CHAPTER XXXII.

EXEUNT OMNES.

It is spring again, and ten years have passed since that sunny April day when we saw Carl Yorke come home from his travels--ten years lacking a month, for it is early in March. The afternoon is as still as any afternoon can be in a city. Not a twig trembles on the bare trees, not a spray swings on the dry vines that drape all the balcony railing. The sky is of a uniform gray, and so thick that it seems to contain a deluge of snow. But the day is not a gloomy one. The shadow seems protecting and tender, as when the small birds are covered in the nest beneath the downy breast of the mother-bird.

Standing on the pavement in front of Mrs. Yorke’s drawing-room windows, one can catch glimpses of warmer color within, bright curtains and cushions, and the soft crimson glow that comes from an open fire.

A tall, broad-shouldered man comes to one of these windows, nearly filling it, and looks out at the sky. He has a long beard streaked with gray, and thick black hair streaked with gray is pushed back from his sober, sunburnt face. While he makes his observations on the weather, a slight figure of a woman comes to his side, drawing more closely about her a white Shetland shawl, and giving a dainty little shiver. She has a delicate face, and the hair that shows under the black lace scarf she wears is a bright bronze, mingled with silver.

“Then you do not think we shall have a great storm, Rudolf,” she says, with another shiver. Mrs. Amy Yorke likes warmth and warm colors, and only to see such a day chills her.

“No, dear!” (Captain Cary always calls his mother-in-law “dear,” being forbidden on his peril to call her mother). “This great parade of getting up a storm seldom amounts to much. When it’s going to storm, it storms, and doesn’t stop to threaten. We may have a little flurry, though, but it will be fair weather to-morrow.”

“I do not care on our account,” Mrs. Yorke says. “We are all very happy and comfortable, thank God! but I pity the poor.”

They retire, and presently another gentleman approaches the window, and looks out. At first glance, one might think that Mr. Yorke has not changed in ten years. The hair is scarcely more gray, the face scarcely more wrinkled. But the second glance detects a certain pallor of age, which has displaced the former bilious tint. A young woman, dressed in gay, outlandish-looking silk, comes to his side. A profusion of black curls are gathered back from her brunette face, and fastened with a garnet chain, and a band of large garnets, _en cabochon_, is clasped round her neck.

“Papa,” she says, “what do you see overhead?”

“Clouds,” replies Mr. Yorke.

She gives his arm a little squeeze. “Oh! but I don’t mean that.”

“What! you are playing Polonius to me?” asks Mr. Yorke. “Well, it is neither like a camel, nor a weasel, nor a whale; it is a tent.”

“Oh! papa!” cries Clara, “put on your spectacles, your second-sighted ones. You have no eyes at all. In that sky I see crops for the fields, billows of grass, heaps of leaves for the trees, foaming torrents for all the brook-channels, and no end of violets, dandelions, buttercups, and ‘other articles too numerous to mention.’”

Both turn their heads, with an affectionate smile, as Mr. Yorke’s youngest daughter takes his other arm, and leans against his shoulder.

Hester’s dress is black. Not a tinge of color nor an ornament breaks the sombre monotony of her costume. But a white _ruche_ at the throat and wrists shows that her widow’s weeds have been long worn, and the smile on her lips, though plaintive, is not without a dawn of returning contentment. It is now three years since Hester took her children, and came back to live with her father and mother.

Why should we stand on the pavement? Open, sesame! We enter. The whole family are gathered, and it is a gala-time; for Captain Cary and his wife have just returned from their last voyage, and are going to settle down in a home with foundations more stable than green, wind-rolled waves; and, a greater event still, Carl and his wife have just arrived from a four-years’ sojourn abroad. The family are all very proud of Carl--not because he has represented his country at a foreign court, not even because he has done so with singular ability, but because he has been so truly just and honorable as to have offended prejudiced partisans on both sides, and won the applause of the few who believe that a man need not blush to be called a traitor to his party, so long as he is true to God.

“I am glad to see you with the minority, sir,” Mr. Yorke had said in welcoming him home; “and to see that you can stand there quietly, as well as firmly. I am tired of splutter.”

“I hope, sir,” Carl replied, smiling, “that you would not object to my being with the majority, if the majority were right.”

