Oh! never till that glorious day, Or hear, O Peace, thy welcome lay Resounding through her sunny mountains. HERE'S THE BOWER. HERE's the bower she loved so much, Here's the harp she used to touch,- Where's the hand to wreathe them? Where's the lip to breathe them? Spring may bloom, but she we loved Years were days, when here she stray'd, Here's the bower she loved so much, And the tree she planted; Here's the harp she used to touch, A MELOLOGUE UPON NATIONAL MUSIC. ADVERTISEMENT. THESE Verses were written for a Benefit at the Dublin Theatre, and were spoken by Miss Smith, with a degree of success, which they owed solely to her admirable manner of reciting them. I wrote them in haste, and it very rarely happens that poetry, which has cost but little labour to the writer, is productive of any great pleasure to the reader. Under this impression, I should not have published them, if they had not found their way into some of the newspapers, with such an addition of errors to their own original stock, that I thought it but fair to limit their responsibility to those faults alone which really belong to them. With respect to the title which I have invented for this Poem, I feel even more than the scruples of the Emperor Tiberius, when he humbly asked pardon of the Roman Senate for using "the outlandish term Monopoly." But the truth is, having written the Poem with the sole view of serving a Benefit, I thought that an unintelligible word of this kind would not be without its attraction for the multitude; with whom, "If 'tis not sense, at least 'tis Greek." To some of my readers, however, it may not be superfluous to say, that by "Melologue " I mean that mixture of recitation and music, which is frequently adopted in the performance of Collins's Ode on the Passions, and of which the most striking example I can remember, is the prophetic speech of Joad, in the Athalie of Racine. T. M. MELOLOGUE UPON NATIONAL MUSIC. INTRODUCTORY MUSIC-Haydn. There breathes the language, known and felt That language of the soul is felt and known. (Where oft, of old, on some high tower, Not worlds could keep her from his arms away 1) Where, beneath a sunless sky, The Lapland lover bids his reindeer fly, Of vernal Phoebus burn'd upon his brow. Is still resistless, still the same! And faithful as the mighty sea To the pale star that o'er its realm presides, Of human passion rise and fall for thee! GREEK AIR. LIST! 'tis a Grecian maid that sings, She draws the cool lymph in her graceful urn; 1 A certain Spaniard, one night late, met an Indian woman in the streets of Cozco, and would have taken her to his home, but she cried "For God's sake, sir, let me go; for that pipe which you hear in yonder tower calls me with great passion, and I cannot refuse the summons; for love constrains me to go, that I may be his wife and he my husband."-Garcilasso de la Vega, in Sir Paul Rycaut's translation. And by her side, in music's charm dissolving, FLOURISH OF TRUMPET. HARK! 'tis the sound that charms See! from his native hills afar, As if 'twere like his mountain rill, O Music! here, even here, Amid this thoughtless wild career, Thy soul-felt charm asserts its wondrous power. There is an air, which oft among the rocks Of his own loved land, at evening hour, Is heard when shepherds homeward pipe their flocks: Oh! every note of it would thrill his mind With tenderest thoughts-would bring around his knees The rosy children whom he left behind, And fill each little angel eye With speaking tears that ask him why SWISS AIR. BUT wake the trumpet's blast again, O War! when Truth thy arm employs, Than the blest sound of fetters breaking, From Slavery's slumber, breathes to Liberty! SPANISH AIR. HARK! from Spain, indignant Spain, By Saragossa's ruin'd streets, By brave Gerona's deathful story, That while one Spaniard's life-blood beats, If neither valour's force nor wisdom's light What muse shall mourn the breathless brave, In sweetest dirge at memory's shrine? What harp shall sigh o'er Freedom's grave? O Erin! thine! IRISH AIR-Gramachree. |