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Let us follow the advice of the poet who tells us

Take joy home

And make a place in thy great heart for her,
And give her time to grow, and cherish her,
Then will she come often and sing to thee,
When thou art working with the furrows aye,
Or weeding in the sacred hour of dawn.
It is a comely fashion to be glad-

Joy is the grace we say to God.

So let us keep a clear conscience and a nest of singing birds in our heart, and joy, firm and abiding, will be ours here and hereafter.

IN WAR TIME

Baby in beleaguered city,

Hush, oh hush that startled cry!
There is none to heed your calling,
While the shrieking shells are falling,
None to croon a lullaby.

Mother's gentle voice is silent;
She was coming when she fell,
Struck unconscious, slowly dying,
'Midst the deadly fragments lying,
Victim of the bursting shell.

Father fighting at the ramparts

Hears no sound but cannon's roar,
Mark for bullets, blinded, reeling,
Death upon him swiftly stealing,
He can sing to you no more.

Baby in beleaguered city,

May good angels hear your cry,
And on noiseless wings descending,
Lowly o'er your cradle bending,
Chant a Heav'nly lullaby!

ANNIE MARGARET PIKE.

ROGER BELLINGHAM

R

OGER BELLINGHAM was killed at the Front on the 4th of March. It comes to me now with a peculiar poignancy that we did not think of his being killed. There were others for whom we had such fears. They were so big that they must make ready targets: or there was some other reason. But for him we were not afraid.

I think now that there must have been in our minds some foolish, unshapen idea that Death would pass over one so boyish, so simple, so young in a sense as Roger Bellingham. As though this war had any mercy!

I shall always remember Roger Bellingham as a young fair boy, with an oddly transparent look and a peculiar quick smile. His face stands out extraordinarily clear and vivid even to one who has a sad forgetfulness of absent faces. He was on the staff of Lord Aberdeen during the latter years of Jis Viceroyalty. I can see him, hat in hand, when he came in attendance on Lady Aberdeen to some philanthropic meeting or other, and the smile with which he recognized a friend and came tip-toe for a whispered word of greeting. I have hardly any memory of his face when it did not smile.

The peculiar transparency of his looks-was it partly a certain delicacy? Or was it innocence? I think it was innocence. He looked, as I am sure he was, quite unsullied. Oh, yes, I remember him on this Eve of St. Patrick, when I write, in his gunner's uniform at the Trooping of the Colours in the Dublin Castle Yard St. Patrick's Day of last year. For a second I did not recognize him in the helmet and chin-strap. They seemed a too martial setting for the young smiling face.

One remembers others by things they said or did, in which a memory of their faces as they said or did counts for little or nothing. My memories of Roger Bellingham are like a series of portraits. I can always see his face and his smile.

One memory is of last May in London. We were on the way to Rome, he, his charming young wife and I. After breakfast at the Grosvenor Hotel he went out with me to make some small purchases, things left behind or forgotten in the hurry of departure. It was characteristically a May morning in London. Even London looked radiantly clean with the sunshine and the window-boxes and the general furbishing up: and there was the sweetness of flowers everywhere. He walked with me bareheaded. He was radiantly happy and the sun was upon him, so that many people as we passed turned to look after him. The prospect of the holidaywhich had already begun--exhilarated him amazingly. He radiated joy. He said to me as we went round the corner to the shops: "I am such a lucky fellow! I have always been so happy! Such a sweet little wife! Such dear little children!"

Again he is tip-toeing about Notre Dame and Notre Dame des Victoires in Paris. It is so easy to lose anyone in those great spaces: and the only thing to do, especially if you are purblind, is to wait till you are found. I can see his face now coming out of the dimness of the great churches, quite light and bright against the background, his straw hat in his hand. The smile came to his face as he recognized me. He had always said his prayers and lit his candle at the Shrine. He never went to these great fanes wholly as a sightseer.

Again we are flying in the Paris-Rome Express through the darkness and he is sitting opposite to me in the glittering little carriage of the train de luxe, telling me his hopes. He wanted to serve Ireland. His great desire was to be a Nationalist Member of Parliament. He poured it all out to me across the little table with its lit electric bulb, and I can see his face smiling against the background of gilding and satinwood while he talked of his hopes and dreams.

Again, it is twelve hours later, and we are running along the shores of the Gulf of Genoa. It is a clear-shining beautiful morning, and we are between the mountains and the sea. Sewing, writing materials and books litter the carriage, giving it a look of home, a little room where the domesticities. gather, rather than a common railway carriage. The little wife is sewing and he has put down his writing to tell me the name

XLIII. NO. 503.

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of this or that village or promontory or wooded hill, names of magic every one. It is a new-made world of blue and deep green and sun-baked marble palaces and grey olives and vineyards and little orchards with lemons growing on the boughs beautiful to the fulfilment of one's fairest dream. Presently I discover that this was the route of a weddingjourney and that this little bay and that little point are bathed for these children in a greater effulgence even than they have for me: for these two were always lovers, and it might have been their wedding journey so young and blissfully happy they One had to remind oneself that the wedding-journey was some years ago, and that the boy and girl are the parents of two beautiful children, for one of whom indeed the smock in the little mother's hands is a-making: for they seem too young, too much boy and girl to have done more than just begun their wedded life.

were.

Those three weeks in Rome were indeed a crowded hour of glorious life: and afterwards there was Florence and Naples and home by way of Switzerland. The time was packed with pleasure and just enough duty thrown in-he was acting as A.D.C. in attendance on the Countess of Aberdeen, who was presiding over the Quinquennial General Conference of the International Council of Women-to relieve the pleasure. No one ever did sight-seeing more thoroughly or junketed so gaily. I have pictures of him at High Mass at St. Peter's; at St. John Lateran's in the dusk, whence we came out to the smell of new hay blown in from the Campagna; at the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, at all manners of functions. eager as though he knew it was to be his very last holiday. Remembering his indefatigable going and doing, I say to myself that for the future when I see a young thing so eager to lay both hands on the cup of life, to drink all of joy that may be in one draught, I shall be afraid.

He was as

Let me add that in this merrymaking God was never forgotten. Roger Bellingham was humbly and sincerely pious. I have met him in full tide of gaiety coming in from early Mass and Holy Communion; and the great churches which he loved to visit knew his prayers and his bended knees, so that much of his pleasure-seeking in Rome might as fittingly be called pilgrimage.

After all the light on his face and the transparence or t might be that

"He hath a glory from that Sun,

Who falls not from Olympus hill."

Such a glory as might be on the face of a young knight keeping his vigil before the accolade falls upon him in the morning.

I have not heard how Roger Bellingham died, but I know that he died bravely. Somewhere in the dimness I can see him smiling still, his joy unspent. He was indeed, as he said, "a lucky fellow." "The sweet little wife and children." There is a reminiscence of Lord Edward Fitzgerald in it. Who shall say that he did not continue lucky? He believed greatly he loved greatly: he died greatly. No man though he live to three score and ten can have more than these.

KATHARINE TYNAN.

BLUE TIT'S SONG

Come, my dearest dearie 0,
Round the garden we shall go,
'Tis the Springtime heigh, high ho!
Chir-up, chir-up, cheery O!

'Mong the apple blossoms sweet
Caterpillars make retreat,

We shall rout them high and low
While we dance on heel and toe.

Then right merrily we'll sing:-
"Wake ye rosebuds, here is Spring!
Spread your petals pink and white!
Fill the earth with pure delight!"

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