The story of his strife;
Such homage suits him well,

Better than funeral pomp or passing bell!

What tale of peril and self-sacrifice!
Prisoned amid the fastnesses of ice,

With hunger howling o'er the wastes of snow!
Night lengthening into months; the ravenous
floe
Crunching the massive ships, as the white bear
Crunches his prey. The insufficient share
Of loathsome food;

The lethargy of famine; the despair

Urging to labor, nervelessly pursued ; Toil done with skinny arms, and faces hued Like pallid masks, while dolefully behind Glimmered the fading embers of a mind! That awful hour, when through the prostrate band Delirium stalked, laying his burning hand

Upon the ghastly foreheads of the crew; The whispers of rebellion, faint and few At first, but deepening ever till they grew Into black thoughts of murder, such the throng Of horrors bound the hero. High the song Should be that hymns the noble part he played! Sinking himself, yet ministering aid

To all around him. By a mighty will
Living defiant of the wants that kill,
Because his death would seal his comrades' fate;
Cheering with ceaseless and inventive skill
Those polar waters, dark and desolate.
Equal to every trial, every fate,

He stands, until spring, tardy with relief,
Unlocks the icy gate,

And the pale prisoners thread the world once more, To the steep cliffs of Greenland's pastoral shore Bearing their dying chief!

Time was when he should gain his spurs of gold From royal hands, who wooed the knightly state; The knell of old formalities is tolled,

And the world's knights are now self-consecrate. No grander episode doth chivalry hold

In all its annals, back to Charlemagne, Than that lone vigil of unceasing pain, Faithfully kept through hunger and through cold, By the good Christian knight, Elisha Kane !

FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN.

THE OLD ADMIRAL.

ADMIRAL STEWART, U. S. N.

GONE at last,

That brave old hero of the past! His spirit has a second birth, An unknown, grander life;

Whether of iron or of oak

The ships we marshal at our country's need,
Still speak their cannon now as then they spoke;
Still floats our unstruck banner from the mast
As in the stormy past.

Lay him in the ground:

Let him rest where the ancient river rolls; Let him sleep beneath the shadow and the sound Of the bell whose proclamation, as it tolls, Is of Freedom and the gift our fathers gave. Lay him gently down:

The clamor of the town

Will not break the slumbers deep, the beautiful ripe sleep,

Of this lion of the wave,

Will not trouble the old Admiral in his grave.

Earth to earth his dust is laid.
Methinks his stately shade

On the shadow of a great ship leaves the shore ; Over cloudless western seas

Seeks the far Hesperides,

The islands of the blest,

Where no turbulent billows roar,

Where is rest.

His ghost upon the shadowy quarter stands
Nearing the deathless lands.

There all his martial mates, renewed and strong,
Await his coming long.

I see the happy Heroes rise

With gratulation in their eyes : "Welcome, old comrade," Lawrence cries; "Ah, Stewart, tell us of the wars ! Who win the glory and the scars?

How floats the skyey flag,- how many stars? Still speak they of Decatur's name,

Of Bainbridge's and Perry's fame?
Of me, who earliest came ?

Make ready, all:

Room for the Admiral!

Come, Stewart, tell us of the wars!"

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

One the grisly King of Terrors; one a Bourbon, with his errors, late to conscience-clearing

set.

Well his fevered pulse may flutter, and the priests their mass may mutter with such fervor

as they may :

Cross and chrysm, and genuflection, mop and mow, and interjection, will not frighten Death away.

By the dying despot sitting, at the hard heart's portals hitting, shocking the dull brain to work,

Death makes clear what life has hidden, chides what life has left unchidden, quickens

truth life tried to burke.

He but ruled within his borders after Holy Church's orders, did what Austria bade him do ;

By their guidance flogged and tortured; highborn men and gently nurtured chained with crime's felonious crew.

What if summer fevers gripped them, what ff winter freezings nipped them, till they rotted in their chains?

He had word of Pope and Kaiser; none could holier be or wiser; theirs the counsel, his the reins.

