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A BALLAD UPON A WEDDING.

BY SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

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But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again, home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

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BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;

Whether we look, or whether we listen,

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;

Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,

And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;

The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys;

The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,

And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean

To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings
He sings to the wide world and she to her nest—
In the nice ear of nature, which song is the best?

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Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known as Father Prout, was born in Cork in 1804. Though he was a Jesuit priest, he was more of a literatus than a man of God. He is the author of the famous "Reliques Later he was of Father Prout," which he wrote for Frazer's Magazine. the Rome correspondent for the Daily News and the Paris correspondent of the Globe. He died in Paris in 1866. Among his poems the following is the only one worth mention:

With deep affection and recollection

I often think of those Shandon bells,

Whose sounds so wild would in the days of childhood
Fling round my cradle their magic spells.

On this I ponder, where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee;
With thy bells of Shandon,

That sound so grand on

The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

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