Mr. Yorke shrugged his shoulders, and made one of his favorite quotations: “_Il y a à parier que toute idée publique, toute convention reçue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand nombre._”

But, though forced to resign his position, Carl is not without a vocation. He speaks and writes; and, such is the charm of his tongue and pen, persons most severely castigated by them listen and read with a sort of pleasure. If one must be dissected, there is surely a certain satisfaction in finding the hand skilful and the scalpel bright.

There is, indeed, danger that Carl might be too sharp, were it not for his wife. But Edith is his first reader, and often, through her influence, a sentence is softened, a sarcasm struck out.

“Love is stronger than hate,” she would say. “You have done only half the good you might do, if, in convincing a man’s reason, you at the same time inflame his will against you. You may make him hate a truth of which he was before ignorant.”

This is one of the couples which rests the heart to see in this world of discordant matches. Every taste and instinct is so in harmony that all the smaller business of life goes on without that jar which, in so many lives, makes a wrangle of pettinesses, and withdraws the attention from all that is noble. And, in higher characteristics, there is only that difference which enables each one to correct the mistakes of the other.

Edith Yorke, at thirty-one, has not yet lost, she probably never will lose, the simple earnestness of her childhood. It is the same bud blossomed, and so fresh and lovely is she, they call her the Rose of Yorke. She was much admired abroad. No other lady had combined so sweet a stateliness, and such wit, with incorruptible piety.

“I think,” she said, “that the reason why, while I kept my place in society, I never once yielded to any pernicious dissipation or extravagance, was because I was constantly afraid that I should.”

The evening shuts in, the curtains are drawn, and the room is in a glow. The wind has risen suddenly, and the snow is coming down, beating sharply with its tiny lances on the window-panes. But the family only feel more keenly the delight of being all together and at home.

“How cosy it is!” exclaims Clara, with a sigh of immense content, as she hears the doors and windows rattle. “One feels so comfortable in-doors when one knows that everybody out-doors is uncomfortable.”

Mrs. Yorke, seated in her own especial chair, with Captain Cary beside her, talks over housekeeping affairs with him, commends his wish to live in the suburbs instead of the city, and does not doubt that he will find fanning a delightful occupation.

Mrs. Yorke cannot now be made to acknowledge that she ever objected to the sailor as a son-in-law. “Why, what should we do without him?” she asks. “We should feel quite lost without this dear Hercules of ours.”

Somewhat withdrawn, at one side, Carl is talking to Hester about her boys. He advises her to send them to a private Catholic school, and she has almost consented. She will ultimately consent. Opposite them, Edith and Melicent talk together. Doctor Stewart is kept at home by a rheumatism, which will not allow him to brave March storms, and no one very much regrets his absence, least of all the doctor himself. His efforts to prevent the whole family from toppling over into Catholicism have not been agreeable to them nor to him, and in their intercourse they feel a constant restraint. But Melicent is highly pleased by the cordial interest with which Edith has inquired concerning all her husband’s symptoms, and, wishing to say something complimentary in return, observes, “I am charmed with your little girl. She will be a great belle some day.”

“God forbid!” Edith exclaimed involuntarily.

Melicent recollected herself. “Yes, to be sure, it is a position full of temptations. Still, she cannot help being admired.”

Edith’s face was very serious. “It is my dearest hope that my Eugénie may be a religious,” she said, with a soft suffusion of her eyes. “She would be such a lovely offering! Of course, I cannot tell what the will of God may be; but if it should be this, I shall be happy.”

“But how would Carl like it?” Melicent asked.

“When I first mentioned it to him, he recoiled,” was the answer. “But when he thought more of it, he became reconciled, and now he desires it as much as I do. We both feel that we would like to present unspotted to God that which is to us most sweet and precious. It may be the partial fondness of parents for their only child, but it seems to us that she is too beautiful for anything else.”

