Why art thou gone from us, Soul of all beauty and joy? Now thou art gone the berry drops from the arbutus, The wind comes in from the ocean with wail and the autumn is sad, The yellow leaves perish, whirled wild whither no one can know. As the crisp leaves are crushed in the woods, so our hearts are crushed at thy parting; As the woods moan for the summer departed, so we mourn that we see thee no more. Why art thou gone from us, Soul of all beauty and joy? Into the twilight the last notes died away, and a lonely heron standing among the rushes at the edge of the tarn moved his head critically to one side as if waiting for another song with which to sympathise. But he was not the only listener. Far up among the purple crags Standish Macnamara was lying looking out to the sunset when he heard the sound of the chant in the glen beneath him. He lay silent while the dirge floated up the mountain-side and died away among the heather of the peak. But when the silence of the twilight came once more upon the glen, Standish arose and made his way downwards to where an old man with one of the small ancient Irish harps, was seated on a stone, his head bent across the strings upon which his fingers still rested. Standish knew him to be one Murrough O'Brian, a descendant of the bards of the country, and an old retainer of the Gerald family. A man learned in Irish, but not speaking an intelligible sentence in English. “Why do you sing the Dirge of Tuathal on this evening, Murrough?” he asked in his native tongue, as he came beside the old man. “What else is there left for me to sing at this time, Standish O'Dermot Macnamara, son of the Prince of Islands and all Munster?” said the bard. “There is nothing of joy left us now. We cannot sing except in sorrow. Does not the land seem to have sympathy with such songs, prolonging their sound by its own voice from every glen and mountain-face?” “It is true,” said Standish. “As I sat up among the cliffs of heather it seemed to me that the melody was made by the spirits of the glen bewailing in the twilight the departure of the glory of our land.” “See how desolate is all around us here,” said the bard. “Glenmara is lonely now, where it was wont to be gay with song and laughter; when the nobles thronged the valley with hawk and hound, the voice of the bugle and the melody of a hundred harps were heard stirring up the echoes in delight.” “But now all are gone; they can only be recalled in vain dreams,” said the second in this duet of Celtic mourners--the younger Marius among the ruins. “The sons of Erin have left her in her loneliness while the world is stirred with their brave actions,” continued the ancient bard.