"THE SLEEP THAT KNOWS NOT BREAKING.'

SOLDIER, rest! thy warfare o'er,

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking: Dream of battle-fields no more,

Days of danger, nights of waking.

In our isle's enchanted hall

Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,

Fairy strains of music fall,

Every sense in slumber dewing.

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,

Dream of fighting-fields no more:

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.

No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armour's clang, or war-steed champing,
Trump nor pibroch summon here

Mustering clan, or squadron tramping.
Yet the lark's shrill fife
may come

At the day-break from the fallow,
And the bittern sound his drum,
Booming from the sedgy shallow.
Ruder sounds shall none be near,

Guards nor warders challenge here,
Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing,
Shouting clans or squadrons stamping.

A A

Id.

MOORE.

1780-1852.

PRINCIPAL WORKS:-Odes and Epistles, 1806-Irish Songs and Melodies, 1813, which at once secured the popular favour-Lalla Rookh, 1817, containing four poems or tales charmingly connected by the intervention of the lady, who gives her name to the whole production, and her princely lover who prefers to win the affections of his mistress in the disguise of a humble bard, and recites these romantic tales in verse for her special amusement. They are severally entitled The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Paradise and the Peri, The Fire-Worshippers, and The Light of the Harem of which The Fire-Worshippers is perhaps the most interesting. Lalla Rookh is a rich and fascinating collection of Oriental romance. Its most remarkable feature is its wonderful fidelity to Eastern manners and imagery.-The Loves of the Angels, and Fables of the Holy Alliance, 1823: the former founded on 'the Eastern story of the angels Harut and Marut, and the rabbinical fictions of the loves of Uzziel and Shamchazai, which are related with graceful tenderness and passion, but with too little of the "angelic air.""

Moore was the author of numerous sonnets and occasional pieces.

LALLA ROOKH.

THE HAREEM.

WHILE thus he thinks, still nearer on the breeze
Come those delicious, dream-like harmonies,
Each note of which but adds new downy links
To the soft chain in which his spirit sinks.
He turns him toward the sound, and far away
Through a long vista, sparkling with the play
Of countless lamps,-like the rich track which day
Leaves on the waters, when he sinks from us;
So long the path, its light so tremulous:-
He sees a group of female forms advance,
Some chain'd together in the mazy dance

By fetters, forged in the green sunny bowers,
As they were captives to the King of Flowers;
And some disporting round, unlink'd and free,
Who seem'd to mock their sisters' slavery,

And round and round them still, in wheeling flight
Went, like gay moths about a lamp at night;
While others walk'd, as gracefully along
Their feet kept time, the very soul of song
From psaltery, pipe, and lutes of heavenly thrill,
Or their own youthful voices, heavenlier still!
And now they come, now pass before his eye,
Forms such as Nature moulds when she would vie
With Fancy's pencil, and give birth to things
Lovely beyond its fairest picturings!

A while they dance before him, then divide,
Breaking, like rosy clouds at eventide
Around the rich pavilion of the sun,-
Till silently dispersing, one by one,

Through many a path that from the chamber leads
To gardens, terraces, and moonlit meads,

Their distant laughter comes upon the wind.

The Veile Prophet of Khorassan.

THE PERI.

ONE morn a Peri at the gate
Of Eden stood disconsolate;
And as she listen'd to the springs

Of life within, like music flowing,
And caught the light upon her wings
Through the half-open portal glowing,
She wept to think her recreant race
Should e'er have lost that glorious place:

'How happy,' exclaim'd this child of air, 'Are the holy spirits who wander there,

'Mid flowers that never shall fade or fall; Though mine are the gardens of earth and sea, And the stars themselves have flowers for me, One blossom of heaven out-blooms them all!

6

Though sunny the lake of cool Cashmere, With its plane-tree isle reflected clear,

And sweetly the founts of that valley fall; Though bright are the waters of Sing-su-hay, And the golden floods that thitherward stray, Yet-oh, 'tis only the blest can say

How the waters of heaven out-shine them all!
Go, wing thy flight from star to star,
From world to luminous world, as far

As the universe spreads its flaming wall;
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres,
And multiply each through endless years,
One minute of heaven is worth them all!'

The glorious Angel, who was keeping
The Gates of Light, beheld her weeping;
And, as he nearer drew and listen'd
To her sad song, a tear-drop glisten'd
Within his eyelids, like the spray

From Eden's fountain, when it lies
On the blue flower which-Brahmins say-
Blooms nowhere but in Paradise:
Nymph of a fair but erring line!'
Gently he said,-'One hope is thine.
'Tis written in the book of Fate,
The Peri yet may be forgiven

Who brings to this eternal gate

The gift that is most dear to Heaven!

Go, seek it, and redeem thy sin :-
"Tis sweet to let the pardon'd in!'

Rapidly as comets run

To the embraces of the sun-
Fleeter than the starry brands
Flung at night from angel-hands *
At those dark and daring sprites,
Who would climb the empyreal heights,
Down the blue vault the Peri flies,
And, lighted earthward by a glance

That just then broke from morning's eyes,
Hung hovering o'er our world's expanse.

Paradise and the Peri.

HINDA.

BEAUTIFUL are the maids that glide

On summer-eves through Yemen's dales,
And bright the glancing looks they hide
Behind their litters' roseate veils ;—
And brides, as delicate and fair

As the white jasmine flowers they wear,
Hath Yemen in her blissful clime,

Who, lull'd in cool kiosk or bower,
Before their mirrors count the time,
And grow still lovelier every hour!
But never yet hath bride or maid

In Araby's gay harams smiled,
Whose boasted brightness would not fade

Before Al Hassan's blooming child.

*The Mohammedans suppose that falling-stars are the firebrands wherewith the good angels drive away the bad when they approach too near the empyreum or verge of the heavens.'-Moore.