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CCCL. GERALD GRIFFIN, 1803-1840.

ADARE.

Oh, sweet Adare! oh, lovely vale!
Óh, soft retreat of sylvan splendour!
Nor summer sun, nor morning gale

E'er hailed a scene more softly tender.
How shall I tell the thousand charms
Within thy verdant bosom dwelling,
Where lull'd in Nature's fost'ring arms,
Soft peace abides and joy excelling.
Ye morning airs, how sweet at dawn
The slumbering boughs your song awaken,
Or linger o'er the silent lawn,

With odour of the harebell taken. Thou rising sun, how richly gleams

Thy smile from far Knockfierna's mountain, O'er waving woods and bounding streams, And many a grove and glancing fountain. In sweet Adare, the jocund spring

His notes of odorous joy is breathing, The wild bird in the woodland sing,

The wildflowers in the vale are breathing. There winds the Mague, as silver clear, Among the elms so sweetly flowing, There fragrant in the early year,

While roses on the bank are blowing.
The wild duck seeks the sedgy bank,

Or dives beneath the glistening billow,
Where graceful droop and clustering dank
The osier bright and rustling willow.
The hawthorn scents the leafy dale,
In thicket lone the stag is belling,

And sweet along the echoing vale

The sound of vernal joy is swelling.

CCCLI. SIR EDWARD EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON, 1803

TALENT AND GENIUS.

Talent convinces-Genius but excites;
This tasks the reason, that the soul delights.

Talent from sober judgment takes its birth,
And reconciles the pinion to the earth;
Genius unsettles with desires the mind,
Contented not till earth be left behind;
Talent, the sunshine on a cultured soil,
Ripens the fruit by slow degrees for toil.
Genius, the sudden Iris of the skies,

On cloud itself reflects its wondrous dyes :
And, to the earth, in tears and glory given,
Clasps in its airy arch the pomp of heaven!
Talent gives all that vulgar critics need,-
From its plain horn-book learn the dull to read;
Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful,

Leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull—
From eyes profane a veil the Isis screens,
And fools on fools still ask-" What Hamlet means ?"

CCCLII. REV. JO. MOULTRIE, 1804

DR MERLIN AND KING ARTHUR.

He [Merlin] was admitted sans delay,

Though the whole palace was in sad confusion; Through crowds of gaping courtiers he made way

To where the king, with dressing gown and shoes on, Was gravely wasting, in great pomp, away;

He bowed and said he "hoped 'twas no intrusion, Though for so many months he had been absent— But a little vision, by his sister Mab sent,

Had told him that his majesty was ill;

So he had come directly from Caer-Mardin,

To offer the assistance of his skill,

For (though he said it) there was nought so hard in

The power of blister, bolus, draught or pill,

But he could cure it-and not charge a farthing. He begged the monarch would put out his tongueHow long had this disorder on him hung?

What was his diet ?-did he sleep at night?

His pulse seemed languid-how did he digest

Had he retained his usual appetite ?

Pray, did he feel a tightness at his chest ?-

He thought 'twas want of exercise-he'd write A short prescription, which to him seemed best."This fragment of it 's extant-the style's eligible. And (like all doctors' Latin) quite intelligible. "Rex Arturus, diabolis cæruleis "Eger, ob desiderium Gigantum "Decollatorum in Calendis Juliis,

"Sal matrimon. quotidie capiat quantum "Suff. et conjugialibus aculeis

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(Versus desideratur-unus tantum) "Haustu matut. merid. et vespertino

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Rix. pulv. pil.-Fiat-auct. M.D. Merlino."

The meaning of the document is plain-
The king was dying of a quiet life,
And therefore Merlin wisely did ordain
That he should take unto himself a wife;
After which treatment should he e'er again
Complain of any lack of noise or strife,
Merlin acknowledged a disease so tragic
Would baffle both his medicine and his magic.

CCCLIII. THOMAS K. HERVEY, 1804-

LIFE.

'Tis thus with our life: while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song,
Gaily we glide in the gaze of the world,

With streamers afloat, and with canvas unfurled;
All gladness and glory, to wandering eyes,

Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs:
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears;

And the withering thoughts that the world cannot know, Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;

Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore, Where the dreams of our childhood are vanish'd and o'er.

CCCLIV. WILL. SEWELL, 1804-

MAN.

Lo, as in some dark time-worn pile,

At evening's close, 'tis good to sit,

O'er moss-grown arch, and broken aisle,
To mark the moon-light shadows flit.
Midst leaves, which scarce the night-winds wave,
To watch the struggling meteors shoot;
Or bend o'er some forgotten grave,
Till startled by the owlet's hoot:
So let me sit at times, and gaze
On that dark wreck, immortal man;
While yet amidst its ruin strays

A twilight softness, faint and wan.
For still they spring, in damp and gloom,
The flowers, that erst in Eden smiled;
And light is in the fractured tomb,

And strains of peace midst tempests wild.

CCCLV. HENRY TAYLOR, 1805--
1. THE RUINED GARDEN.

Delighted was the child to call

The plot of garden ground her own;
Delighted was she at the fall

Of evening mild, when shadows tall
Cross-barred the mound and cottage wall,

To linger there alone.

Nor seem'd the garden flowers less fair,
Nor loved she less to linger there,

When glisten'd in the morning dew

Each lip of red and eye of blue;

And when the sun too brightly burned
Towards the forest's verge she turned,
Where stretched away from glade to glade
A green
interminable shade;

And in the skirts thereof a bower

Was built with many a creeping flower,
For shelter at the noon-tide hour ;
And from the forest walks was heard
The voice of many a singing bird,
With murmurs of the cushat-dove,
That tell the secret of her love;

And pleasant therefore all day long,
From earliest dawn to even-song,-
Supremely pleasant was this wild
Sweet garden to the woodian's child.—

The whirlwind came with fire and flood
And smote the garden in the wood;
All that was formed to give delight
Destruction levelled in a night;

The morning broke, the child awoke,
And when she saw what sudden stroke
The garden which she loved had swept
To ruin, she sat down and wept.
Her grief was great, but it had vent;
Its force, not spared, was sooner spent ;
And she bethought her to repair
The garden which had been so fair.
Then roam'd she through the forest walks
Cropping the wild flowers by their stalks,
And divers full-blown blossoms gay
She gather'd, and in fair array

Disposed, and stuck them in the mound,
Which had been once her garden-ground.
They seem'd to flourish for awhile,
A moment's space she seemed to smile;
But brief the bloom and vain the toil,
They were not native to the soil.

That other child, beneath whose zone
Were passions fearfully full-grown,—
She too essayed to deck the waste

Where love had grown, which love had graced
With false adornments, flowers not fruit,
Fast-fading flowers, that strike not root,--
With pleasures alien to her breast,
That bloom but briefly at the best,
The world's sad substitutes for joys
To minds that lose their equipoise.

2. GREAT MEN.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

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