Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joys we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground. Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. THE SENSITIVE PLANTA A sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the spring arose on the garden fair, And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast The snow-drop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, And their breath was mix'd with fresh odor sent Then the pied wind-flowers, and the tulip tall, 1"I am aware that quoting a few stanzas | place as a specimen of the building he had for from The Sensitive Plant can only call to mind sale. But we venture on it, and take part of the pedant in the Facetis of Hierocles, who the catalogue of flowers."-MOIR. carried about a brick with him in the market And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest, And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, CHARLES WOLFE, 1791–1823. CHARLES WOLFE, the youngest son of Theobald Wolfe, Esq., was born in Dublin on the 14th of December, 1791. As a youth, he showed great precocity of talent, united to a most amiable disposition. After the usual preparatory studies, in which he distinguished himself, he entered the University of Dublin in 1809. He immediately attained a high rank for his classical attainments and for his true poetic talent; and the first year of his college course he obtained a prize for a poem upon Jugurtha in Prison. Before he left the university, he wrote a number of pieces of poetry that were truly beautiful, but especially that one on which his fame chiefly rests, the Lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore. In 1814 he took his bachelor's degree, and entered at once upon the study of divinity. In 1817 he was ordained as curate of the church of Ballyclog, in Tyrone, and afterwards of Donoughmore. His conscientious and incessant attention to his duties in a wild and scattered parish soon made inroads upon his health, and he was advised to go to the south of France as the most likely means to avert the threatened malady,-consumption. He remained but little more than a month at Bordeaux, and returned home, appearing to have been benefited by the voyage. But the fond hopes of his friends were soon to be blasted,-the fatal disease had taken too strong a hold upon its victim, and, after a protracted illness accompanied with much suffering, which he bore with Christian fortitude and patience, he expired on the 21st of February, 1823, in the thirty-second year of his age.1 1 The following eloquent tribute to his memory was written by the Rev. Dr. Miller, of Trinity College, Dublin, author of the Leo tures on Modern History:-" He combined elo THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; We buried him darkly at dead of night, No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; Few and short were the prayers we said, We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring; quence of the first order with the zeal of an apostle. During the short time in which he held a curacy in the diocese of Armagh, he so wholly devoted himself to the discharge of his duties in a very populons parish, that he exhausted his strength by exertions disproportioned to his constitution, and was cut off by disease in what should have been the bloom of youth. This zeal, which was too powerful for his bodily frame, was yet controlled by a vigorous and manly intellect, which all the arlor of religion and poetry could never urge to enthusiasm. His opinions were as suber as if they were merely speculative; his fancy was as vivid as if he never reasoned; his conduct as zealous as if he thought only of his practical duties; every thing in him held its proper place, except a due consideration of himself, and to his neglect of this he became an early victim." 1 The passage in the Edinburgh Annual Register (1808) on which Wolfe founded his ode is as follows:-"Sir John Moore had often said that, if he was killed in battle, he wished to be buried where he fell. The body was re- 2 Lord Byron, who considered this poem one 4 As if in spite because they had been de Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory: SONG. TO MARY. If I had thought thou couldst have died, But I forgot, when by thy side, And still upon that face I look, But when I speak, thou dost not say If thou wouldst stay, e'en as thou art,—— I still might press thy silent heart, Thou seemest still mine own; I do not think, where'er thou art, And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart, Yet there was round thee such a dawn 1 "Charles Wolfe has been one of the few who have gained probable immortality from a casual gleam of inspiration thrown over a single poem, consisting of only a few stanzas, and these, too, little more than a spirited version from the prose of another. But the lyric 18 indeed full of fervor and freshness; and his triumph is not to be grudged."-D. M. MOIR. 2 This song was written to one of Wolfe's favorite melodies, the Irish air Gramachree, for which he thought no words had ever been composed which came up to his idea of the peculiar pathos which pervades the whole of that strain. When asked if he had any real incident in view, or alluded to any particular person, he said, "That he had sung the air over and over till he burst into a flood of tears, in which mood he composed the words." The song seems, indeed, to have been inspired by the muse of Grief, and rivals the pathos of Cowper's address to a real Mary. In tenderness, simplicity, and elegance, it is hardly surpassed by any thing in our language. BLINDNESS OF MILTON, There lived a divine old man, whose everlasting remains we have all admired, whose memory is the pride of England and of nature. His youth was distinguished by a happier lot than perhaps genius has often enjoyed at the commencement of its career; he was enabled, by the liberality of Providence, to dedicate his soul to the cultivation of those classical accomplishments in which almost his infancy delighted; he had attracted admiration at the period when it is most exquisitely felt; he stood forth the literary and political champion of republican England; and Europe acknowledged him the conqueror. But the storm arose; his fortune sank with the republic which he had defended; the name which future ages have consecrated was forgotten; and neglect was imbittered by remembered celebrity. Age was advancing. Health was retreating. Nature hid her face from him forever; for never more to him returned Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, What was the refuge of the deserted veteran from penuryfrom neglect from infamy-from darkness? Not in a querulous and peevish despondency; not in an unmanly recantation of principles, erroneous, but unchanged; not in the tremendous renunciation of what Heaven has given, and Heaven alone should take away: but he turned from a distracted country and voluptuous court; he turned from triumphant enemies and inefficient friends; he turned from a world, that to him was a universal blank, to the muse that sits among the cherubim, and she caught him into heaven! The clouds that obscured his vision. upon earth instantaneously vanished before the blaze of celestial effulgence, and his eyes opened at once upon all the glories and terrors of the Almighty, the seats of eternal beatitude and bottomless perdition. What though to look upon the face of this earth was still denied? what was it to him that one of the outcast atoms of creation was concealed from his view, when the Deity permitted the muse to unlock his mysteries, and disclose to the poet the recesses of the universe,-when she bade his soul expand into its immensity, and enjoy as well its horrors as its magnificence? what was it to him that he had "fallen upon evil days and evil tongues"? for the muse could transplant his spirit into the bowers of Eden, where the frown of fortune was disregarded, and the weight of incumbent infirmity forgotten in the Smile that beamed on primeval innocence, and the tear that was consecrated to man's first disobedience! |