child,

If, like a tower upon a headlong rock,
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
Such scorn of man had helped to brave the
shock;

But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,

Their admiration thy best weapon shone : The part of Philip's son was thine, not then (Unless aside thy purple had been thrown) Like stern Diogenes to mock at men ;

For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den.

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,

And there hath been thy vane; there is a fire And motion of the soul which will not dwell In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire ; And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire Of aught but rest; a fever at the core, Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.

This makes the madmen who have made men mad

By their contagion! Conquerors and Kings, Founders of sects and systems, to whom add Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things Which stirtoo strongly the soul's secret springs, And are themselves the fools to those they fool;

Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule.

Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die ;
Even as a flame, unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,

"But through some fatal witchery

He, whom a pope had crowned and blest, Perished, my sons, by foulest treachery, Cast on an isle far in the lonely West! Long time sad rumors were afloat,

The fatal tidings we would spurn,
Still hoping from that isle remote

Once more our hero would return.
But when the dark announcement drew
Tears from the virtuous and the brave,
When the sad whisper proved too true,
A flood of grief 1 to his memory gave.
Peace to the glorious dead!"

66

Mother, may God his fullest blessing shed Upon your aged head !"

FRANCIS MAHONY (Father Prout)

MURAT.

FROM "ODE FROM THE FRENCH."

THERE, where death's brief pang was quickest,
And the battle's wreck lay thickest,
Strewed beneath the advancing banner

Of the eagle's burning crest-
(There with thunder-clouds to fan her,
Who could then her wing arrest

Victory beaming from her breast ?) While the broken line enlarging

Fell, or fled along the plain : There be sure Murat was charging! There he ne'er shall charge again!

LORD BYRON

Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind,
Then break against the rock, and show behind
The lowland valleys floating up to crowd

The sense with beauty. He, with forehead bowed
And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined
Before the sovran thought of his own mind,
And very meek with inspirations proud,
Takes here his rightful place as poet-priest
By the high-altar, singing prayer and prayer
To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free,
Our Haydon's hand hath flung out from the mist!
No portrait this, with Academic air,
This is the poet and his poetry.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

BURNS.

A POET'S EPITAPH.

STOP, mortal! Here thy brother lies,
The poet of the poor.

His books were rivers, woods, and skies,
The meadow and the moor;

His teachers were the torn heart's wail,
The tyrant, and the slave,

The street, the factory, the jail,

The palace, and the grave! Sin met thy brother everywhere!

And is thy brother blamed?
From passion, danger, doubt, and care
He no exemption claimed.

The meanest thing, earth's feeblest worm,
He feared to scorn or hate;

But, honoring in a peasant's form

The equal of the great,

He blessed the steward, whose wealth makes The poor man's little more;

Yet loathed the haughty wretch that takes From plundered labor's store.

A hand to do, a head to plan,

A heart to feel and dare,

Tell man's worst foes, here lies the man

Who drew them as they are.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

BURNS.

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM

No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! The moorland flower and peasant! How, at their mention, memory turns Her pages old and pleasant!

The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,

And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning:

New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman;

And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.

I woke to find the simple truth

Of fact and feeling better

Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor :

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart

In every tongue rehearsing.

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already?

I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;

The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.

I saw the same blithe day return, The same sweet fall of even,

That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, And sank on crystal Devon.

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweet-brier and the clover;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood-hymus chanting over.

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,

The child of God's baptizing.

With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy.

And if at times an evil strain,

To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain Of pure and healthful feeling,

It died upon the eye and ear,

No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear

The discord and the staining.

Let those who never erred forget

His worth, in vain bewailings;

Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings!

Lament who will the ribald line

Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine,
Or wanton ones of beauty;

But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.

Not his the song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render,

The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor,

But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer ?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer ?

On fields where brave men "die or do,"
In halls where rings the banquet's mirth,
Where mourners weep, where lovers woo,
From throne to cottage hearth?

What sweet tears dim the eye unshed,
What wild vows falter on the tongue,
When "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,"
Or" Auld Lang Syne," is sung!

Pure hopes, that lift the soul above,

Come with his Cotter's hymn of praise, And dreams of youth, and truth, and love With "Logan's" banks and braes. And when he breathes his master-lay

Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall, All passions in our frames of clay Come thronging at his call.

Imagination's world of air,

And our own world, its gloom and glee, Wit, pathos, poetry, are there,

And death's sublimity.

And Burns- though brief the race he ran,
Though rough and dark the path he trod
Lived, died, in form and soul a man,
The image of his God.

Through care, and pain, and want, and woe
With wounds that only death could heal,
Tortures the poor alone can know,

The proud alone can feel;

He kept his honesty and truth,

His independent tongue and pen, And moved, in manhood as in youth, Pride of his fellow-men.

Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong,
A hate of tyrant and of knave,
A love of right, a scorn of wrong,

Of coward and of slave;

A kind, true heart, a spirit high,
That could not fear, and would not bow,
Were written in his manly eye
And on his manly brow.

Praise to the bard! his words are driven,

Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown, Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven, The birds of fame have flown.

Praise to the man! a nation stood Beside his coffin with wet eyes, Her brave, her beautiful, her good, As when a loved one dies.