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.

INTRODUCTORI MUSIC-Haydn.

There breathes the language, known and felt
Far as the pure air spreads its living zone,
Wherever rage can rouse, or pity melt

That language of the soul is felt and known,
From those meridian plains,

(Where oft, of old, on some high tower,
The soft Peruvian pour'd his midnight strains,

And call'd his distant love with such sweet power

That when she heard the lonely lay,

Not worlds could keep her from his arms arsy1)

'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 Bycaut's translation,

To the bleak climes of polar night,
Where, beneath a sunless sky,

The Lapland lover bids his reindeer fly,

And sings along the lengthening waste of snow, As blithe as if the blessed light

Of vernal Phoebus burn'd upon his brow.

O Music! thy celestial claim

Is still resistless, still the same!

And faithful as the mighty sea

To the pale star that o'er its realm presides,
The spell-bound tides

Of human passion rise and fall for thee!

GREEK AIR.

LIST! 'tis a Grecian maid that sings,
While from Ilissus' silvery springs

She draws the cool lymph in her graceful urn;
And by her side, in music's charm dissolving,
Some patriot youth, the glorious past revolving,
Dreams of bright days that never can return z
When Athens nursed her olive bough
With hands, by tyrant power unchain'd,
And braided for the Muse's brow
A wreath, by tyrant touch unstain'd.
When heroes trod each classic field,
Where coward feet now faintly falter;
When every arm was Freedom's shield,
And every heart was Freedom's altar.

FLOURISH OF TRUMPET.

HARK! 'tis the sound that charms The war-steed's wakening ears!

Oh! many a mother folds her arms

Round her boy-soldier, when that call she hears,
And though her fond heart sink with fears,
Is proud to feel his young pulse bound
With valour's fervour at the sound!

See! from his native hills afar,
The rude Helvetian flies to war,
Careless for what, for whom he fights,
For slave or despot, wrongs or rights;
A conqueror oft-a hero never-
Yet lavish of his life-blood still,

As if 'twere like his mountain rill,
And gush'd for ever!

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