So he pleads excuses eager, clutching, with his fingers meagre, at the bedclothes as he speaks;

But King Death sits grimly grinning at the Bourbon's cobweb-spinning, -as each cobweb-cable breaks.

And the poor soul, from life's eylot, rudderless, without a pilot, drifteth slowly down the dark;

While 'mid rolling incense vapor, chanted dirge, and flaring taper, lies the body, stiff and stark.

PUNCH.

BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

NOT a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his corse 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 inclosed his breast,

Nor 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 of the dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smoothed 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 tolled 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, we raised not a stone, But we left him alone in his glory.

CHARLES WOLFE.

ZIMRI.

GEORGE VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 1682.

SOME of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ,
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes :
So over-violent or over-civil,

That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laughed himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom, and wise Achitophel.
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left no faction, but of that was left.
JOHN DRYDEN.

WHITEFIELD.

FROM "HOPE."

LEUCONOMUS (beneath well-sounding Greek
I slur a name a poet may not speak)
Stood pilloried on infamy's high stage,
And bore the pelting storm of half an age;
The very butt of slander, and the blot
For every dart that malice ever shot.
The man that mentioned him at once dismissed
All mercy from his lips, and sneered and hissed;
His crimes were such as Sodom never knew,
And perjury stood up to swear all true;
His aim was mischief, and his zeal pretence,
His speech rebellion against common sense;
A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule,
And when by that of reason, a mere fool;
The world's best comfort was, his doom was past;
Die when he might, he must be damned at last.

Now, truth, perform thine office; waft aside The curtain drawn by prejudice and pride, Reveal (the man is dead) to wondering eyes This more than monster in his proper guise.

He loved the world that hated him; the tear
That dropped upon his Bible was sincere ;
Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife,
His only answer was a blameless life;
And he that forged and he that threw the dart
Had each a brother's interest in his heart.
Paul's love of Christ and steadiness unbribed
Were copied close in him, and well transcribed.
He followed Paul; his zeal a kindred flame,
His apostolic charity the same.

Like him crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas,
Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease;
Like him he labored, and like him, content
To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went.
Blush, Calumny! and write upon his tomb,
If honest Eulogy can spare thee room,
Which, aimed at him, has pierced the offended
Thy deep repentance of thy thousand lies,

skies;

He had written praises of all kings whatever; He had written for republics far and wide,

And then against them bitterer than ever; For pantisocracy he once had cried

OG.

SHADWELL, THE DRAMATIST.

Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, For here's a tun of midnight work to come. Og, from a treason-tavern rolling home Round as a globe, and liquored every chink, Goodly and great he sails behind his link: With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og,

his skin.

of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk?
Satire of sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks,
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;
His wit all seesaw, between that and this.
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that, acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have exprest,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

ALEXANDER POPE.

The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull, With this prophetic blessing, "Be thou dull; Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight Fit for thy bulk; do anything but write: Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men ; A strong nativity but for the pen ! Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink": Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink, I see, I see, 't is counsel given in vain, For treason botched in rhyme will be thy bane; Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck, 'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck; Why should thy metre good King David blast? A psalm of his will surely be thy last. A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull To die for faction is a common evil, For writing treason and for writing dull. But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil. JOHN DRYDEN.

ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQUIRE.

A WANDERER, Wilson, from my native land,
Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,
Where rolls between us the eternal sea,
Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand,
Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall,
Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call,
Across the wavy waste between us stretched,
A friendly missive warns me of a stricture,
Wherein my likeness you have darkly etched;
And though I have not seen the shadow sketched,
Thus I remark prophetic on the picture.

I guess the features : — in a line to paint
Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint.
Not one of those self-constituted saints,
Quacks not physicians — in the cure of souls,
Censors who sniff out moral taints,

And call the devil over his own coals,

Those pseudo Privy-Councillors of God,

Who write down judgments with a pen hardnibbed ;

Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod, Commending sinners not to ice thick-ribbed, But endless flames, to scorch them like flax,