hallowed spot.

The two streets, or double lines of houses which constitute the village of Kilbeg, stand at right angles to each other, the old ruin forming their point of junction, and from this point