(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,And thee, more loved than aught beneath the sun, If I had lived to smile but on the birth Of one dear pledge ;-but shall there then be none, To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me? A sweetness in the cup of death to be, Lord of my bosom's love! to die beholding thee!" (XXXII.) Hushed were his Gertrude's lips! but still their bland And beautiful expression seem'd to melt With love that could not die! and still his hand She presses to the heart no more that felt. Ah, heart! where once each fond affection dwelt, Of them that stood encircling his despair He heard some friendly words; but knew not what they were. (XXXIII.) For now, to mourn their judge and child, arrives (XXXIV.) Then mournfully the parting bugle bid Its farewell o'er the grave of worth and truth; His face on earth;-him watch'd, in gloomy ruth, He watch'd, beneath its folds, each burst that came (xxxv.) "And I could weep; "-th' Oneyda chief His descant wildly thus begun : "But that I may not stain with grief The death-song of my father's son, Or bow this head in woe! For, by my wrongs, and by my wrath, To-morrow Areouski's breath, (That fires yon heaven with storms of death,) Shall light us to the foe: And we shall share, my Christian boy, The foeman's blood, the avenger's joy! (XXXVI.) "But thee, my flower, whose breath was given By milder genii o'er the deep, The spirits of the white man's heaven Forbid not thee to weep: Nor will the Christian host, Nor will thy father's spirit grieve, (XXXVII.) "To-morrow let us do or die! But when the bolt of death is hurl'd, The hand is gone that cropt its flowers; Its echoes and its empty tread Would sound like voices from the dead! (XXXVIII.) Or shall we cross yon mountains blue, A thousand warriors drew the shaft? Ah! there, in desolation cold, The desert serpent dwells alone, Where grass o'ergrows each mouldering bone, And stones themselves to ruin grown, Like me are death-like old. Then seek we not their camp,-for there (XXXIX.) But hark, the trump! to-morrow thou Because I may not stain with grief The death-song of an Indian chief!" Thomas Moore. 1779-1852. "SURELY you must have been born with a rose in your lips, and a nightingale singing on the top of your bed," said Samuel Rogers to Moore; and there is much significance in the conceit. Moore's poems are full of colour, while their melody is almost faultless. His verse is sensuous and sweet. It seldom reaches passion or heroic aspiration. There is no profound depth of thought, no far insight of human nature or character. But it is full of airy fancies which are wrought into musical numbers characterised by exquisite finish which at its best shows no signs of elaboration. The flow and modulation of his lines give them an immediate affinity to music, and it seems but in the natural order of things that they should have been sung in a tender, sympathetic voice by the poet himself. Moore's songs still live in popular appreciation, now that "Lalla Rookh" is seldom read, and its splendours-astonishing as they are -have to a great extent ceased to hold the fancy of a younger generation. Even his Irish patriotic songs are remembered with something of the thrill which they caused when they were sung in fashionable drawing-rooms more than half a century ago. Though Moore had less depth and less force of genius than some, he had as much learning as most of his contemporaries, and a warmer and more |