There was a chorus of children’s voices from the next room, where Betsey Bates and a French _bonne_ were entertaining the little ones, and presently the door was opened, and a little boy came in, went to Mrs. Amy Yorke, and leaned on her lap. This child’s face told at once who he was. Brown, ruddy, black-eyed, with thick black hair which constantly fell over his forehead, gay and daring was this four-year-old sailor. He was ocean-born and ocean-bred, he had played with babes of all nations, chattered childish words in many a tongue, and was at home everywhere. His mother privately called him Captain Kidd; and his father had often sung to him the ballad of that wicked sailor, when they sat on deck as their ship cleaved the wave, and the fresh breeze sang in the rigging.

But, when night came on, there was one song that the child always asked for, and his mother always sang before he slept. Many a distant sea had heard that tender evening hymn to the Virgin, _Ave Sanctissima_, which the mother sang in a tremulous voice, mindful of home, and of the many dangers in her path. And, after a while, it became a tacit understanding, that, when at evening he saw the boy in his mother’s arms, with his blooming cheek laid close to hers, and their black locks flowing indistinguishably together, Captain Cary should come and stand, with bared head, beside the two, and listen as though to a prayer while the hymn was sung. Gradually his prejudices had worn away; and when he saw that mother and son, so dear to him, and so inseparable, he recognized the sacred and indissoluble union of the Divine Son with his Immaculate Mother. “Besides,” the sailor reasoned in his own mind, “there must be something more than commonly good in that religion which claims such devotion from Dick Rowan and Edith Yorke, and which my Clara thinks as good as any, and a little better.”

“I am glad that we are going to have a real home for the child, and make a citizen of him,” his father said, as the boy went slowly toward the door again. “Clara and I have been a little too easy with him, I am afraid.”

“It is odd,” Mrs. Yorke remarked, “that of my daughters, Hester, the softest, should be quite strict with her children, while Clara, whom I should have thought would need a warning not to be so, is almost too indulgent.”

“I could have told you that,” Captain Cary answered, glancing across the room to where his wife talked with her father. “Clara’s heart melts only too readily, I always knew. I never mistook her disposition. And, if she is literary, she can darn stockings the most neatly, and make a room look prettier, and get up the best little supper of any woman I know.”

Charlie Cary, loitering toward the door, had scarcely reached it, when it was pushed open, and--was it a human child, or a fairy, who entered, and flitted across the room into Edith Yorke’s arms? A little girl of five years, softly white and dainty, golden-haired and hazel-eyed, and so exquisite in shape that one examined her with delight. Her motions were full of a captivating grace, her voice silvery-fine. She was vowed to the Virgin, and wore only white and blue.

Charlie stopped inside the door to stare at her. He always did follow her about, and watch her, as though she were some strange, rare bird. He seldom volunteered to speak to her, and touched her with timid care, like something he feared to break.

Carl Yorke crossed the room, and leaned on the back of his wife’s chair. One could not see a more perfect group.

Edith bent over the child, her braids of shadowed gold touching the pure gold ringlets. “What does mamma’s little girl want?” she asked.

The child, smilingly aware that all eyes were upon her, but too much accustomed to love to be abashed by their gaze, lisped out her question: “Isn’t Philip, and Charlie, and all of ’em got guardian-angels?”

“Yes, my love!” answered Edith.

“There!” cried the child, with a glance of sparkling triumph at Charlie.

She ran to him, and put her white arms around his neck in a hug of congratulation, then, as light as air, whisked herself behind him.

“You’s got an angel, and he stands just so, and tells you what to do,” she said.

She stood on tiptoe, showing a pink and white face beside his, and two tiny hands on his shoulder. Then, with a bewitching laugh, she ended her pantomime, and ran back to her mother.

Charlie did not take it well. “I haven’t got any old angel,” he said doggedly. “My mother tells me where to go, and _Ave Sanctissima_ takes care of us nights.”

A vivid red shot across Clara’s face as she drew the boy to her. “It is true, Charlie, and I will tell you all about it soon,” she said.

Should Edith’s child, should any other mother’s child, go guarded by angels, and upheld by a religious trust, and her son be like a heathen? All she had taught him had been such as pleased her fancy only. _Sanctissima_ had been but a beautiful object to paint and sing, not a real being to whom honor was due. “I’ll have Father Rasle baptize this child before he is a week older!” she resolved.

Edith held out her hand to the boy, and looked at him with a beaming smile. “Come, darling, and tell me about _Sanctissima_,” she said.

