THE DONOVANS.

If you would like to see the height of hospitality, The cream of kindly welcome and the core of cordiality; Joys of old times are you wishing to recall again?— Oh! come down to Donovan’s, and there you’ll meet them all again! Chorus. Cead mille failte[44] they’ll give you down at Donovan’s, As cheery as the spring-time, and Irish as the ceanabhan;[45] The wish of my heart is, if ever I had any one— That every luck in life may linger with the Donovans. Soon as you lift the latch, little ones are meeting you; Soon as you’re ’neath the thatch, kindly looks are greeting you; Scarce have you time to be holding out the fist to them— Down by the fireside you’re sitting in the midst of them! There sits the grey old man, so flaitheamhail[46] and so handsome, There sit his sturdy sons, well worth a monarch’s ransom; Songs the night long, you may hear your heart’s desire of them, Tales of old times they will tell you till you tire of them. There bustles round the room the lawhee-est[47] of vanithees,[48] Fresh as in her young bloom, and trying all she can to please; In vain to maintain you won’t have a deorin[49] more again— She’ll never let you rest till your glass is brimming o’er again. There smiles the cailin deas[50]—oh! where on earth’s the peer of her? The modest grace, the sweet face, the humour and the cheer of her? Eyes like the skies, when but twin stars beam above in them— Oh! proud may be the boy that’s to light the lamp of love in them. Then when you rise to go, ’tis “Ah, then, now, sit down again!” “Isn’t it the haste you’re in,” and “Won’t you come round soon again?” Your cothamor[51] and hat you had better put astray from them— The hardest job in life is to tear yourself away from them! Francis A. Fahy.