that Hyacinth
discerned figures in a semicircle, and a slim woman in a white dress
standing apart from the others near the fire. Then he heard a voice,
a singularly sweet voice, as it seemed to him, reciting with steady
emphasis on the syllables which marked the rhythm of the poem:

'Out there in the West, where the heavy gray clouds are
insistent,
Where the sky stoops to gather the earth into mournful
embraces,
Where the country lies saturate, sodden, round saturate
hamlets--

'Out there in the sunset where rages and surges Atlantic,
And the salt is commingled with rain over desolate beaches,
Thy heart, O beloved, is still beating--fitfully, feebly.

'Is beating--ah! not as it beat in the squadrons of Sarafield,
Exultantly, joyously, gladly, expectant of battle,
With throbs like the notes of the drums when men gather for
fighting.

'Beats still; but, ah! not as it beat in the latest Fitzgerald,
Nobly devote to his race's most noble tradition;
Or in Emmet or Davis, or, last on their list, in O'Brien.

'Beats fitfully, feebly. O desolate mother! O Erin!
When shall the pulse of thy life, which but flutters in
Connaucht,
Throb through thy meadows and boglands, and mountains and
cities?'

A subdued murmur of applause greeted the close of the recitation, and
praise more sincere than that with which politeness generally greets the
drawing-room performances of minor poets. Hyacinth joined in neither.
It seemed to him that the verses were too beautiful to speak about, so
sacred that praise was a kind of sacrilege. Perhaps some excuse may be
found for his emotion in the fact that for weeks he had heard no poetry
except the ode about 'wiping something off a slate.' The violence of the
contrast benumbed his critical faculty. So a man who was obliged to gaze
for a long time at the new churches erected in Belfast might afterwards
catch himself in the act of admiring the houses which the Congested
Districts Board builds in Connaught.

'I am afraid I must have bored you.' It was Miss O'Dwyer who greeted
him. 'I didn't see you and Mr. Maguire come in until I had commenced my
poor little poem. I ought to have given you some tea before I inflicted
it on you.'

'Oh,' said Hyacinth, 'it was beautiful. Is it really your own? Did you
write it?'

Miss O'Dwyer flushed. The vehement sincerity of his tone embarrassed
her, th