They are laid by the stream of Lubar. Four gray stones mark the dwelling of Orla and Calmar. When Swaran was bound, our sails rose on the blue waves. The winds gave our barks to Morven. The bards raised the song.

banks of Lubar." "Calmar," said the chief of ful is the clang of death! many are the widows of Oithona; "why should thy yellow locks be dark-Lochlin. Morven prevails in his strength. ened in the dust of Erin? Let me fall alone. My Morn glimmers on the hills; no living foe is seen. father dwells in his hall of air: he will rejoice in his but the sleepers are many; grim they lie on Erin. boy; but the blue-eyed Mora spreads the feast for The breeze of ocean lifts their locks; yet they do not her son in Morven. She listens to the steps of the awake. The hawks scream above their prey. hunter on the heath, and thinks it is the tread of Whose yellow locks wave o'er the breast of a Calmar. Let him not say, 'Calmar has fallen by chief? Bright as the gold of the stranger, they the steel of Lochlin: he died with gloomy Orla, the mingle with the dark hair of his friend. 'Tis Calchief of the dark brow.' Why should tears dim the mar: he lies on the bosom of Orla. Theirs is one azure eye of Mora? Why should her voice curse stream of blood. Fierce is the look of the gloomy Orla, the destroyer of Calmar? Live, Calmar! Orla. He breathes not; but his eye is still a flame. Live to raise my stone of moss; live to revenge me It glares in death unclosed. His hand is grasped in in the blood of Lochlin. Join the song of bards Calmar's; but Calmar lives! he lives, though low. above my grave. Sweet will be the song of death to " Rise," said the king, "rise, son of Mora: 'tis Orla from the voice of Calmar. My ghost shall mine to heal the wounds of heroes. Calmar may yet smile on the notes of praise." "Orla," said the son bound on the hills of Morven." of Mora, "could I raise the song of death to my "Never more shall Calmar chase the deer of Morfriend? Could I give his fame to the winds? No, ven with Orla," said the hero. "What were the my heart would speak in sighs. Faint and broken chase to me alone? Who would share the spoils o are the sounds of sorrow. Orla! our souls shall battle with Calmar? Orla is at rest! Rough was hear the song together. One cloud shall be ours on thy soul, Orla! yet soft to me as the dew of morn. high. The bards will mingle the names of Orla and It glared on others in lightning; to me a silver Calmar." beam of night. Bear my sword to blue-eyed Mora: They quit the circle of the chiefs. Their steps let it hang in my empty hall. It is not pure from we to the host of Lochlin. The dying blaze of oak blood: but it could not save Orla. Lay me with my dim twinkles through the night. The northern star friend. Raise the song when I am dark!” points the path to Tura. Swaran, the king, rests on his lonely hill. Here the troops are mixed: they frown in sleep; their shields beneath their heads. Their swords gleam at distance in heaps. The fires are faint; their embers fail in smoke. All is hushed; but the gale sighs on the rocks above. Lightly wheel "What form rises on the roar of clouds? Whose the heroes through the slumbering band. Half the dark ghost gleams on the red streams of tempests? journey is past, when Mathon, resting on his shield, His voice rolls on the thunder. 'Tis Orla, the brown meets the eye of Orla. It rolls in flame, and glist-chief of Oithona. He was unmatched in war. ens through the shade. His spear is raised on Peace to thy soul, Orla! thy fame will not perish. high. "Why dost thou bend thy brow, chief of Nor thine, Calmar! Lovely wast thou, son of blueOithona?" said fair-haired Calmar. "We are in the eyed Mora; but not harmless was thy sword. It midst of foes. Is this a time for delay?" "It is a hangs in thy cave. The ghosts of Lochlin shriek time for vengeance," said Orla of the gloomy brow. around its steel. Hear thy praise, Calmar! It "Mathon of Lochlin sleeps: seest thou his spear? dwells on the voice of the mighty. Thy name Its point is dim with the gore of my father. The shakes on the echoes of Morven. Then raise thy blood of Mathon shall reek on mine; but shall I fair locks, son of Mora. Spread them on the arch slay him sleeping, son of Mora? No! he shall feel his of the rainbow; and smile through the tears of the wound my fame shall not soar on the blood of storm.”* slumber. Rise! Mathon! rise! the son of Conna calls; thy life is his; rise to combat." Mathon starts from sleep; but did he rise alone? No: the gathering chiefs bound on the plain. "Fly! Calmar! fly!" said dark-haired Orla. "Mathon is mine. I shall die in joy. But Lochlin crowds around. Fly through the shade of night." Orla turns. The helm of Mathon is cleft; his shield falls from his arm: he shudders in his blood. He rolls! by the side of the blazing oak. Strumon sees him fall: his wrath rises: his weapon glitters on the head of Orla: but a spear pierced his eye. His brain gushes through the wound, and foams on the spear of Calmar. As roll the waves of the ocean on two mighty barks of the north, so pour the men of Lochlin on the chiefs. As, breaking the surge in foam, proudly steer the barks of the north, so rise the chiefs of Morven on the scattered crests of Loch

