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Where once in the fire of his youthful emotion,

He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh!

"Sad is my fate!" said the heartbroken stranger;

"The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,

But I have no refuge from famine and danger,

A home and a country remain not

to me.

Never again, in the green sunny bowers,

Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,

Or cover my harp with the wildwoven flowers,

66

And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh!

"Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,

In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;

But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,

And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more! [me O cruel fate! wilt thou never replace in a mansion of peace- - where no perils can chase me? Never again shall my brothers embrace me?

They died to defend me, or lived to deplore!

"Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild wood?

Sisters and sire, did ye weep for its fall?

Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?

And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all ?

Oh, my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure,

Why did it dote on a fast-fading treasure?

Tears, like the rain drop, may fall without measure,

But rapture and beauty they can not recall.

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And when its yellow lustre smiled O'er mountains yet untrod, Each mother held aloft her child To bless the bow of God.

Methinks, thy jubilee to keep,
The first-made anthem rang,
On earth delivered from the deep,
And the first poet sang.

Nor ever shall the Muse's eye
Unraptured greet thy beam:
Theme of primeval prophecy,

Be still the prophet's theme!

The earth to thee her incense yields,
The lark thy welcome sings,
When glittering in the freshened
fields

The snowy mushroom springs.

How glorious is thy girdle cast
O'er mountain, tower and town,
Or mirrored in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down!

As fresh in yon horizon dark,

As young thy beauties seem, As when the eagle from the ark First sported in thy beam.

For, faithful to its sacred page, Heaven still rebuilds thy span, Nor lets the type grow pale with age That first spoke peace to man.

THE RIVER OF LIFE.

THE more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages:
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.

But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man.
Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath,

And life itself is vapid, Why, as we reach the Falls of Death, Feel we its tide more rapid ?

It may be strange - yet who would change

Time's course to slower speeding, When one by one our friends have gone

And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength

Indemnifying fleetness; And those of youth, a seeming length,

Proportioned to their sweetness.

BATTLE OF THE BALTIC.

OF Nelson and the North,
Sing the glorious day's renown,
When to battle fierce came forth
All the might of Denmark's crown,
And her arms along the deep proudly
shone;

By each gun the lighted brand,
In a bold determined hand;
And the prince of all the land
Led them on.

Like leviathans afloat,

Lay their bulwarks on the brine;
While the sign of battle flew
On the lofty British line:

It was ten of April morn by the chime:
As they drifted on their path,

| There was silence deep as death; And the boldest held his breath, For a time.

But the might of England flushed
To anticipate the scene;
And her van the fleeter rushed
O'er the deadly space between.
"Hearts of oak!" our captain cried,
when each gun

From its adamantine lips
Spread a death-shade round the ships,
Like the hurricane eclipse
Of the sun.

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organ play,

[From The Pleasures of Hope.]
DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

LET winter come! let polar spirits sweep

The darkening world, and tempesttroubled deep!

Though boundless snows the withered heath deform,

And the dim sun scarce wanders through the storm,

Yet shall the smile of social love repay,

With mental light, the melancholy day!

And, when its short and sullen noon is o'er,

The ice-chained waters slumbering on the shore,

How bright the fagots in his little hall Blaze on the hearth, and warm his pictured wall!

How blest he names, in Love's familiar tone,

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And sweep the furrowed lines of Trim the gay taper in his rustic dome,

anxious thought away..

[From The Pleasures of Hope.]

HOPE IN ADVERSITY.

BRIGHT as the pillar rose at Heaven's command,

When Israel marched along the desert land,

Blazed through the night on lonely wilds afar,

And told the path, -a never-setting

star:

So, heavenly Genius, in thy course divine,

Hope is thy star, her light is ever thine.

And light the wintry paradise of home;

And let the half-uncurtained window

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The morning dream of life's eternal day

Then, then the triumph and the trance begin,

And all the phoenix spirit burns

within!

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dread,

waves the night-shade round the skeptic head.

What is the bigot's torch, the tyrant's

I

chain ?

smile on death, if Heavenward Hope remain:

But, if the warring winds of Nature's

strife

Be all the faithless charter of my life, If Chance awakened, inexorable power This frail and feverish being of an hour;

Doomed o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep,

Swift as the tempest travels on the deep,

To know Delight but by her parting smile,

And toil, and wish, and weep a little while;

Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain

This troubled pulse and visionary brain!

Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom,

And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb! Truth, ever lovely, began,

since the world

The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man,

How can thy words from balmy slumber start

Reposing Virtue pillowed on the heart!

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