“I’ve no objection,” Captain Cary said later that night, when his wife asked his permission to have their child baptized by a priest. “But you needn’t fret, Clara, at the boy’s speaking so. It is more natural that a little yellow-haired girl should take to religion, than that a great bouncing boy should.”

Father Rasle, it should be said, was at this time the pastor of a city church.

This little scene ended, “I am glad to see, Clara,” her father said, “that in what you write lately, you employ less pure color for your men and women, and use secondaries and tertiaries more. There is, of course, a vast difference between the good and bad; but in this life, whatever they may become in the next, all are human.”

“And yet,” she replied, “I am sometimes criticised for putting spots on the sun, and giving an amiable trait to my villain. The pretext for the criticism is that perfect examples and perfect warnings are wanted. I think, however, that the spots on the sun give most offence.

‘And if Jove err, who dare say Jove doth wrong?’”

“Nevertheless, stick to your tertiaries,” Mr. Yorke said, with a decided nod. “The lump of glass that, seeing a flaw in the diamond, went and smashed itself all to pieces, would have smashed itself to pieces if it had not seen the flaw in the diamond. It merely used that as a pretext for what it was predetermined to do. It is one thing to admire an ideal character, and another thing to imitate it; and many a lazy and insincere moralist would be delighted to have you paint all your good characters so extremely good that he could at once prove his piety by applauding, and his modesty by not striving to emulate. There are, of course, exceptions, dear souls who love to look at unadulterated goodness; but they are so charitable they will forgive you the spots on the sun, and so truthful they will not require you to be false in order to please them. My belief is that those persons do great good whose occasional missteps excite our courage to imitate the virtues by which they retrieve themselves. There are other stronger beings, who are outwardly without a fault; but they are exceptional, about in the proportion of salt to your porridge. Suppose that I were advised to go to the top of a high mountain. ‘I cannot go,’ I say. My mentor points to a man who stands on the summit. ‘Perhaps he was born there,’ I reply. ‘Not so!’ says mentor. ‘He climbed: see the steps!’ ‘But,’ I still object, ‘he must be so much stronger than I am. I should fall before I were half-way up.’ ‘He was as weak as or weaker than you,’ says my adviser; ‘and he fell after a dozen steps, and fell again and again; yet, there he is!’ Don’t you see that if anything would take me up the mountain-top, that would? No, Clara, I think that, in the long run, it’s best to tell the truth. There may be ignorant souls who will thrive for a while on pretence; but let them once find out that you have once pretended, no matter how good the motive, and, from their very ignorance, they will never be able to trust you again. If you want to be politic, honesty is the best policy.”

“If people wouldn’t classify one so!” sighed the young woman pathetically. “The science and order that are abroad appall me. You cannot say nor do the smallest thing, but instantly somebody pounces on you, and pins a label on your back before you can take breath. One would think that we were dried specimens. Say that you sometimes fancy your departed friends may hear you speak, you are without delay set down as a spiritist, a table-tipper, a planchette-roller, a spirit-seer, and everything that follows; say that you think Catholics, and even priests, have some little chance of being saved, presto! you are a Papist, you are a Jesuit, you are going to poison Protestants, you want the Pope to be president of the United States, you are going to muzzle the press, shut up the public schools, destroy the Bible, put an end to free speech, etc.; send Bridget to get your husband’s slippers, instead of going after them yourself, and oh! you woman’s-rights woman, you! How you are going to abuse your husband! How you are going to let him eat cold dinners, wear ragged stockings, and come to grief generally! Labelled you must be, if you put your nose above the earth. And how your dear friends like to pin on the little pieces of paper, and give you a pat at the same time, so that the pin shall prick! There’s Miss Minerva, who wants to pick me to pieces, and, at the same time, keep up a reputation for charity, goes round telling everybody, and me among them, that I am impressionable, using the word in a tone that makes it mean unprincipled, of no stability, frivolous, inconstant; and that, because I have eyes and a heart, I was delighted to find in a newspaper, not long ago, a little extract which I am going to send her: ‘A strong mind is more easily impressed than a weak one; you shall not as easily convince a fool that you are a philosopher, as a philosopher that you are a fool.’ Papa, I insist on being eclectic!”