lin. The din of arms came to the ear of Fingal. He
strikes his shield; his sons throng around; the peo-
ple pour along the heath.
Ryno bounds in joy.
Ossian stalks in his arms. Oscar shakes his spear.
The eagle wing of Fillan floats on the wind. Dread-

TO E. N. L. ESQ.t

"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico."-Hor. B.
DEAR L, in this sequester'd scene,
While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days which ours have been
Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;
Thus if amid the gathering storm,
While clouds the darken'd noon deform,
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow,
I hail the sky's celestial bow,
Which spreads the sign of future peace,
And bids the war of tempest cease.

I fear Laing's late edition has completely overthrown every hope hat

Macpherson's Ossian might prove the translation of a series of porma com-
plete in themselves; but, while the imposture is discovered, the merit of the
work remains undisputed, though not without faults-particularly, in some
parts, turgid and bolzstic diction. The present hunible imitation !
pardoned by the admirers of the original as an attempt, however
which evinces an attachment to their favorite author.
↑ First published in Hours of dienes

Have made, though neither friends nor foes,
Associates of the festive hour.

Give me again a faithful few,

In years and feelings still the same,
And I will fly the midnight crew,
Where boist'rous joy is but a name.
And woman! lovely woman, thou,
My hope, my comforter, my all!
How cold must be my bosom now,
When e'en thy smiles begin to pall.
Without a sigh would I resign

This busy scene of splendid wo,
To make that calm contentment mine,
Which virtue knows, or seems to know.

Fain would I fly the haunts of men-
I seek to shun, not hate mankind;
My breast requires the sullen glen,
Whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind.
Oh! that to me the wings were given

Which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of heaven,
To flee away, and be at rest.❤

STANZAS.*

I WOULD I were a careless child,
Still dwelling in my Highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bounding o'er the dark-blue wave;
The cumbrous pomp of Saxont pride
Accords not with the freeborn soul,
Which loves the mountain's craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where billows roll.
Fortune! take back these cultured lands,
Take back this name of splendid sound,
I hate the touch of servile hands,

I hate the slaves that cringe around.

Place me along the rocks I love,

Which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;

I ask but this-again to rove

LINES +

WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCHYARI
OF HARROW ON THE HILL, SEPTEMBER 2, 1807.
SPOT of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm' beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mused the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But, ah! without the thoughts which then were mine.
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,

Through scenes my youth hath known before. And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,

Few are my years, and yet I feel

The world was ne'er design'd for me:
Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal
The hour when man must cease to be?
Once I beheld a splendid dream,

A visionary scene of bliss:
Truth!-wherefore did thy hated beam
Awake me to a world like this?

I loved-but those I loved are gone;
Had friends-my early friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone,
When all its former hopes are dead?
Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart-the heart is lonely still.

How dull! to hear the voice of those

Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power,

• First published in the second edition of Hours of Idleness.

"Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!"
When fate shall chill. at length, this fever'd breast,
And calm its cares and passions into rest.
Oft have I thought 'twould soothe my dying hour,
If aught may soothe when life resigns ner power,
To know some humbler grave, some narrow cell,
Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell:
With this fond dream methinks 'twere sweet to die-
And here it linger'd, here my heart might lie;
Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose,
Scene of my youth, and couch of my repose;
For ever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade,
Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd;
Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved,
Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved;
Blest by the tongues that charm'd my youthful ear,
Mourn'd by the few my soul acknowledged here;
Deplored by those, in early days allied,
And unremember'd by the world beside.

• Psalm iv. ver. 6.--" And I said, Oh1 that I had wings like a dove; k then would I fly away, and be at rest." This verse also constitutes a pazi

↑ Sassenage, or Saxon, a Gaelic word, signifying either Lowland or of the most beautiful anthem in our language, English.

↑ First published in the second edition of the Hours of Idienean.

CRITIQUE,

EXTRACTED FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, FOR JANUARY, 1808,

Hours of Idleness; a Series of Poems, original and however, does allude frequently to his family and translated. By George Gordon, Lord Byron, a ancestors-sometimes in poetry, sometimes in notes; Minor. 8vo. pp. 200.-Newark, 1807. and while giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us of Dr. Johnson's

We

THE poesy of this young lord belongs to the class saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, which neither gods nor men are said to permit. his merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a quantity truth, it is this consideration only that induces us of verse with so few deviations in either direction to give Lord Byron's poems a place in our review, from that exact standard. His effusions are spread beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forth over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below with abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which the level, than if they were so much stagnant water. are considerable, and his opportunities, which are As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author great, to better account. is peculiarly forward in pleading minority. With this view, we must beg leave seriously to have it in the titlepage, and on the very back of the assure him, that the mere rhyming of the final volume; it follows his name like a favorite part of syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of his style. Much stress is laid upon it in the pre- a certain number of feet,-nay, although (which face; and the poems are connected with this general does not always happen) those feet should scan statement of his case, by particular dates, substan- regularly, and have been all counted accurately tiating the age at which each was written. Now, upon the fingers, -is not the whole art of poetry. the law upon the point of minority we hold to be We would entreat him to believe, that a certain perfectly clear. It is a plea available only to the portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necesdefendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a supplement- sary to constitute a poem, and that a poem in the ary ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be present day, to be read, must contain as least one brought against Lord Byron, for the purpose of thought, either in a little degree different from the compelling him to put into court a certain quantity ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. of poetry, and if judgment were given against him, We put it to his candor, whether there is any thing it is highly probable that an exception would be so deserving the name of poetry in verses like the taken, were he to deliver for poetry the contents of following, written in 1806; and whether, if a youth this volume. To this he might plead minority; of eighteen could say any thing so uninteresting to but, as he now makes voluntary tender of the his ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it: article, he hath no right to sue, on that ground, for the price in good current praise, should the goods be unmarketable. This is our view of the law on the point, and, we dare to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps, however, in reality, all that he tells us about his youth is rather with a view to increase our wonder than to soften our censures. He possibly means to say, "See how a minor can write! This poem was actually composed by a young man of eighteen, and this by one of only sixteen!"-But, alas! we all remember the poetry of Cowley at ten, and Pope at twelve; and so far from hearing, with any degree of surprise, that very poor verses were written by a youth from his leaving school to his the noble minor's volume. leaving college, inclusive, we really believe this to

"Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing

From the seat of his ancestors, bids you adieu !
Abroad or at home, your remembrance imparting
New courage, he'll think upon glory and you.
"Though a tear din his eye at this sad separation,
"Tis nature, not fear, that excites his regret:
Far distant he goes, with the same emulation;
The fame of his father's he ne'er can forget.
"That fame, and that memory, still will he cherish
He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown;
Like you will be live, or like you will he perish;

When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own.”

Now we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these stanzas in the whole compass

Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting be the most common of all occurrences; that it what the greatest poets have done before him, for happens in the life of nine men in ten who are comparisons (as he must have had occasion to see educated in England; and that the tenth man at his writing-master's) are odious.-Gray's Ode on writes better verse than Lord Byron. Eton College should really have kept out the ten His other plea of privilege our author rather hobbling stanzas "On a distant View of the Village orings forward in order to waive it. He certainly, and School of Harrow."

