"Thou hast a little harp--

How sweetly would it swell the angel's hymn:
Give me that harp." There burst a shuddering sob,
As if the bosom by some hidden sword

Were cleft in twain.

Morn came. A blight had struck

The crimson velvet of the unfolding bud;

The harp-strings rang a thrilling strain and broke-
And that young mother lay upon the earth,

In childless agony.

Again the voice

That stirred her vision:-"He who asked of thee
Loveth a cheerful giver." So she raised

Her gushing eyes, and, ere the tear-drop dried
Upon its fringes, smiled-and that meek smile,
Like Abraham's faith, was counted righteousness.

Charles Wolfe.

Born 1791

Died 1823

Was born in Dublin, in 1791. After leaving Trinity College, Dublin, he took orders in the Episcopal Church, and was first curate of Ballyclog, in Tyrone, which he afterwards exchanged for Donoughmore. He began writing verses while at the University, and in 1817 he wrote his ode on "The Burial of Sir John Moore," which has obtained for him one of the highest positions as a poetical writer. Wolfe died in 1823

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.
Nor a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeams' misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,

And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,

And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him-
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame, fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-
But we left him alone with his glory!

SONG.

IF I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee;

But I forgot, when by thy side,

That thou couldst mortal be:
It never through my mind had pass'd
The time would e'er be o'er,

And I on thee should look my last,
And thou shouldst smile no more!

And still upon that face I look,

And think 'twill smile again;

And still the thought I will not brook.
That I must look in vain!
But when I speak-thou dost not say
What thou ne'er left'st unsaid;
And now I feel, as well I may,

Sweet Mary! thou art dead!

O'er Judah's land Thy rainbow, Lord, shall beam,
And the sad city lift her crownless head;
And songs shall wake, and dancing footsteps gleam,
Where broods o'er fallen streets the silence of the dead.
The sun shall shine on Salem's gilded towers,
On Carmel's side our maidens cull the flowers,
To deck, at blushing eve, their bridal bowers,
And angel-feet the glittering Sion tread.

The born in sorrow shall bring forth in joy;
Thy mercy, Lord, shall lead Thy children home;
He that went forth a tender yearling boy,

Yet, ere he die, to Salem's streets shall come.
And Caanan's vines for us their fruits shall bear,
And Hermon's bees their honied stores prepare;
And we shall kneel again in thankful prayer,
Where, o'er the cherub-seated God, full blazed the
irradiate dome.

1792

Percy Bysshe Shelley. {Drowned 1822

THIS great but erring genius was the eldest son of a wealthy English baronet, and was born at Field Place, in Sussex, on 4th August 1792. From his earliest years he seems to have entertained opinions subver sive of all authority, human and divine. At Eton and Oxford he got into difficulties with the authorities, and at Oxford openly avowed himself an atheist. On leaving college he married Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London coffee-house keeper, by whom he had two children. She seems to have been respectable and well educated, and did all she could to gain an influence over the wayward poet. His family were deeply grieved by his conduct, the more so as in exposition of his atheistical principles, he openly set out for the Continent with Mary W Godwin, leaving his poor wife in misery and wretchedness. His wife committed suicide in 1816, after which he married Mary Godwin. Shelley began verse-writing in his fifteenth year, but it was not till his eighteentb year that he appeared before the public in his atheistic poem of "Queen Mab." His other pieces, "Alastor," "The Revolt of Islam," "Prometheus Unbound," "The Cenci," &c., are all tinged with the same ideas. In 1818 Shelley visited Italy, where he renewed his acquaintance with Byron. He took up his abode on the Gulf of Lerici. He was drowned on 8th July 1822, in a storm in the Bay of Spezzia. his remains were found, and, agreeably to a formerly expressed desire, his body was burnt, and the ashes conveyed to Rome, where they were buried in the Protestant burying-ground, near the pyramid of Caius Cestus

A fortnight after

A CALM WINTER'S NIGHT.

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which Love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow-
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pure beam-yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace,—all form a scene
Where musing Solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still.

THE PINE FOREST BY THE SEA.

WE wander'd to the Pine Forest

That skirts the ocean's foam;
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whisp'ring waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of heaven lay;

It seem'd as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scatter'd from above the sun
A light of Paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,-

And soothed by every azure breath

That under heaven is blown,