“Take breath, my daughter, take breath!” said Mr. Yorke apprehensively.

Mrs. Clara took breath, and switched the last part of the conversation off the track. “_A propos_ of colors!” she said. “You remember I always liked to find out the relations of things, and had the idea of a trinity in everything, before I heard of Delsarte. And, by the way, I do not think that the theory is original with him. It seems to me I have heard it before. You know how he does; groups everything in threes, the parts of which are co-existent, co-efficient, and co-necessary, and, as an instance, gives space, motion, and time, neither of which can be computed without the aid of the other two. See how I figure my Trinity with the three colors: the color which signifies the Father is blue, the contemplative color, the color of infinite space in which the creation floats, the intellectual color, the color of faith; the ensign of the Son is red, which is sacrifice and love; yellow is for the Holy Spirit, and is the illuminating color. It is also the color chosen by the Pope, who is the human voice of the Holy Spirit. United, these three form white, which is the seal of the Trinity. White is rest, peace, and bliss.”

“You are, then, a Catholic!” Mr. Yorke said, looking with keen eyes into his daughter’s face.

She blushed, and was embarrassed. “Æsthetically, papa!”

He dropped his eyes, and a slight frown settled on his forehead.

“Papa,” she said earnestly, “there is nothing else!”

He smiled, but said nothing.

“Would you be displeased if I should be one in earnest?” she asked.

“I should be glad!” her father replied, and rose abruptly to meet Melicent, who was going home.

The others withdrew, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Yorke with Edith and Carl. They gathered closely together before the fire, the parents sitting between their children, and, with hand clasped in hand, talked lovingly and seriously far into the night.

When they parted, all had shed tears, but they were not tears of sorrow.

“Good-night, my dear parents,” Edith said, embracing them. “You have made me happy for all my life, and yourselves happy for all eternity. I do not wonder that you find it hard to take such a step, and renounce before the world the religion which you have professed all your lives. You are not cowards; you have been willing to suffer that Catholics might have their rights; but, you know, ‘obedience is better than sacrifice.’”

“Perhaps it is a whim,” Mrs. Yorke said; “but I would like to be baptized by that dear young man I used to love so, Mr. Rowan.”

“Young man!” Carl said, smiling. “He and I are about the same age, and I am forty-three.”

“Forty-three!” echoed his mother in surprise. “And I am over sixty! Charles, we are entering on our service at the eleventh hour. We will not wait for Mr. Rowan. Let us not delay beyond to-morrow.”

“Good-night, children!” said Mr. Yorke. “Yes, Amy.”

The next day was Sunday, and Carl and Edith went to High Mass. Captain Cary’s “flurry” had passed with the night, and not a cloud was to be seen. Little heaps and drifts of snow hid under fences and trees, but the pavement was wind-swept. The sun shone joyously, and, not far from it, a waning moon dissolved in its light.

There was the dear old church again, and, just going in under the portal, Mrs. Rowan-Williams. She took holy water, and bowed before entering her pew. The same hands were on the organ-keys, the same soprano, bright as a sunbeam, broke through the cloud of bass and alto, the same slow wreath of white-robed boys curled silently, like incense, about the sanctuary, there were the same faces at the altar. It was like coming home again.

But, before the _Veni Creator_, who was this coming from the sacristy, palm to palm, draped in folds of spotless whiteness, and showing, even now, through his measured steps, a familiar swing and freedom? The chestnut hair, cut short, exposed the forehead, the face was slightly thin, but bright and healthy.

The glance this priest cast over the congregation, as he went toward the pulpit, was peculiar. It took in the number of his hearers, but you would say that he saw their souls, not their bodies. So many waiting souls to whom he was to carry a message. Self so completely annihilated that even humility was forgotten, he went on, wrapped in calm obedience, to speak the word that was given him.

The subject of the sermon was the uses of pain; the argument, that all real good comes through pain. The speaker’s voice was so clear and strong that it was heard without effort on his part or the listener’s, his tone was conversational, and his illustrations came naturally from his old sea-life.

Real confidence in God can be shown, he said, only when we are blind, and cannot see how our sufferings are to lead to any good end. Then trust is possible, is deserving, is saving. Then we learn quickly the lesson that God would teach us, and take a higher place. Our Master does not put back any soul. If it remain long in the region of trouble, it must be through its own stubbornness.

“We all suffer too much, because we afflict ourselves in trying to escape pain, when we cannot escape it. The chalice of this bitter sacrament is never empty, and never set aside. Friends and foes alike give it into our hands, our dearest and kindest press it to our lips, unaware, or in their own despite; the messenger of God presents it. It is useless to struggle, for we cannot escape; it is foolish to struggle; for in the bottom of that cup of bitterness is a heavenly draught of sweetness.

“Lessons are on every side, the whole creation preaches to us. Even the building of a ship is like the building of a saint. The pine and the oak grow in the forest, they grow in rain and sunshine, they swing their branches in the wind, and rock the birds to rest. What is their end? To grow, and then to decay, and feed the roots of succeeding trees with their crumbling remains. They grow only to decay, and wish no better, and know no better, and, if better come, it must come from some outside, wiser will.

“When the woodman appears, he is an object of terror, fancy, the Manichee would tell you. At the blows of the axe, the whole tree shivers, it trembles in every leaf, it falls with a groan. But its tortures are not ended. The saw, the plane, the shave, the auger, the adze, do each their work; and the mourning tree says, ‘I was made to be tormented. I am covered with ruin, and good shall no more come to me.’ Ah, then, how happy seem the far-away, peaceful woods! how dear the little nests that have been clipped off, and the intertwining branches of neighboring trees!

“But we are not like the tree. We know what hand lays us low, and clips off the unruly wishes, the foolish, twittering hopes.

“Look at the home of the iron! It lies in darkness and mystery underground, and hears the small streams trickle down or bubble up. It knows and wishes no better. The miner comes with his pick, the dark ore is dazzled with alien sunshine, is tortured by fire. In its agony it becomes more terrible than fire, and presses and glows to destroy. It replies with sparks to the blows of the hammer.

“Oh! for the cool dark, the whispering stream, the moveless rock and earth! Its pain is to no end but that it may suffer, and ruin has come.

“But we are not like the senseless iron. We know what Divine Miner digs us out of our abasement, shows us the light of truth, and moulds us into shape.

“At last the ship is built; its different elements are united into one harmonious being; and then it fancies that it understands all. It exults over the dull tree standing with its roots in earth, over the brutish ore buried in the darkness. It stands in its stocks, and grows in beauty, looks at the shining river that flows and sings for ever, and sees the children play, and the days go by.

“But the end is not yet. Some summer morning the workmen come to strike its props away. The tide comes up, and its song is the song of the siren; a crowd gathers to mock at its ruin. It was raised, then, only to be more cruelly cast down. One support after another is struck away, prop after prop falls. The ship shudders, it has learnt nothing from its lesson, it moans, it slips slowly, then rapidly, then it plunges--whither? Into annihilation? No! into its own proper element at last, into the bosom of the deep. The tides bear it up, the winds of heaven wing its course; at last it is of use.

“Take comfort, brethren, in your pain. He who permits it knows well how hard it is to bear. When you are nailed to your cross, the glorified flesh of the Man-God remembers its own agony. And, suffer not only trustingly, and with resignation, but suffer with courage. If you shrink and cover your eyes, you have hidden a ghost in your life. When a sorrow comes to you, look it in the face; and, by-and-by, the mask shall fall off, and you will see the face of an angel.”

We have given but a sketch. The words are dry, but the sermon was full of life.

When Carl and his wife walked homeward, Edith did not speak for a long time. Whenever her husband looked at her, she was gazing straight forward, and seemed absorbed in thought.

“Well, Edith,” he said at length, “what is it?”

She looked up into his face with those eyes so childlike still.

“I was wondering, Carl,” she said, “how I could ever have presumed to call him Dick!”

And so we leave our Edith, as we found her, wondering.

FRAGMENTS OF EARLY ENGLISH POEMS ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN.

