"Hearts of oak!" our captains cried; when each gu From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse Of the sun. IV. Again! again! again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back ;— Their shots along the deep slowly boom ;- As they strike the shatter'd sail; Or, in conflagration pale, Light the gloom. Brave hearts! to Britain's pride With the gallant good Riou ; Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave! While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the souls Of the brave! FROM GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. THE DEATH OF GERTRUDE. PART III. STANZA XXIX. Clasp me a little longer on the brink Of fate! While I can feel thy dear caress; 1 "Captain Riou, justly entitled the gallant and the good, by Lord Nelson, when he wrote home his dispatches." FROM GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. And when this heart hath ceased to beat-oh! think, That thou hast been to me all tenderness, And friend to more than human friendship just. Oh! by that retrospect of happiness, And by the hopes of an immortal trust, 439 God shall assuage thy pangs—when I am laid in dust ! XXX. Go, Henry, go not back, when I depart; The scene thy bursting tears too deep will move, In heaven; for ours was not like earthly love. No! I shall love thee still, when death itself is past. XXXI. Half could I bear, methinks, to leave this earth,- Of one dear pledge;-but shall there then be none To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me? Yet seems it, even when life's last pulses run, A sweetness in the cup of death to be, Lord of my bosom's love, to die beholding thee! THOMAS MOORE. (1779-1852.) THOMAS MOORE was born in Dublin, of comparatively humble parentage. A relaxation in the laws affecting Roman Catholics gave him access to Dublin University. Narrowly escaping connection with the conspiracies of the time, in which the ardour of his nature would have involved him, he came to London to study law. The celebrity of his translation of Anacreon (1800), his songs, and his brilliant and amiable qualities, admitted him to the highest circles. He conceived warm hopes of advancement from the patronage of Lord Moira and the Prince of Wales (George IV.); but his only appointment, obtained in 1803, was an office in the Admiralty Court at Bermuda. The duties he executed by deputy, and at length, in 1818, his deputy proving faithless, he had ultimately to pay £1050 for defalcations. He rejected the offers of friends, and redeemed himself with his pen. In 1811 he married, and retired to the country, to work for himself, and to be "as happy as love, literature, and liberty could make him." In his various retreats he is always found in the neighbourhood and society of the wealthy and the noble; he loved to linger in the light of the gilded saloons; but it is true that his society was universally courted. His talents and fame rendered him a special favourite in all intellectual and fashionable circles. At Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes, close to Bowood, the seat of his noble and constant friend the Marquis of Landsdowne, he fixed his residence in 1817. His pen had served the Whig party well, and from Lord Melbourne's government he received a pension of £300 a year. This he did not long enjoy; he gradually declined, till his fine intellect was eclipsed: he died in February 1852, unconscious of pain. His life and correspondence were published by his literary executor, Lord John Russell, by which a sum of £3000 was obtained for the poet's widow. Like some brother poets, Moore latterly published a collected edition of his poetry expurgated from the licentiousness which had stained some of his earlier works, and which caused, from the severe strictures of the Edinburgh Review, the ridiculous duel with Mr. (Lord) Jeffrey in 1806, -a quarrel that resulted in lasting friendship. His largest work, "Lalla Rookh," is constructed on the principle followed by Boccaccio, and exemplified in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and Hogg's "Queen's Wake;" the narrative connecting the tales is in prose. These oriental stories abound with gorgeous eastern scenery, display wonderful variety of learning, are brilliant in invention and incident, and redolent of the climes in which they are cast. The "Loves of the Angels," founded on a common interpretation of Gen. vi. 2, is too voluptuously beautiful. FROM LALLAH ROOKH. 441 Anacreon is translated with the gusto of a kindred spirit. But Moore's Songs and Irish Melodies, swelling to the "bold anthems" of patriotism and war, or murmuring the softest and tenderest feelings of the heart, with scenic touches flitting like sunset among their fitful verses, will form the lasting basis of his fame. In all Moore's poetry, the reader is delighted with the butterfly sportiveness of his fancy over regions of perpetual brightness, but in his larger works this continuous splendour fatigues. In prose he is the author of a " History of Ireland," of biographies of Sheridan and Byron (the latter a difficult task well executed), and of a fine eastern romance called the "Epicurean." Moore was remarkably small in stature, with a countenance so changeful in expression that none of his portraits are said to convey a true idea of the man. His cheerfulness was imperturbable even amidst circumstances that chequered his successful career. Warm in his affections, he was the delight of all who knew him, and the friendships he made he never lost. FROM LALLAH ROOKH. (PARADISE AND THE PERI.1) EGYPTIAN SCENERY-THE PLAGUE. Now among Afric's lunar Mountains, And sleek'd her plumage at the fountains Her grots, and sepulchres of kings, To watch the moonlight on the wings 1 Peris (Fairies), "those beautiful creatures of the air, who live upon perfumes, and inhabit beneath the dark sea,' who lost heaven with Eblis (Lucifer) and his adherent rebel spirits. The Peri of the poem, sighing at the celestial portals over her lost paradise is told by the angel who was keeping the 'Gates of Light,' that bliss may be regained by bringing the gift that is most dear to Heaven.' She proceeds over the earth in her search, and brings successively, the last blood-drop of a dying patriot on the battle-field; the last sigh of a faithful lover, who sacrifices himself with his mistress, perishing of the plague in Egypt; and the tear of a repentant sinner: the third gift obtains the Peri's object." The extract is taken from the second errand of the Peri. 2 Lunar; "the Montes Lunae of antiquity, at the foot of which the Nile is supposed to rise."-Bruce. "Sometimes," says Jackson, "called Jibbel Kumrie, or the white or lunar-coloured mountains; so a white horse is called by the Arabians a mooncoloured horse." Giant; the Nile is so called by the Abyssinians. 3 Rosetta, the Italianized name of Raschid, the town at the ancient Bolbitic mouth of the Nile. Italian names are frequent in the geography of the Levant, from the commercial intercourse of the republics of Italy with these countries. Of the white pelicans that break The azure calm of Moris' Lake.1 'Twas a fair scene-a land more bright Who could have thought, that saw, this night, Bathing their beauties in the lake, Amid whose fairy loneliness Nought but the lawping's cry is heard, Nought seen but (when the shadows, flitting Some purple wing'd Sultana' sitting Upon a column, motionless, And glittering like an idol bird!— Who could have thought, that there, even there, The Demon of the Plague hath cast The sun went down on many a brow The very vultures turn away, And sicken at so foul a prey! Only the fierce hyena stalks Through the city's desolate walks 1 To the west of the Nile, in the Oasis of Faioum; the lake, or the canal which led to it, is said to have been dug by a king of the same name. 2 "That beautiful bird-the natural and living ornament of the temples and palaces of the Greeks and Romans, which, from the stateliness of its port, as well as the brilliancy of its colours, has obtained the title of Sultana."-Sonnini. 3 The poison wind of the desert, taking its colour from the sand which it raises in its course. |