令 Wit's electric flame Ne'er so swiftly passes It shoots from brimming glasses. Every drop we sprinkle Smooths away a wrinkle. Sages can, they say, Grasp the lightning's pinions, From the starred dominions;- And 'mid bumpers brightening, From the heaven of Wit Draw down all its lightning. Wouldst thou know what first For wine's celestial spirit? The living fires that warm us. The careless Youth, when up To hide the pilfered fire in.- A bowl of Bacchus lying. Some drops were in that bowl, Hath such spells to win us; Fill the bumper fair! Smooths away a wrinkle. DEAR HARP OF MY COUNTRY. DEAR Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers, Have throbbed at our lay, 'tis thy glory alone; THE EAST INDIAN. COME, May, with all thy flowers. When May-flies haunt the willow, From Eastern isles, she wingeth The fields where she was straying In that rebellious but beautiful song, "When Erin first rose," there is, if I "The dark chain of silence was thrown o'er the deep." The Chain of Silence was a sort of practical figure of rhetoric among the ancient Irish. Walker tells us of a "celebrated contention for precedence between Finn and Gaul, near Finn's palace at Almhaim, where the attending bards, anxious, if possible, to produce a cessation of hostilities, shook the Chain of Silence, and flung themselves among the ranks."- See also the Ode to Gaul, the son of Morni, in Miss Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry, Then now, O May! be sweeter DUET. LOVE, MY MARY, DWELLS WITH THEE. He-Love, my Mary, ne'er can roam, Ne'er can be a home for him. In my heart his home thou'lt see; THESE verses were written for a Benefit at the Dublin Theatre, and were spoken by Miss Smith, with a degree of success which they owed solely to her admirable manner of reciting them. I wrote them in haste, and it very rarely happens that poetry, which has cost but little labour to the writer, is productive of any great pleasure to the reader. Under this impression, I should not have published them, if they had not found their way into some of the newspapers, with such an addition of errors to their own original stock that I thought it but fair to limit their responsibility to those faults alone which really belong to them. With respect to the title which I have invented for this Poem, I feel even more than the scruples of the Emperor Tiberius, when he humbly asked pardon of the Roman Senate for using "the outlandish term Monopoly." But the truth is, having written the Poem with the sole view of serving a Benefit, I thought that an unintelligible word of this kind would not be without its attraction for the multitude; with whom, "If 'tis not sense, at least 'tis Greek." To some of my readers, however, it may not be superfluous to say, that by "Melologue" I mean that mixture of recitation and music which is frequently adopted in the performance of Collins's Ode on the Passions, and of which the most striking example I can remember is the prophetic speech of Joad, in the Athalie of Racine. T. M. INTRODUCTORY MUSIC-Haydn. That language of the soul is felt and known N A MELOLOGUE UPON NATIONAL MUSIC. 381 From those meridian plains Where oft, of old, on some high tower, The soft Peruvian poured his midnight strains, And called his distant love (with such sweet power Not worlds could keep her from his arms away*) Where, beneath a sunless sky, The Lapland lover bids his reindeer fly, Of vernal Phoebus burned upon his brow. Is still resistless, still the same ! And faithful as the mighty sea, To the pale star that o'er its realm presides, Of human passion rise and fall for thee! GREEK AIR. LIST! 'tis a Grecian maid that sings, When every arm was Freedom's shield, FLOURISH OF TRUMPET. HARK! 'tis the sound that charms The war-steed's wakening ears! Oh! many a mother folds her arms Round her boy-soldier, when that call she hears, Is proud to feel his young pulse bound A certain Spaniard, one night late, met an Indian woman in the streets of Cozco, and would have taken her to his home, but she cried "For God's sake, sir, let me go; for that pipe which you hear in yonder tower calls me with great passion, and I cannot refuse the summons; for love constrains me to go, that I may be his wife and he my husband."-Garcilasso de la Vega, in Sir Paul Rycaut's translation. |