The Legends of Saint Patrick

ONCE more our readers are indebted to a living poet for wide circulation of a volume of delightful verse. The name of Aubrey de Vere is the more pleasantly familiar because its...

The “Tripartite Life” thus ends:—“After these great miracles, therefore, after resuscitating the dead, after healing lepers, and the blind, and the deaf, and the lame, and all d...

But Milcho slept not all that night for thought, And, forth ere sunrise issuing, paced a moor Stone-roughened like the graveyard of dead hosts, Till noontide. Sudden then he sto...

Then entered they that darkness; and the wood Closed as a cavern round them. O’er its roof Leaned roof of cloud, and hissing ran the wind, And moaned the trunks for centuries ho...

The words that Patrick spake Were words of power, not futile did they fall: But, probing, healed a sorrowing people’s wound. Round him they stood, as oft in Grecian days, Some h...

There and then The Rite began: his people’s Chief and Head Beside the font Aengus stood; his face Sweet as a child’s, yet grave as front of eld: For reverence he had laid his cr...

Thus, gay or grave, Conversed they, while the Brethren paced behind; Till now the morn crowded each cottage door With clustered heads. They reached ere long in woods A hamlet sm...

Then Patrick, on whose face the princess bent The supplication softly strong of eyes Like planets seen through mist, Eochaid’s heart Knowing, which miracle had hardened more, Ma...

Dairè then, His tall frame boastful with that life renewed, Took with him men, and down the stone-paved hill Rode from his tower, and through the woodlands green, And bare with...

As Secknall sang, Nearer the Brethren drew. On Patrick’s right Benignus stood; old Mochta on his left, Slow-eyed, with solemn smile and sweet; next Erc, Whose ever-listening cou...

To Patrick then, Thus Victor spake: “Depart from Cruachan, Since God hath given thee wondrous gifts, immense, And through thy prayer routed that rebel host.” And Patrick, “Till...

That hour true life’s beginning was, O Lord, Because the work Thou gav’st into my hands Prospered between them. Yea, and from the work The Power forth issued. Strength in me was...