True as the lute that no sighing can waken,

And blooming for ever unchanged as the tree!

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

Á MELOLOGUE

As blithe as if the blessed light

Of vernal Phæbus burn'd upon his brow.
UPON NATIONAL MUSIC.

Oh Music! thy celestial claim

Is still resistless, still the same; These verses were written for a Benefit at the

And, faithful as the mighty sea Dublin Theatre, and were spoken by Miss Smith, To the pale star that o'er its realm presides, with a degree of success, which they owed solely to The spell-bound tides her admirable manner of reciting them. I wrote of human passion rise and fall for thee ! them in haste ; and it very rarely happens that

Greek Air. poetry, which has cost but little labour to the writer, is productive of any great pleasure to the reader.

List! 't is a Grecian maid that sings, Under this impression, I should not have published

While, from Ilyssus' silvery springs, them if they had not found their way into some of

She draws the cool lymph in her graceful urn;" the newspapers, with such an addition of errors to And by her side, in music's charm dissolving, their own original stock, that I thought it but fair to Some patriot youth, the glorious past revolving, limit their responsibility to those faults alone which

Dreams of bright days that never can return! really belong to them.

When Athens nursed her olive-bough, With respect to the title which I have invented for With hands by tyrant power unchain'd, this Poem, I feel even more than the scruples of the

And braided for the muses' brow Emperor Tiberius, when he humbly asked pardon of

A wreath by tyrant touch unstain'd. the Roman senate for using “the outlandish term

When heroes trod each classic field monopoly.' But the truth is, having written the

Where coward feet now faintly falter ; Poem with the ole view of serving a Benefit, I

When every arm was Freedom's shield, thought that an unintelligible word of this kind And every heart was Freedom's altar! would not be without its attraction for the multitude,

Flourish of Trumpet. with whom, “if 't is not sense, at least 't is Greek.”

Hark! 't is the sound that charms To some of my readers, however, it may not be The war-steed's waking cars ! superfluous to say, that, by “Melologue,” I mean

Oh! many a mother folds her arms that mixture of recitation and music, which is fre- Round her boy-soldier when that call she hears . quently adopted in the performance of Collins's Ode

And, though her fond heart sink with fears, on the Passions, and of which the most striking ex

Is proud to feel his young pulse bound
arople I can remember is the prophetic speech of With valour's fever at the sound !
Toad in the Athalie of Racine.

See! from his native hills afar
T. M.

The rude Helvetian flies to war;
Careless for what, for whom he fights,

For slave or despot, wrongs, or rights ;
THERE breathes a language, known and felt

A conqueror oft-a hero neverFar as the pure air spreads its living zone;

Yet lavish of his life-blood still, Wherever rage can rouse, or pity melt,

As if it were like his mountain rill,
That language of the soul is felt and known.

And gush'd for ever!
From those meridian plains,
Where oft, of old, on some high tower,

Oh Music! here, even here,
The soft Peruvian pour'd his midnight strains,

Amid this thoughtless, wild career, And call's his distant love with such sweet power,

Thy soul-felt charm asserts its wondrous power. That, when she heard the lonely lay,

There is an air, which oft among the rocks Not worlds could keep her from his arms away;'

Of his own loved land, at evening hour, To the bleak climes of polar night,

Is beard, when shepherds homeward pipe their Where, beneath a sunless sky,

flocks; The Lapland lover bids his rein-deer fly,

Oh! every note of it would thnll his mind And sings along the lengthening waste of snow,

With tenderest thoughts would bring around his

knees 1 "A certain Spaniard, one night late, met an Indian The rosy children whom he left behind, woman in the streets of Cozco, and would have taken her

And fill each little angel eye to his home, but she cried out, 'For God's sake, Sir, let me go; for that pipe, which you hear in yonder tower, calls me With speaking tears, that ask him why with great passion, and I cannot refuse the summops; for He wander'd from his hut for scenes like these? Jove constrains me to go, that I may be his wife, and he my Vain, vain is then the trumpet's brazen roar; husband.'”-Garcilasso de la Vega, in Sir Paul Rycaut's tranelation

Sweet notce of home of love are all he hean,

382

his sway.

