tive than that of their cure, and the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and I confidently hope, that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there are still union and strength in Ireland sufficient to accomplish this noblest enterprise. 7. All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes So live, that when thy summons comes to join To that mysterious realm, where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed 8. Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up To drink this last and bitter cup Of grief that man shall taste- On earth's sepulchral clod, 9. Two hundred years!-two hundred years!— God of our fathers,-in whose sight The thousand years, that sweep away Are but the break and close of day,- 10. Thy path is high in heaven ;—we cannot gaze One of the sparks of night that fire the air; And, as round thy centre planets roll, So thou, too, hast thy path around the central soul. 11. O Thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! whence are thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest above! Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall: the mountains themselves decay with years: the ocean shrinks and grows again: the moon herself is lost in the heavens: but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls, and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm.But to Ossian thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more, whether thy yellow hair floats on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O Sun! in the strength of thy youth.—Age is dark and unlovely: it is like the glimmering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills; when the blast of the north is on the plain, and the traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey. 12. Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, 13. In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. This is the place, the centre of the grove: GAVETY, &c. Gayety is the exact opposite of dignity, and consequently demands another class of elements for its expression. Sprightliness of sentiment therefore, calls into requisition the Natural Voice, Quick Time, and Short Quantity, the Radical or Vanishing Stress, and the frequent recurrence of the Alternate Phrase of Melody. Facetiousness, Eager Argument, and Earnest Description employ these symbols. 1. EXAMPLES. Those two together long had lived Where neither tree nor house could bar And nigh an ancient obelisk Was raised by him, found out by Fisk, The strangest long-winged hawk that flies, On herald's martlet, has no legs, Nor hatches young ones, nor lays eggs; This Sydrophel by chance espied, A comet, and without a beard! Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl It must be supernatural, Unless it be that cannon-ball That, shot i' th' air point-blank upright, That by the earth's round bulk is made, 2. My poem's epic, and is meant to be Divided in twelve books; each book containing, A list of ships and captains, and kings reigning, A panorama view of hell's in training, All these things will be specified in time, Which makes so many poets, and some fools; 3. 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse: The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap— |