Touching the moral portion of the text, it may be remarked that moralizing, in the common acceptation of the word, is not often the vein of lyric writers, and a people of a temperament notoriously lively as the Irish, would be less expected than others to abound in lyrics of that fashion;-it would almost seem out of nature: Shakspeare makes the reflective Jaques say

"When I did hear

The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to caw like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep contemplative."

He looks upon it as ridiculous that a jester (for that is the sense in which the term fool must be taken here) should turn moralist; and, if that view be correct, we should not look for a preponderance of the moralizing quality among the sportive lyrists of Ireland. Nevertheless, a deep tone of morality will be found in some of the following examples,-suggested rather than preached:-and it is thus that it should be, in compositions of the lighter kind. But, for that matter, why should we talk specially of moral songs? A moral may be extracted from songs and other poetic compositions of various classes. As Nature provides the flower, and the bee extracts the honey, so the poet gives forth forms of beauty and store of sweets and the office of the bee lies in the reader.

WHEN FILLED WITH THOUGHTS OF LIFE'S YOUNG DAY.

GERALD GRIFFIN.

WHEN filled with thoughts of life's young day,

Alone in distant climes we roam,

And year on year has rolled away,

Since last we viewed our own dear home;
Oh, then, at evening's silent hour,
In chamber lone or moonlight bow'r,
How sad on memory's listening ear
Come long-lost voices sounding near;
Like the wild chime of village bells
Heard far away in mountain dells.
But, oh! for him let kind hearts grieve,
His term of youth and exile o'er,
Who sees in life's declining eve

With altered eyes his native shore!
With aching heart and weary brain,
Who treads those lonesome scenes again!
And backward views the sunny hours
When first he knew those ruined bow'rs,
And hears in every passing gale
Some best affection's dying wail.

Oh, say, what spell of power serene
Can cheer that hour of sharpest pain,
And turn to peace the anguish keen,
That deeper wounds, because in vain ?
'Tis not the thought of glory won,
Of hoarded gold or pleasure gone,
But one bright course, from earliest youth,
Of changeless faith-unbroken truth.
These turn to gold, the vapours dun,
That close on life's descending sun.

* The sadness of spirit breathed in this verse seems a reflex of his own emotions, when we remember that he returned to Ireland (after having made a high reputation) not in "life's declining eve," but in the prime of manhood, and retired into monastic seclusion.

ON RETURNING A RING TO A LADY.

Right Hon. JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.

THOU emblem of faith-thou sweet pledge of a passion
By Heaven reserved for a happier than me,-
On the hand of my fair go resume thy lov'd station,
Go bask in the beam that is lavish'd on thee!

And if, some past scene thy remembrance recalling,
Her bosom shall rise to the tear that is falling,
With the transport of love may no anguish combine,
Be her's all the bliss, and the suffering all mine!*

Yet say, (to thy mistress ere yet I restore thee,)
Oh, say why thy charm so indifferent to me?
To her thou art dear,-then should I not adore thee?
Can the heart that is her's be regardless of thee?
But the eyes of a lover, a friend, or a brother,
Can see naught in thee but the flame of another;
On me then thou'rt lost; as thou never couldst prove
The emblem of faith, or the token of love.

But, ah! had the ringlet thou lov'st to surround-
Had it e'er kissed the rose on the cheek of my dear,
What ransom to buy thee could ever be found,

Or what force from my heart thy possession could tear?

A mourner, a suff'rer, a wand'rer, a stranger—

In sickness, in sadness, in pain, and in danger,

Next my heart thou shouldst dwell till its last gasp were o'er,
Then together we'd sink—and I'd part thee no more.

* We are reminded here of a line of Byron's

"Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt!"

These lines, with all their blemishes of execution, particularly in the four first lines of the second verse, are so tender, so passionate, so hopeless, that they touch the heart:they acquire an additional interest when it is remembered how cruelly the writer's married life was embittered.

COULD I HER FAULTS REMEMBER.

SHERIDAN.

COULD I her faults remember,
Forgetting every charm,
Soon would impartial Reason
The tyrant Love disarm.

But when, enraged, I number
Each failing of her mind,
Love, still, suggests each beauty,
And sees, while Reason's blind.

Oliver Goldsmith was born at Pallas.† in the county of Longford, Ireland, November 29, 1731, and died in London, April 4, 1774. It is to be regretted that few extracts can be gathered from his works, suited to this volume; but, happily, there are a few, which afford the opportunity of enriching our register of bright names with one of the brightest in the annals of literature; and as his slightest productions justify the celebrated "nullum quod tetigit non ornavit," these few would adorn any collection;-but still they are far from sufficiently representing the intellectual power of the author of "The Traveller," "The Deserted Village," "The Vicar of Wakefield," and "She Stoops to Conquer."

O, MEMORY! thou fond deceiver,
Still importunate and vain ;
To former joys recurring ever,

And turning all the past to pain.

Thou, like the world, the oppress'd oppressing,
Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe!
And he who wants each other blessing,
In thee must ever find a foe.

Mr. Forster, in his Life of Goldsmith, names the year 1728.

+ Three odd mistakes are made in a translation of Doctor Johnson's Latin epitaph on

Goldsmith, given in one of the numerous small editions of Goldsmith's Life and Works;one of them particularly so ;-the lines in the original stand thus:

"Natus Hiberniâ Fornia Lonfordiensis,
In loco cui nomen Pallas,"

The translation given, is

He was born in the Kingdom of Ireland,
At Ferns, in the Province

Of Leinster,

Where Pallas had set her name."

The translator calling Forney Ferns, Longford Leinster, and strangely mistaking the name of the little Irish village, Pallas, for that of the goddess of wisdom and patroness of learning.

WHEN YOUR BEAUTY APPEARS.

The Rev. Dr. PARNELL. Born, 1679. Died, 1717.

WHEN your beauty appears,
In its graces and airs,

All bright as an angel new dropt from the sky;
At distance I gaze, and am awed by my fears,
So strangely you dazzle my eye!

When

But when without art,

Your kind thoughts you impart;

your love runs in blushes through every vein;

When it darts from your eyes, when it pants in your heart,
Then I know you're a woman again.

"There's a passion and pride

In our sex," she replied,

"And, thus (might I gratify both), I would do: Still an angel appear to each lover beside,

And still be a woman, to you."

This graceful trifle of Dr. Parnell gives but the occasion of noticing another bright name among the poets of Ireland. His poem of "The Hermit," alone, would have made his name remembered with admiration. His poetical works were considered of sufficient value to be collected and published by Pope in 1721. Doctor Johnson praises Parnell for the "easy sweetness of his diction;" and though he does not allow that he "ravishes," he admits that "he always delights." Dr. Lempriere classes him "among the most pious and useful poets in the English language," and Goldsmith seems to have had a similar sense of his excellence, by the eloquent epitaph which follows.