5
At ev'ning returning, as homeward he goes,
His heart soft with whisky, his head soft with blows,
With a sprig of shilelah and shamrock so green.
He meets with his Shelah, who blushing a smile,
Cries, “Get ye gone, Pat," yet consents all the
while,
To the priest then they go, and nine months after
that,
A fine baby cries out, “How dy'e do, father Pat,
With your sprig of shilelah and shamrock so green."
Bless the country, says I, that gave Patrick his
birth!
Bless the land of the oak and its neighbouring earth!
Where grow the shilelah and shamrock so green.
May the sons of the Thames, the Tweed and the
Shannen.
Drub the foe who dare plant on our confines a cannon:
United and happy at loyalty's shrine,
May the rose and the thistle long flourish and twine
Round a sprig of shilelah and shamreck so green.
———
DARBY MSHANES VISIT TO LONDON.
Tune—‘The Sprig of Shilelah.’
WITH a dozen thirteens in a nice paper bag,
I came up to London without a dry rag,
On a fine summer's day in a shower of rain;
But all that I saw I thought devilish queer;
At a place call'd Cheapside they sell every thing
dear;
I went to Cornhill, where I look'd like an ape,
