DEAR HARP OF MY COUNTRY. Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, Have throbb'd at our lay, 'tis thy glory alone; VOL. IV. ECHO. How sweet the answer Echo makes When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes, Yet Love hath echoes truer får, Than e'er beneath the moonlight's star, The songs repeat, 'Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere, And only then, The sigh that's breath'd for one to hear, Breathed back again! Y OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT. [From National Airs.] Oft, in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm'd and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. When I remember all The friends, so link'd together, I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather; I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. CHARLES WOLFE. [CHARLES WOLFE was born in Dublin, Dec. 14, 1791. He was educated at the University of Dublin, was ordained in 1817, became Curate of Donoughmore in Downshire, and died at the Cove of Cork, Feb. 21, 1823. He printed no book during his life-time, but his slender remains in prose and verse were collected some years after his death by Archdeacon Russell.] The famous ode on The Burial of Sir John Moore was first printed in The Newry Telegraph, an Ulster newspaper, in 1817, with the initials C. W. It was copied into the English papers, and won an instant popularity, but the slight evidence of authorship seems to have dropped out of sight at once. Byron's friends charged him with its composition, but he regretfully disowned it, reading it meanwhile to all his friends with enthusiasm, among others to Shelley, who remarked, 'I should have taken the whole for a rough sketch of Campbell's.' Almost immediately it took its place among the four or five best martial poems in our language, preeminent for simplicity, patriotic fervour, and manly pathos. It was presently discovered that this poem had been written some years before it was printed, by a young Irishman of much promise who died of a decline in his thirty-second year1. When this fact became known, public curiosity was attracted to his name, and an attempt was made by one of his early friends to collect what he had written. Only twelve short pieces, besides the ode, could be discovered; they were mostly songs of love and friendship, full of ardour, and not uninfluenced by the popular Irish manner of Moore. We give one of these, as a favourable specimen of Wolfe's ordinary style. 1 EDMUND W. GOSSE. It has been usually said that Wolfe paraphrased very closely the report of the death of Sir John Moore in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1808. A reference to the report in question relegates this statement to the province of fable; the newspaper account is quite bald and commonplace, and the poet has supplied all the salient points out of his own imagination. THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA. 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 nor in shroud we wound him; Few and short were the prayers we said, We thought as we hollowed 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 weary task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stoneBut we left him alone with his glory. SONG. O say not that my heart is cold For those who made it dearer still, Still oft those solemn scenes I view Stern Duty rose, and frowning flung 'The mountain breeze, the boundless heaven, Unfit for toil the creature ; These for the free alone were given, But what have slaves with Nature?' |