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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.

EDMUND W. Gosse.

1 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;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we stedfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,-
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

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 stone-But we left him alone with his glory.

SONG.

O say not that my heart is cold
To aught that once could warm it;
That Nature's form, so dear of old,

No more has power to charm it;
Or that the ungenerous world can chill
One glow of fond emotion

For those who made it dearer still,
And shared my wild devotion.

Still oft those solemn scenes I view
In rapt and dreamy sadness;
Oft look on those who loved them too
With Fancy's idle gladness;
Again I longed to view the light
In Nature's features glowing,
Again to tread the mountain's height,
And taste the soul's o'erflowing.

Stern Duty rose, and frowning flung
His leaden chain around me;
With iron look and sullen tongue

He muttered as he bound me:

"The mountain breeze, the boundless heaven, Unfit for toil the creature;

These for the free alone were given,

But what have slaves with Nature ?'

CHARLES LAMB.

[Born in the Temple, London, February 10, 1775; was educated at Christ's Hospital, with Coleridge for a school-fellow; became clerk in the India House, 1792; retired on a pension, 1825; died December 27, 1834. His poetry is as follows:-Poems by S. T. Coleridge, second edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, 1797. Blank Verse, by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798. Poetry for Children, entirely original; by the Author of Mrs. Leicester's School, 1809. Poems in The Works of Charles Lamb, 1818. Album Verses, with a few others, by Charles Lamb, 1830.]

Charles Lamb's nosegay of verse may be held by the small hand of a maiden, and there is not in it one flaunting, gallant flower; it is, however, fragrant with the charities of home, like blossoms gathered in some old cottage croft. To know his varying subtleties, his play of intellect, his lambent humour, one must turn to his prose writings; but the gentle heart, the unworldly temper, the fine courtesy, betray themselves in every utterance of Lamb. It was in early manhood and in snatches of time that his first verses were written; he speaks of them as creatures of the fancy and the feeling in life's more vacant hours, as derivatives from the poetry of Coleridge. And certainly there is less in them of Lamb's own favourite, Burns, than of Bowles, whom Coleridge at one time idolised. In Coleridge's volume they modestly made their appearance. 'My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle under cover of the greater Ajax.' The larger number of his poems are occasional; a few are interesting as records of a love in idleness that gave unusual charm to the memory of some months in Lamb's prime of youth. From the India House desk it was pleasant to wander in fancy along some forest-glade by the side of fair-haired Anna. But after all, his dear sister, even his good and pious grandame, was closer to Lamb than

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