An Irish funeral of later days, with its attendant circumstances of poverty and gloom, is truly calculated to stir the sensitive heart of a poet. The obsequies display the meagre results of attempts to bury the dead with decency. The mourners are few, but their grief is sincere; and they weep for the lost as they would be wept for when Death, who is ever walking by their side, lays his cold hand on them. During the great famine, some poor wretches perished while preparing funerals for their friends. In the following verses, published in Howitt's Journal, of the 1st of April, 1847, we have a fine delineation of an Irish funeral, such as only a poet could give:— AN IRISH FUNERAL. BY THE AUTHOR OF "ORION." "Funerals performed."—_London_ Trades. "On Wednesday, the remains of a poor woman, who died of hunger, were carried to their last resting-place by three women, and a blind man the son-in-law of the deceased. The distance between the wretched hut of the deceased and the grave-yard was nearly three miles."—_Tuam Herald._ Heavily plod Highroad and sod, With the cold corpse clod Whose soul is with God! An old door's the hearse Of the skeleton corpse, And three women bear it, With a blind man to share it: Over flint, over bog, They stagger and jog:— Weary, and hungry, and hopeless, and cold, They slowly bear onward the bones to the mould. Heavily plod Highroad and sod, With the cold corpse clod, Whose soul is with God! Barefoot ye go, Through the frost, through the snow; Unsteady and slow, Your hearts mad with woe; Bewailing and blessing the poor rigid clod— The dear dead-and-cold one, whose soul is with God. Heavily plod Highroad and sod, This ruin and rod Are from man—and not God! Now out spake her sister,— "Can we be quite sure Of the mercy of Heaven, Or that Death is Life's cure? A cure for the misery, famine, and pains, Which our cold rulers view as the end of their gains?" Heavily plod Highroad and sod, With the cold corpse clod, Whose soul is with God!