Yet Love hath echoes truer far,

And far more sweet,

Than e'er beneath the moonlight's star,
Of horn, or lute, or soft guitar,
The songs repeat.

'Tis when the sigh in youth sincere-
And only then-

The sigh that's breath'd for one to hear
Is by that one, that only dear,
Breath'd back again!

AS SLOW OUR SHIP

As slow our ship her foamy track
Against the wind was cleaving,
Her trembling pennant still look'd back
To that dear Isle 'twas leaving,
So loath we part from all we love,
From all the links that bind us;
So turn our hearts as on we rove,
To those we've left behind us.

When round the bowl of vanish'd years
We talk, with joyous seeming--
With smiles that might as well be tears,
So faint, so sad their beaming ;
While mem'ry brings us back again
Each early tie that twined us,
Oh, sweet's the cup that circles then
To those we've left behind us.

And when, in other climes, we meet
Some isle or vale enchanting,
Where all looks flow'ry, wild and sweet,
And nought but love is wanting;
We think how great had been our bliss,
If Heav'n had but assign'd us

To live and die in scenes like this,
With some we've left behind us!

As travellers oft look back at eve,
When eastward darkly going,
To gaze upon that light they leave,
Still faint behind them glowing-
So, when the close of pleasure's day
To gloom hath near consign'd us,
We turn to catch one fading ray
Of joy that's left behind us.

No, NOT MORE WELCOME

No, not more welcome the fairy numbers
Of music fall on the sleeper's ear,
When, half-awaking from fearful slumbers,

He thinks the full choir of heaven is near-
Than came that voice, when, all forsaken,

This heart long had sleeping lain,
Nor thought its cold pulse would ever waken
To such benign, blessed sounds again.

Sweet voice of comfort! 'twas like the stealing
Of summer wind thro' some wreathed shell-
Each secret winding, each inmost feeling

Of all my soul echoed to its spell;

'Twas whisper'd balm-'twas sunshine spoken
I'd live years of grief and pain

To have my long sleep of sorrow broken
By such benign, blessed sounds again.

MY BIRTHDAY

'My birthday!' What a different sound
That word had in my youthful ears!
And how, each time the day comes round,
Less and less white its mark appears!

When first our scanty years are told,
It seems like pastime to grow old;

E

And as youth counts the shining links
That time around him binds so fast,
Pleased with the task, he little thinks
How hard that chain will press at last.

Vain was the man, and false as vain,
Who said, 'Were he ordained to run
His long career of life again,

He would do all that he had done.'
Ah! 'tis not thus the voice that dwells
In sober birthdays speaks to me;
Far otherwise-of time it tells

Lavished unwisely, carelessly;
Of counsel mocked; of talents made
Haply for high and pure designs,
But oft, like Israel's incense, laid
Upon unholy, earthly shrines;
Of nursing many a wrong desire;

Of wandering after Love too far,
And taking every meteor fire

That crossed my pathway for his star! All this it tells, and could I trace

The imperfect picture o'er again,

With power to add, retouch, efface

The lights and shades, the joy and pain,
How little of the past would stay!
How quickly all should melt away—

All-but that freedom of the mind

Which hath been more than wealth to me; Those friendships in my boyhood twined, And kept till now unchangingly;

And that dear home, that saving ark

Where Love's true light at last I've found, Cheering within when all grows dark

And comfortless and stormy round.

CHARLES WOLFE

THE world is often spoken of as dull and blind to true excellence. It is a shallow view. Humanity bristles with sensitive tentacles which rarely fail to grasp and draw in anything that will nourish it, even if they sometimes, for a time, lay hold of things useless and unwholesome. Even thus the world's tentacles get hold of things, like the DISCOURSES of Epictetus or the RELIGIO MEDICI, that never were intended for publicity, nor do they fail to search out minuter things too. The Rev. Charles Wolfe, an obscure Irish clergyman, writes a short poem which a friend who had learned it recites to a casual travelling acquaintance. The latter publishes it in the Newry Telegraph. Soon it is on the lips of Shelley and Byron, and now there is hardly a reader of the English language who has not read the 'Burial of Sir John Moore.' Few indeed are the 'occasional' poems that possess so enduring a power to move the heart. Its note of pride and sorrow is tuned to that of all the lofty sorrows of the world, and the very music of the lines, with their long, deep vowel sounds, like the burst of solemn passion in Beethoven's Funeral March, will carry their meaning and emotion to readers of many generations hence.

Wolfe wrote but little poetry in his short life, and little of what he wrote can compare with the Burial Ode.' But the 'Song' which he wrote under the influence of a strain of Irish music, to which he was keenly sensitive, has a remarkable intensity of feeling and sweetness of melody. He had a keen affection for his native land and all that it produced, and though a descendant of the dominant class, and what we should now call an Imperialist, he could write lines like the following from his long poem on 'Patriotism':

O Erin! O my mother! I will love thee !
Whether upon thy green Atlantic throne
Thou sitt'st august, majestic and sublime;

Or on thy empire's last remaining fragment
Bendest forlorn, dejected and forsaken,—

Thy smiles, thy tears, thy blessings and thy woes,
Thy glory and thy infamy, be mine!

The selection here given includes one poem- -a sonnetnot previously printed. It is taken from a manuscript insertion bound up in a volume of the LIFE AND REMAINS OF THE REV. C. WOLFE (third edition, 1827) which was purchased in a second-hand bookshop in Dublin in 1888. The volume has also bound up with it a leaf from Bentley's Magazine, vol. v., containing a German version of the 'Burial Ode,' and a copy of a note from Mr. Edmund Gosse in Ward's ENGLISH POets, vol. iv. (1880), on the history of the Ode. After these come two quarto leaves of older paper, and written in a quite different and evidently earlier handwriting. They contain three hitherto unknown pieces alleged to be by Wolfe. The first is entitled 'The Contrast Lines written by the Rev. C. Wolfe while standing under Windsor Terrace.' It is a poem on George III., reading like a hasty impromptu sketch of what might have been made a powerful piece of verse. I may quote two stanzas:

We have fought the fight. From his lofty throne

The foe to our land we tumbled,

And it gladdened each heart, save his alone

For whom that foe was humbled:

His silver beard o'er a bosom spread
Unvaried by life's emotion,

Like a yearly lengthening snowdrift spread
On the calm of a frozen ocean.

Still o'er him Oblivion's waters lay,

Though the tide of life kept flowing;
When they spoke of the King, 'twas but to say,
The old man's strength is going.'

At intervals thus the waves disgorge,

By weakness rent asunder,

A piece of the wreck of the Royal George,'

For the people's pity and wonder.

Then comes the sonnet given below, and finally a poem