"Where fancy yet joys to retrace the resemblance
Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied;
How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance,
Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied."

In like manner, the exquisite lines of Mr. Rogers, "On a Tear," might have warned the noble author of those premises, and spared us a whole dozen such stanzas as the following:

"Mild Charity's glow,

To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
Compassion will melt
Where this virtue is felt,
And its dew is diffused in a Tear.
"The man doc.n'd to sail
With the blast of the gale,
Through billows Atlantic to steer,
As he bends o'er the wave,

Which may soon be his grave,

The green sparkles bright with a Tear."

bard," ("The artless Helicon I boast is youth", -should either not know, or should seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above cited, on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages, on the self-sam. subject, introduced with an apology, "he certainly had no intention of inserting it," but really "the particular request of some friends," &c. &c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, "the last and youngest of a noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin y Gair, a mountain where he spent part of his youth, and might have learned that pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle. As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize his employments at school and at college, we cannot possibly dismiss it without presenting the reader with a specimen of these

And so of instances in which former poets had ingenious effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, failed. Thus, we do not think Lord Byron was called Granta, we have the following magnificent made for translating, during his nonage, Adrian's stanzas:

Address to his Soul," when Pope succeeded so
indifferently in the attempt. If our readers, how-
ever, are of another opinion, they may look at it.

"Ah! gentle, fleeting, wavering sprite,
Friend and associate of this clay !

To what unknown region borne;

Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight?
No more with wonted humor gay,

But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn."

And

"There, in apartments small and damp,
The candidate for college prizes
Sits poring by the midnight lamp,
Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
"Who reads false quantities in Sele,
Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle,
Deprived of many a wholesome meal,

In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle!

"Renouncing every pleasing page,

From authors of historic use,
Preferring to the letter'd sage

The square of the hypothenuse.

"Still harmless are these occupations,

That hurt none but the hapless student,
Compared with other recreations,

Which bring together the imprudent."

"Our choir would hardly be excused
Even as a band of raw beginners;
All mercy now must be refused
To such a set of croaking sinners.
"If David, when his toils were ended,

Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
To us is psalms had ne'er descended:

In furious mood he would have tore 'em ["

However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are great favorites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school exercises, they may pass. Only, why print them after they nave had their day and served their turn? We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the why call the thing in p. 79* a translation, where college psalmody as is contained in the following two words (9tλw Aɛyet) of the original are expanded Attic stanzas: into four lines, and the other thing in p. 81,† where μεσονυκτίαις ποθ' ώραις is rendered by means of six hobbling verses? As to his Ossianic poesy, we are not very good judges, being, in truth, so moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in all probability, be criticising some bit of the genuine Macpherson itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. If, then, the following beginning of a "Song of Bards" is But whatever judgment may be passed on the by his his lordship, we venture to object to it, as far poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take as we can comprehend it. "What form rises on them as we find them, and be content; for they are the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the the last we shall ever have from him. He is, at red stream of tempests? His voice rolls on the best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of thunder; 'tis Orla, the brown chief of Oithona. Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like thoroughHe was," &c. After detaining this "brown chief" bred poets; and "though he once roved a careless some time, the bards conclude by giving him their mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland," he advice to "raise his fair locks;" then to "spread has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, them on the arch of the rainbow;" and "to smile he expects no profit from his publication; and, through the tears of the storm." Of this kind of whether it succeeds or not, "it is highly improbathing there are no less than nine pages; and we can ble, from his situation and pursuits hereafter," that so far venture an opinion in their favor, that they he should again condescend to become an author. look very like Macpherson; and we are positive Therefore, let us take what we get, and be thankful. they are pretty nearly as stupid and tiresome. What right have we poor devils to be nice? We

It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists: are well off to have got so much from a man of this but they should "use it as not abusing it;" and lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but particularly one who piques himself (though indeed "has the sway" of Newstead Abbey. Again, we at the ripe age of nineteen) of being "an infant say, let us be thankful; and, with honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the mouth

See page 131.

↑ Page 431.