the dim past bring back once more the glowing visions of that time, when life was but the dawning of a long summer day of bliss, ere we had learned to know with Fenwick, that "youth is but the death of infancy, and manhood but the death of youth, and to-morrow but the death of to-day;" songs that make the heart swell, and the pulse quicken, at the memory of great deeds of high and noble daring; songs that cause the eyes to glisten, and the breast to throb, as some old ballad, or rhyming story, tells how sorrow, or pain, or disappointment has crushed a noble spirit; songs that in the deep poetry of thought, or in the flowing strain of a glorious melody, send all the heavenly portion of our nature upward to its primal home "Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound—” songs so sweet, so touching, that, as they steal upon the ear in a soft, slow cadence, or swell upon the air in a deep, full diapason, we recall the memory of some summer morning when we watched a sky-lark, trilling as he soared, till poised in an atmosphere of his own sweet music. Moore, whose songs come upon the listener's ear, like the music of fairy land, remembered in the morning vision of a past night's dream; Bailey, whose lyrics are the relics of a poet's mind, spoiled by a drawing-room malaria of fashion, and perfume, and foppery; Lover, whose songs, like his genius, are ever fresh, and fraught with charms that prove the land and the race from which he sprung; Mrs. Norton, whose birth-right is fancy, and eloquence, and glowing thought; Felicia Hemans, whose life was but a brief span of time, in which all her hours were devoted to poetry, the strains of whose melody can never be forgotten till all that glorifies nature, or makes love, and hope, and truth, a heaven, shall have passed away for ever; Motherwell, whose Jeanie Morrison, and My Heid is like to rend, Willie, touch * * What an exquisite picture these lines present of the child loversO dear, dear Jeanie Morrison The thochts o' by-gane years Still fling their shadows ower my path, They blind my een wi' saut, saut tears, As memory idly summons up 'Twas then we luvit ilk ither weel, Sweet time-sad time! twa bairns at scule, 'Twas then we sat on ae laigh bink, To leir ilk ither lear; And tones, and looks, and smiles were shed, Remembered evermair. I wonder, Jeanie, aften yet, When sitting on that bink, Cheek touchin' cheek, loof lock'd in loof, When baith bent doun ower ae braid page, Thy lips were on thy lesson, but the feelings like the last bitter sob of a breaking heart; James Hogg, glorious James Hogg, with his bright fancies, and quaint thoughts, his genial humor, and his true souled naturalness; greatest of all, brightest glory of English song writers, the bard of nature, the self-taught, glowing, ardent child of genius and of song, the poet of every passion and of every feeling that heaven has placed in the breast of man, he whose lays are but the outpourings of his own great, deep heart Robert Burns-these, all these, and with them Ramsay, and Sheridan, and Dibden, and Campbell, and Charles Swain, form the glory of our modern song-writers. ་ We do not, however, confine the lyric bards of England to the epoch of which Robert Burns is the earliest, as he is also the chief. Who, in looking through Doctor Rimbault's most admirable volumes, will not feel pride at the many charming songs that grace our language! What lover of English music will not recall Ben Jonson's songs, in which every thought is bright and tender, as : Or as in Or as in Follow a shadow, it still flies you; Seem to fly it, it will pursue: Oh do not wanton with those eyes, Kiss me, sweet! the wary lover Who forgets the gallant, courtly Raleigh, and Hey down a down, did Dian sing, Amongst her virgins sitting, Than love there is no vainer thing, For maidens more unfitting: And so think I with a down down derry. Or who recollects not Who does not fond lover ?" Shall I, like a hermit, dwell, What care I how fair she be? recall Suckling's-"Why so wan and pale, Who does not remember Waller's Go, lovely rose ! Tell her that wastes her time and me, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be. Or that exquisite ballad It is not that I love you less, But to prevent the sad increase Then we have Carew, and As old time makes these decay, Lovely cheeks, or lips or eyes. Who does not recollect Lovelace's famous "When Love with unconfined wings," and Herrick's "Fair Daffodils," and "Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee," and "Gather sweet Rose buds." But our paper is not devoted to English song writers generally; so we turn to that band of bards who have written convivial songs. We take it to be a general rule, that most great poets could, had they been so inclined, have penned convivial lyrics. The heart of the true poet is ever young and ever joyous, and when turning to itself for consolation or hope, in sorrow or in misfortune, it ever finds relief. So it was with Tasso. So it was with Lovelace, when he sang : Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; The true poet loves all nature, and all her gifts. Her sunshine is not more bright than that which gleams from the heaven within his own breast; and though grief come upon him, though his form be bent, and his footstep slow, yet his heart is light and bounding, and in the philosophy of a sober Pantagruelist he finds a balm for every sorrow, and a soother for every care. i Thus it is that the poet becomes a convivial song writer; and as there can be no great bard in a state of barbarism, so there can be no good convivial songs in any language, unless the people who speak it have arrived at that phase of civilization at least, where the interchange of thoughts and feelings is held to form a considerable portion of the enjoyment which rational beings experience when, gathered together, they "sit at good men's feasts." The savage who gorges himself with the grilled buttock of his captured enemy has, in his wild gibberish, no melody of a convivial character. He has his songs which tell him that his opponents have been scalped, or which relate the stories of savage wooings, but these are only the natural feelings of every heart beating in the great theatre of the world-revenge and love. Passing from the savage to the semi-civilized, we come to the Russian serf, and to the English railway navey. They sing of eating and of drinking; they sing too of love, that is they sing of women, but of convivial songs they are entirely ignorant. The navey has no song that speaks to his heart, save through the medium of his palate or of his eyes. Of that which pleases his palate he sings: Oh! I wish I had a piece o' pork, With fat three inches thick, I'd tuck it in, 'twould blow me out, And swell me like a tick. Singing of his sweet-heart, and how he means to please her, he bellows : Oh! my wesket it is red, And my jacket it is blue; Passing from the navey to the English, Irish and Scotch peasants, we find in their songs the first approach to that species of lyric which is properly called convivial. We care not how simple the idea, how rough the metre, ill-designed the construction of the song, if it tell of friendship, and of warm hearts, of bright eyes, or of smiling faces; if it be calculated to make men sit closer round the table, and forget, in the enjoyment of the hour, the cares and carks of the jarring world of day light-the song which does this, whether sung at Greenwich with claret or champagne-beside a babbling burn-in a quiet glen of the Highlands, around a still of Scotch whisky-on a mountain side, far off in the wilds of Erris, or by a tub of potheen upon the breast |