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Wit's electric flame

Ne'er so swiftly passes
As when through the frame

It shoots from brimming glasses.
Fill the bumper fair!

Every drop we sprinkle
O'er the brow of Care

Smooths away a wrinkle.

Sages can, they say,

Grasp the lightning's pinions,
And bring down its ray

From the starred dominions;-
So we, Sages, sit

And 'mid bumpers brightening,

From the heaven of Wit

Draw down all its lightning.

Wouldst thou know what first
Made our souls inherit
This ennobling thirst

For wine's celestial spirit?
It chanced upon that day,
When, as bards inform us,
Prometheus stole away

The living fires that warm us.

The careless Youth, when up
To Glory's fount aspiring,
Took nor urn nor cup

To hide the pilfered fire in.-
But oh, his joy! when, round
The halls of heaven spying.
Among the stars he found

A bowl of Bacchus lying.

Some drops were in that bowl,
Remains of last night's pleasure;
With which the Sparks of Soul
Mixed their burning treasure.
Hence the goblet's shower

Hath such spells to win us;
Hence its mighty power
O'er that flame within us.

Fill the bumper fair!
Every drop we sprinkle
O'er the brow of Care

Smooths away a wrinkle.

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DEAR HARP OF MY COUNTRY.

DEAR Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee,
The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long,*
When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee,
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song!
The warm lay of love and the light note of gladness
Have wakened thy fondest, thy liveliest thrill;
But so oft hast thou echoed the deep sigh of sadness
That even in thy mirth it will steal from thee still.

Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers,
This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine.
Go, sleep with the sunshine of Fame on thy slumbers.
Till touched by some hand less unworthy than mine :
If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover,

Have throbbed at our lay, 'tis thy glory alone;
I was but as the wind, passing heedlessly over,
And all the wild sweetness I waked was thy own

THE EAST INDIAN.

COME, May, with all thy flowers.
Thy sweetly-scented thorn,
Thy cooling evening showers,
Thy fragrant breath at morn.

When May-flies haunt the willow,
When May-buds tempt the bee,
Then, o'er the shining billow,
My love will come to me.

From Eastern isles, she wingeth
Through watery wiles her way,
And on her cheek she bringeth
The bright sun's orient ray!
Oh! come and court her hither,
Ye breezes mild and warm;
One winter's gale would wither
So soft, so pure a form.

The fields where she was straying
Are blessed with endless light;
With zephyrs always playing
Through gardens always bright.

In that rebellious but beautiful song, "When Erin first rose," there is, if I
recollect right, the following line :-

"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,

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Then now, O May! be sweeter
Than e'er thou'st been before;
Let sighs from roses meet her,
When she comes near our shore.

DUET.

LOVE, MY MARY, DWELLS WITH THEE.
He.-Love, my Mary, dwells with thee,
On thy cheek his bed I see.
She.-No, that cheek is pale with care-
Love can find no roses there.
Both. 'Tis not on the bed of rose
Love can find the best repose:
In my heart his home thoa'lt see,
There he lives, and lives for thee.

He-Love, my Mary, ne'er can roam,
While he makes that eye his home.
She.-No, the eye with sorrow dim,

Ne'er can be a home for him.
Both. Yet 'tis not in beaming eyes
Love for ever warmest lies;

In my heart his home thou'lt see;
There he lives, and lives for thee.

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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.
There breathes the language, known and felt
Far as the pure air spreads its living zone;
Wherever rage can rouse, or pity melt,

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
That when she heard the lonely lay,

Not worlds could keep her from his arms away*)
To the bleak climes of polar night,

Where, beneath a sunless sky,

The Lapland lover bids his reindeer fly,
And sings along the lengthening waste of snow,
As blithe as if the blessed light

Of vernal Phoebus burned upon his brow.
O Music! thy celestial claim

Is still resistless, still the same !

And faithful as the mighty sea,

To the pale star that o'er its realm presides,
The spell-bound tides

Of human passion rise and fall for thee!

GREEK AIR.

LIST! 'tis a Grecian maid that sings,
While from Illissus' silvery springs
She draws the cool lymph in her graceful urn;
And by her side, in music's charm dissolving,
Some patriot youth, the glorious past revolving,
Dreams of bright days that never can return;
When Athens nursed her olive bough
With hands by tyrant power unchained,
And braided for the Muse's brow
A wreath by tyrant touch unstained :-
When heroes trod each classic field,
Where coward feet now faintly falter;

When every arm was Freedom's shield,
And every heart was Freedom's altar.

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,
And though her fond heart sink with fears,

Is proud to feel his young pulse bound
With valour's fervour at the sound!

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.

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