And the stern eyes, that look'd for blood before, His children might still have been bless'd with his
Now melting, mournful, lose themselves in tears!

love,

And England would ne'er have been cursed with
Swiss Air_“Ranz des Vaches."
But, wake the trumpet's blast again,

And rouse the ranks of warrior-men!
Oh War! when truth thy arm employs,

LINES
And Freedom's spirit guides the labouring storm,

On the Death of Sh-r-d-n.
'T is then thy vengeance takes a hallow'd form,
And, like Heaven's lightning, sacredly destroys !

Principibus placuisse viris.-Hor.
Nor, Music ! through thy breathing sphere,
Lives there a sound more grateful to the ear
Of Him who made all harmony,

Yes, grief will have way—but the fast-falling tear
Than the bless'd sound of fetters breaking,

Shall be mingled with deep execrations on those
And the first hymn that man, awaking

Who could bask in that spirit's meridian career,
From Slavery's slumber, breathes to Liberty !

And yet leave it thus lonely and dark at its close :

Whose vanity flew round him only while fed
Spanish Chorus.

By the odour his fame in its summer-time gave ;
Hark! from Spain, indignant Spain, Whose vanity now, with quick scent for the dead,
Bursts the bold, enthusiast strain,

Like the ghole of the East, comes to feed at his
Like moming's music on the air !

grave!
And seems, in every note, to swear,

Oh! it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow
By Saragossa's ruin'd streets,

And spirits so mean in the great and high-born;
By brave Gerona's deathful story,

To think what a long line of titles may follow
That, while one Spaniard's life-blood beats,

The relics of him who died-friendless and lord !
That blood shall stain the conqueror's glory!

How proud they can press to the funeral array
Spanish Air—" Ya Desperto."

Of one whom they shunn'd in his sickness and
But ah! if vain the patriot's zeal,

sorrow:
If neither valour's force, nor wisdom's light

How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,
Can break or melt that blood-cemented seal

Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow!
Which shuts so close the book of Europe's right-
What song shall then in sadness tell

And thou, too, whose life, a sick epicure's dream,
Of broken pride, of prospects shaded,

Incoherent and gross, even grosser had pass'd,
Of buried hopes, remember'd well,

Were it not for that cordial and soul-giving beam
Of ardour quench'd, and honour faded?

Which his friendship and wit o'er thy nothingness

cast:
What Muse shall mourn the breathless brave,
In sweetest dirge at Memory's shrine ?

No, not for the wealth of the land that supplies theo
What harp shall sigh o'er Freedom's grave? With millions to heap upon foppery's shrine ;-
Oh Erin! thine !

No, not for the riches of all who despise thee,
Though this would make Europe's whole opulence

mine

Would I suffer what-even in the heart that thou LINES

hastOn the Death of Mr. P-r--v-l.

All mean as it is—must have consciously burn'd, In the dirge we sung o'er him no censure was heard, When the pittance, which shame had wrung from Unembitter'd and free did the tear-drop descend ;

thee at last, We forgot in that hour how the statesman had err’d,

And which found all his wants at an end, was reAnd wept for the husband, the father, and friend.

turn'd!!

“ Was this, then, the fate"-future ages will say, Oh! proud was the meed his integrity won,

When some names shall live but in history's curse;
And generous indeed were the tears that we shed, When Truth will be heard, and these lords of a day
When in grief we forgot all the ill he had done,

Be forgotten as fools, or remember'd &s worse-
And, though wrong'd by him living, bewail'd him
when dead.

"Was this, then, the fate of that high-gifted man,

The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall,
Even now, if one harsher emotion intrude,

The orator-dramatist-minstrel,—who ran
'Tis to wish he had chosen some lowlier state-

Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of Had known what he was, and, content to be good,

all! Had ne'er, for our ruin, aspired to be great.

1 The sum was So, left through their own little orbit to move,

two hundred pounds-offered when

Sh-r-d-n could no longer take any sustenanco, and declined, His years might have rollid inoffensive away; for him, by his friends.