To Catholics ... it is a joy and a solace to look back into past centuries, and remember that there were days when our poets drank of a purer fount than that of Castaly; and made it their pride to celebrate in their verse, not Dian nor Proserpine, but the Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Of Chaucer’s devotion to this theme, I have already spoken, but other poets before his time delighted in dedicating their verses to her who, as she inspired the most exquisite designs of the artist’s pencil, has also claimed not the least beautiful productions of the poet’s pen. Thus, one sings of her as ‘Dame Lyfe,’ and describes how

“As she came by the bankes, the boughs eche one, Lowked to the Ladye, and layd forth their branches, Blossoms and burgens (new shoots) breathed ful swete, Flowres bloomed in the path where forth she stepped, And the gras that was dry greened belive.”

Others, according to their quaint fashion, mixed up English and Latin rhymes in a style which, barbarous as it is, is certainly not deficient in harmony. One little poem, ascribed to a writer in the reign of Henry III., commences thus:

“Of all that is so fayr and bright, Velut maris stella; Brighter than the day is light, Parens et puella. I crie to The, Thou se to me, Levedy, preye the Sone for me, Tam pia, That Ich mote come to The, Maria.”

--_Christian Schools and Scholars._

THE LEGENDS OF OISIN, BARD OF ERIN.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

VI.

OISIN’S GOOD CONFESSION.

Not seldom, crossed by bodings sad, In words though kind yet hard Spake Patrick to his guest, Oisin; For Patrick loved the Bard

In whose broad bosom, swathed with beard Like cliffs with ivy trailed, A Christian strove with a pagan soul, And neither quite prevailed.

Silent as shades the shadowing monks O’er cloistral courts might glide; But the War-Bard strode through the church itself Like hunter on mountain-side.

Yea, sometimes, while his beads he told, Fierce thoughts, a rebel breed, Burst up from the graves of his warriors dead, And he stormed at priest and Creed.

His end drew nigh. ’Twas after years Had proved stern warnings vain, When dying he lay on his wolf-skin bed, And murmured a warlike strain.

The Saint drew near: he gazed; then spake, “A fair child died one day: Four weeks had passed; yet, changeless still, Like a child asleep he lay.

“They could not hide him in the ground Though hand and heart were chill, For round his lips the smile avouched The soul was in him still.

“Then lo! a man of God came by And stood beside the bier, And spake, ‘A pagan house is this; And yet a saint lies here!

“‘God shaped this child his praise to sing To a blind and pagan race; And till that song is sung, in heaven He may not see God’s face.’

“Then thrice around that child he moved With circling censer-cloud, And touched with censer fire his tongue, And the dead child sang aloud.

“Oisin! like larks beside thy Lee, So loud he sang his hymn: And straight baptized he was, and died; And, dead, his face grew dim.

“So then, since Christ had caught to heaven The fair soul washed from sin, A little grave they dug, and laid The little saint therein.

“And ever as fell the night, that grave Shone like the Shepherds’ star, With happy beam that homeward drew The wanderer from afar.

“Oisin! thy Land is as that child! Thou call’st her dead--thy Land; For cold is Fionn, thy sire; and he, He was her strong right hand!

“And cold is Oscar now, thy son: Her mighty heart was he-- Oisin! let dead at last be dead; Let living, living be!

“Her great old Past is gone at last: Her heavenlier Future waits, Yet entrance never can she find Till Faith unbars the gates.

“Prince of thy country’s songful choir! Thou wert her golden Tongue! Sing thou her New Song--‘I believe!’ Give thou to God her Song!

Then suddenly that old man stood, And made his arms a cross: Within his heart a light that changed The earth to dust and dross:

And, pierced by beams from those two hands Of Jesus crucified, His Erin of two thousand years Held forth her hands, and died:

For all her sceptres by a Reed That hour were overborne; And all her crowns went down, that hour, Before the Crown of Thorn.

As shines the sun through snowy haze Oisin’s white head forth shone: “In God the Father I believe,” He sang, “and Mary’s Son:”

And, onward as the swan-chaunt swept Adown the Creed’s broad flood, In radiance waxed his face, as though He saw the face of God.

Then Patrick, with his wondering monks, Knelt down, and said, “Amen,” While slowly dropped a sun that ne’er Saw that white head again.

The rite complete, the old man sank, And turned him on his side: Next morning, as the Lauds began, “My Son,” he said, and died.

A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR.