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Irish Jesuit Province

MayAuthor(s): Agnes WhiteSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 29, No. 336 (Jun., 1901), pp. 330-331Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20499765 .

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330 THE IRISH MONTHLY

haze gathers thick, over Glasnevin; and a love and reverence that

do naot die, in the people's heart. At least the Liberator's feet

stood here on Tara, and past and present were linked by that, in

the endless golden chain of national consciousness.

The shadows are lengthening. The dew is beginning to fall.

The easterly breeze has dropped away, and an exquisite pellucid

clearness is on the land, faintly rosy now, as the sun sinks. What

a prospect it is! It was beautiful in the morning mistiness, how

much more now in the evening glory! So.we must leave the Hill to the wonder of the sunset and the magic mist of evening. It is

time for our drive back, through the scented lanes, to common life. The Hill seems to lie, wrapt about in its memories and dreams,

-waiting! Does it wait, the Royal Hill, for the foot of an Ardrigh

yet to come ? The legends tell that Finn and his chosen champions

lie sleeping in their country's earth, deep hidden, but awaiting

their time. In her hour of sorest, deepest need, they are to rise

and succour her. Will the old prophecy ever find a shadowy

fulfilment in the coming of one, wise, strong, and noble as the

old champions?

"To strive as they strove, yet retrieving

The Cause from all shadow of blame,

In the Congress of Peoples achieving

A place for our nation and name;

Not by war between brothers in blood,

But by glory made perfect through good."

At least, with such a dream shining fair before us, let us leave

the old Hill where we have lingered for a day of memories.

HELEN GRIERSON.

MAY

THROUGH sun-touched April showers the Spring

Has climbed her sweet uncertain way;

The birds sang in her following,

The year has slowly grown to May.

Beneath a roof of singing leaves,

Whose song the wandering winds repeat,

A river all its blown spray weaves

To moon-white blossoms at our feet.



NOTES ON NEW BOOKS 331

Love built a palace, gold and high; In that dim hollow ere Love went,

We let the sad old world go by In our sweet wonder and content.

The music of the wandering wind The beauty of a hundred Springs

All found in May-time warm and kind

Were made for dear rememberings.

No May shall ever build again Those broken palace walls-though 'sweet

The Springtime in a misty glen,

The moonlight water at our feet.

AGNE S WHITE.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS

1. Pastorals of Dorset. By M. E. Francis (Mrs. Francis

Blundell). London: Loncman, Green & Co. (Price 6s.)

This is the newest addition to the long list of bright and

wholesome stories that we owe to a gifted Irishwoman. What a list that is already, thou4h it is not many years since Mrs.

Blundell published In a North Country Village. Then there

came . Whither? and The Story of Dan, annd A Daughter of the Soil (with whicb The Times first broke away from its

century-old traditions), and after that laigne o' the Corner.

and Frieze and Futstian, and Among the Untrodden Ways, and

Miss Erin, and The Daenna of a Genius, and Yeoman

Fleetwood, and no doubt some others. Like three of these plea

sant volumes the present one is made up of short stories which

Mrs. Blundell has the knack of making extremely interesting. The first of these " Pastorals has a special right to the name,

for it relates to an old broken-down shepherd and a serious crisis in his life. The incident might be told in two or three sentences,

but here it is set before us with a skill that is really adnirable, a

quiet pathos that breaks now and then into a smile. For Mrs. Blundell does not deal with rustic tragedies, though there is plenty of feeling and thought in her idyllic tales. This new collection talks a good deal in the Dorsetshire dialect, just as In a North



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