1

1

“Whose mind was an essence, compounded with art | When the world stood in hope--when a spirit, that From the finest and best of all other men's powers

breathed Who ruled, like a wizard, the world of the heart, The fresh air of the olden time, whisper'd about, And could call up its sunshine, or bring down its And the swords of all Italy half-way unsheathed, showers!

But waited one conquering cry to flash out! "Whose humour, as gay as the fire-fly's light, When around you, the shades of your mighty in fame,

Play'd round every subject, and shone as it play'da Filicajas and Petrarchs, seem'd bursting to view, Whose wit, in the coinbat, as gentle as bright, And their words and their warnings—like tongues of Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade ;

bright flame

Over Freedom's apostles--fell kindling on you ! “Whose eloquence-brightning whatever it tried,

Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave- Good God! that in such a proud moment of life, Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide

Worth the history of ages—when, had you but As ever bore Freedom aloft on its wave !"

hurl'd Yes-such was the man, and so wretched his fate ;

One bolt at your bloody invader, that strife

Between freemen and tyrants had spread through And thus, sooner or later, shall all have to grieve,

the worldWho waste their morn's dew in the beams of the Great,

That then--oh disgrace upon manhood! even then, And expect 't will return to refresh them at eve! You should falter, should cling to your pitiful In the woods of the North there are insects that prey Cower down into beasts, when you might have stood

breath, On the brain of the elk till his very last sigh ;'

men, Oh, Genius! thy patrons, more cruel than they,

And prefer the slave's life of damnation to death! First feed on thy brains, and then leave thee to die!

It is strange—it is dreadful;-shout, tyranny, shout,

Through your dungeons and palaces, “Freedom is LINES

o'er!"

If there lingers one spark of her light, tread it out, WRITTEN ON HEARING THAT THE AUSTRIANS HAD

And return to your empire of darkness once more ENTERED NAPLES.

For, if such are the braggarts that claim to be free, Carbone Notati!

Come, Despot of Russia, thy feet let me kiss

Far nobler to live the brute bondman of thee, Ay-down to the dust with them, slaves as they are- Than to sully even chains by a struggle like this ! From this hour, let the blood in their dastardly Paris, 1821.

veins, That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war, Be suck'd out by tyrants, or stagnate in chains !

THE INSURRECTION OF THE PAPERS. On, on, like a cloud, through their beautiful vales,

Ye locusts of tyranny, blasting them o'erFill, fill up their wide sunny waters, ye sails

" It would be impossible for His Royal Highness to disen From each slave-mart of Europe, and poison their gage his person from the accumulating pile of papers that shore !

encompassed it.”- Lord CASTLEREAGH's Speech upon

Colonel M.Mahon's Appointment.
Let their fate be a mock-word-let men of all lands
Laugh out, with a scorn that shall ring to the poles,

Last night I toss'd and turn'd in bed,
When each sword that the cowards let fall from their

But could not sleep—at length I said, hands

“I'll think of Viscount C-STL-R-GH, Shall be forged into fetters to enter their souls !

And of his speeches--that's the way."

And so it was, for instantly And deep and more deep as the iron is driven,

I slept as sound as sound could be ; Base slaves! may the whet of their agony be,

And then I dream'd--oh, frightful dream! To think—as the damn'd haply think of that heaven

Fuseli has no such theme; They had once in their reach-that they might have been free!

- never wrote or borrow'd

Any horror half so horrid ! Shame, shame, when there was not a bosom, whose heat

Methought the P-e, in whisker'd staté, Ever rose o'er the ZERO of -'s heart,

Before me at his breakfast sate: That did not, like echo, your war-hymn repeat,

On one side lay unread petitions,
And send all its prayers with your liberty's start-

On 't other, hints from five physicians
Here tradesmen's bills, official papers,

Notes from my Lady, drams for vapours 1 Naturalists have observed that, upon dissecting an elk,

There plans of saddles, tea and toast, there were found in its head some large flies, with its brain almost eaten away by them.- History of Poland.

Death-warrants and the Morning Post.

A DREAM.