"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.

NOT 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.

Ir 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!

If thou wouldst stay e'en as thou art,
All cold and all serene-

I still might press thy silent heart,

And where thy smiles have been!
While e'en thy chill bleak corse I have,
Thou seemest still mine own;
But there I lay thee in thy grave—
And I am now alone!

I do not think, where'er thou art,
Thou hast forgotten me;

And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart,
In thinking too of thee:

Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of light ne'er seen before,
As fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore!

Henry Hart Wilman.

Dean of St Paul's, was born at London, 10th February, 1791.

was Sir F. Milman, physician to George III. has published several volumes, he is also a power.

Born 1791.

His father

Besides poetry, of which he prose writer of considerable

HYMN OF THE CAPTIVE JEWS.

GOD of the rainbow! at whose gracious sign
The billows of the proud their rage suppress;
Father of mercies! at one word of thine

An Eden blooms in the waste wilderness;
And fountains sparkle in the arid sands,
And timbrels ring in maidens' glancing hands,
And marble cities crown the laughing lands,
And pillared temples rise Thy name to bless.

O'er Judah's land Thy thunders broke, O Lord!
The chariots rattled o'er her sunken gate,
Her sons were wasted by the Assyrian sword,

Even her foes wept to see her fallen state;
And heaps her ivory palaces became,
Her princes wore the captive's garb of shame,
Her temple sank amid the smouldering flame,

For thou didst ride the tempest-cloud of fate.

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley. {

1792.

Born
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 subversive 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 eighteenth 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. 1818 Shelley visited Italy, where he renewed his acquaintance with Byron. He took up his abode on the Gulf of Lerici. He was drowned

In

on 8th July 1822, in a storm in the Bay of Spezzia. A fortnight after, 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 CALM WINTER'S NIGHT.

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,

Tortured by storms to snapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,—
And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown,