The story of his strife;
Such homage suits him well,

Better than funeral pomp or passing bell!

What tale of peril and self-sacrifice!
Prisoned amid the fastnesses of ice,

With hunger howling o'er the wastes of snow!
Night lengthening into months; the ravenous
floe

Crunching the massive ships, as the white bear
Crunches his prey. The insufficient share
Of loathsome food;

The lethargy of famine; the despair

Urging to labor, nervelessly pursued ; Toil done with skinny arms, and faces hued Like pallid masks, while dolefully behind Glimmered the fading embers of a mind! That awful hour, when through the prostrate band Delirium stalked, laying his burning hand

Upon the ghastly foreheads of the crew; The whispers of rebellion, faint and few At first, but deepening ever till they grew Into black thoughts of murder, such the throng Of horrors bound the hero. High the song Should be that hymns the noble part he played! Sinking himself, yet ministering aid

To all around him. By a mighty will
Living defiant of the wants that kill,
Because his death would seal his comrades' fate;
Cheering with ceaseless and inventive skill
Those polar waters, dark and desolate.
Equal to every trial, every fate,

He stands, until spring, tardy with relief,
Unlocks the icy gate,

And the pale prisoners thread the world once more,
To the steep cliffs of Greenland's pastoral shore
Bearing their dying chief!

Time was when he should gain his spurs of gold From royal hands, who wooed the knightly state; The knell of old formalities is tolled,

And the world's knights are now self-consecrate. No grander episode doth chivalry hold

In all its annals, back to Charlemagne, Than that lone vigil of unceasing pain, Faithfully kept through hunger and through cold, By the good Christian knight, Elisha Kane !

FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN.

THE OLD ADMIRAL.

ADMIRAL STEWART, U. S. N.

GONE at last,

That brave old hero of the past! His spirit has a second birth, An unknown, grander life ;

All of him that was earth

Lies mute and cold,

Like a wrinkled sheath and old

Thrown off forever from the shimmering blade That has good entrance made

Upon some distant, glorious strife.

From another generation,

A simpler age, to ours Old Ironsides came; The morn and noontide of the nation

Alike he knew, nor yet outlived his fame,

O, not outlived his fame!

The dauntless men whose service guards our shore Lengthen still their glory-roll

With his name to lead the scroll, As a flagship at her fore

Carries the Union, with its azure and the stars, Symbol of times that are no more And the old heroic wars.

He was the one

Whom Death had spared alone

Of all the captains of that lusty age, Who sought the foeman where he lay, On sea or sheltering bay,

Nor till the prize was theirs repressed their rage.

They are gone, - all gone:

They rest with glory and the undying Powers; Only their name and fame, and what they saved,

are ours!

It was fifty years ago,

Upon the Gallic Sea,

He bore the banner of the free,

And fought the fight whereof our children know, —
The deathful, desperate fight!
Under the fair moon's light

The frigate squared, and yawed to left and right.
Every broadside swept to death a score !
Roundly played her guns and well, till their fiery
ensigns fell,

Neither foe replying more.

All in silence, when the night-breeze cleared the air,

Old Ironsides rested there,

Locked in between the twain, and drenched with blood.

Then homeward, like an eagle with her prey!
O, it was a gallant fray,

That fight in Biscay Bay!

Fearless the captain stood, in his youthful hardi

hood:

He was the boldest of them all,

Our brave old Admiral!

And still our heroes bleed, Taught by that olden deed.

One the grisly King of Terrors; one a Bourbon, with his errors, late to conscience-clearing set.

Well his fevered pulse may flutter, and the priests their mass may mutter with such fervor

as they may:

Cross and chrysm, and genuflection, mop and mow, and interjection, will not frighten Death away.

By the dying despot sitting, at the hard heart's portals hitting, shocking the dull brain to work,

Death makes clear what life has hidden, chides what life has left unchidden, quickens

truth life tried to burke.

He but ruled within his borders after Holy Church's orders, did what Austria bade him do ;

By their guidance flogged and tortured; highborn men and gently nurtured chained with crime's felonious crew.

What if summer fevers gripped them, what if winter freezings nipped them, till they rotted in their chains?

He had word of Pope and Kaiser; none could holier be or wiser; theirs the counsel, his the reins.

So he pleads excuses eager, clutching, with his fingers meagre, at the bedclothes as he speaks;

But King Death sits grimly grinning at the Bourbon's cobweb-spinning, -as each cobweb-cable breaks.

And the poor soul, from life's eylot, rudderless, without a pilot, drifteth slowly down the dark; While 'mid rolling incense vapor, chanted dirge, and flaring taper, lies the body, stiff and stark.

PUNCH.

BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

NOT a drum was heard, nor 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 moonbeams' misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin inclosed his breast,

Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay, like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.

GEORGE VILLiers, duke oF BUCKINGHAM. 1682.

SOME of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ,
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent or over-civil,

That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laughed himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom, and wise Achitophel.
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left no faction, but of that was left.
JOHN DRYDEN.

WHITEFIELD.

FROM "HOPE."
LEUCONOMUS (beneath well-sounding Greek
I slur a name a poet may not speak)
Stood pilloried on infamy's high stage,
And bore the pelting storm of half an age;
The very butt of slander, and the blot
For every dart that malice ever shot.

The man that mentioned him at once dismissed
All mercy from his lips, and sneered and hissed;
His crimes were such as Sodom never knew,
And perjury stood up to swear all true;
His aim was mischief, and his zeal pretence,
His speech rebellion against common sense;
A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule,
And when by that of reason, a mere fool;
The world's best comfort was, his doom was past;
Die when he might, he must be damned at last.

Now, truth, perform thine office; waft aside The curtain drawn by prejudice and pride, Reveal (the man is dead) to wondering eyes This more than monster in his proper guise.

He loved the world that hated him; the tear That dropped upon his Bible was sincere ; Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was a blameless life; And he that forged and he that threw the dart Had each a brother's interest in his heart. Paul's love of Christ and steadiness unbribed Were copied close in him, and well transcribed. He followed Paul; his zeal a kindred flame, His apostolic charity the same. Like him crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas, Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease; Like him he labored, and like him, content To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went. Blush, Calumny! and write upon his tomb, If honest Eulogy can spare thee room, Which, aimed at him, has pierced the offended Thy deep repentance of thy thousand lies,

skies;

To name his works,

"Wat Tyler," "Waterloo."

he would but cite a few, "Rhymes on Blenheim,"

He had written praises of a regicide;

He had written praises of all kings whatever; He had written for republics far and wide,

And then against them bitterer than ever; For pantisocracy he once had cried

OG.

Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin,

A monstrous mass of foul, corrupted matter,

Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk?

Satire of sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks,
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;
His wit all seesaw, between that and this.
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,

And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that, acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have exprest,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

ALEXANDER POPE.

The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing, "Be thou dull;
Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk; do anything but write:
Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men;
A strong nativity - but for the pen !
Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,
Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink":
I see, I see, 't is counsel given in vain,
For treason botched in rhyme will be thy bane;
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck;
Why should thy metre good King David blast?
A psalm of his will surely be thy last.

A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull
For writing treason and for writing dull.
To die for faction is a common evil,
But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.
JOHN DRYDEN.

ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQUIRE.
A WANDERER, Wilson, from my native land,
Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,
Where rolls between us the eternal sea,
Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand, -
Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall,
Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call,
Across the wavy waste between us stretched,
A friendly missive warns me of a stricture,
Wherein my likeness you have darkly etched;
And though I have not seen the shadow sketched,
Thus I remark prophetic on the picture.

I guess the features:- in a line to paint
Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint.
Not one of those self-constituted saints,
Quacks not physicians in the cure of souls,
Censors who sniff out moral taints,
And call the devil over his own coals,
Those pseudo Privy-Councillors of God,
Who write down judgments with a pen hard.
nibbed ;

--

Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod, Commending sinners not to ice thick-ribbed, But endless flames, to scorch them like flax,

Of such a character no single trace
Exists, I know, in my fictitious face.
There wants a certain cast about the eye;
A certain lifting of the nose's tip;
A certain curling of the nether lip,

In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;
In brief, it is an aspect deleterious,
A face decidedly not serious,

A face profane, that would not do at all

To make a face at Exeter Hall,

That Hall where bigots rant and cant and pray,
And laud each other face to face,
Till every farthing-candle ray

Conceives itself a great gaslight of grace!

Well!-be the graceless lineaments confest! I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest

-

"Within the limits of becoming mirth ";
No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,
Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious,
Nor study in my sanctum supercilious
To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.
I pray for grace, - repent each sinful act,
Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible;
And love my neighbor far too well, in fact,
To call and twit him with a godly tract
That's turned by application to a libel.
My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven,
All creeds I view with toleration thorough.
And have a horror of regarding heaven
As anybody's rotten borough.

I've no ambition to enact the spy
On fellow-souls, a spiritual Pry,
'T is said that people ought to guard their noses
Who thrust them into matters none of theirs ;
And, though no delicacy discomposes
Your saint, yet I consider faith and prayers
Amongst the privatest of men's affairs.

I do not hash the Gospel in my books,
And thus upon the public mind intrude it,
As if I thought, like Otaheitan cooks,
No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it.
On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk;
Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk,
For man may pious texts repeat,
And yet religion have no inward seat;
"T is not so plain as the old Hill of Howth,
A man has got his belly full of meat
Because he talks with victuals in his mouth!

I honestly confess that I would hinder
The Scottish member's legislative rigs,
That spiritual Pindar,

That must be lashed by law, wherever found,
And driven to church as to the parish pound.
I do confess, without reserve or wheedle,
I view that grovelling idea as one
Worthy some parish clerk's ambitious son,
A charity-boy who longs to be a beadle.
On such a vital topic sure 't is odd

How much a man can differ from his neighbor;
One wishes worship freely given to God,
Another wants to make it statute-labor, -
The broad distinction in a line to draw,
As means to lead us to the skies above,
You say,
Sir Andrew and his love of law,
And I, the Saviour with his law of love.

Spontaneously to God should tend the soul,
Like the magnetic needle to the Pole ;

But what were that intrinsic virtue worth, Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowl. edge

Fresh from St. Andrew's college,
Should nail the conscious needle to the north?
I do confess that I abhor and shrink
From schemes, with a religious willy-nilly,
That frown upon St. Giles's sins, but blink
The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly, —
My soul revolts at such bare hypocrisy,
And will not, dare not, fancy in accord
The Lord of Hosts with an exclusive lord
Of this world's aristocracy.

It will not own a notion so unholy
As thinking that the rich by easy trips
May go to heaven, whereas the poor and lowly
Must work their passage, as they do in ships.

One place there is, beneath the burial-sod,
Where all mankind are equalized by death;
Another place there is, the fane of God,
Where all are equal who draw living breath;-
Juggle who will elsewhere with his own soul,
Playing the Judas with a temporal dole,
He who can come beneath that awful cope,
In the dread presence of a Maker just,
Who metes to every pinch of human dust
One even measure of immortal hope, —
He who can stand within that holy door,
With soul unbowed by that pure spirit-level,
And frame unequal laws for rich and poor,
Might sit for Hell, and represent the Devil!

The humble records of my life to search,
I have not herded with mere pagan beasts;
But sometimes I have "sat at good men's feasts,"
And I have been "where bells have knolled to
church."

Dear bells how sweet the sounds of village bells
When on the undulating air they swim!
Now loud as welcomes! faint, now, as farewells!