WILT THOU SAY FAREWELL, LOVE? “I'll still be thine, and thou'lt be mine, "Wilt thou think of me, love, "Let not other wiles, love, CEASE, OH CEASE TO TEMPT. CEASE, oh cease to tempt My tender heart to love, It never, never can So wild a flame approve. All its joys and pains To others I resign; But be the vacant heart, The careless bosom, mine. Say, oh say no more, That lovers' pains are sweet; I never, never can Believe the fond deceit. Weeping day and night, Consuming life in sighs; This is the lover's lot, And this I ne'er could prize. JOYS THAT PASS AWAY. Joys that pass away like this, If every beam of bliss Is followed by a tear. Fare thee well! oh fare thee well! Soon, too soon, thou hast broke the spell; Oh! I ne'er can love again The girl whose faithless art Could break so dear a chain, And with it break my heart! Once when truth was in those eyes. For truth, alas, is gone! Fare thee well! oh fare thee well! MY MARY. LOVE, my Mary, dwells with thee, 'Tis not on the cheek of rose Love, my Mary, ne'er can roam, Yet, 'tis not in beaming eyes NOW LET THE WARRIOR. Now let the warrior wave his sword afar, And the sun shall blush with war. Victory sits on the Christian's helm, To guide her holy band; The Knight of the Cross this day shall whelm Oh, blest who in the battle dies! LIGHT SOUNDS THE HARP. LIGHT Sounds the harp when the combat is over, Again the hero burns; High flames the sword in his hand once more: Is then the sound that charms, And brazen notes of war, by thousand trumpets sung. Light went the harp when the War-God, reclining, The hero's eye breathed flame: Soon from his neck the white arm was flung; No other sounds were dear But brazen notes of war, by thousand trumpets sung. PREFATORY LETTER ON MUSIC. IT has often been remarked, and oftener felt, that our music is the truest of all comments upon our history. The tone of defiance, succeeded by the languor of despondency-a burst of turbulence dying away into softness-the sorrows of one moment lost in the levity of the next-and all that romantic mixture of mirth and sadness which is naturally produced by the efforts of a lively temperament to shake off or forget the wrongs which lie upon it:-such are the features of our history and character, which we find strongly and faithfully reflected in our music; and there are many airs which, I think, it is difficult to listen to without recalling some period or event to which their expression seems peculiarly applicable. Sometimes, when the strain is open and spirited, yet shaded here and there by a mournful recollection, we can fancy that we behold the brave allies of Montrose* marching to the aid of the royal cause, notwithstanding all the perfidy of Charles and his ministers, and remembering just enough of past sufferings to enhance the generosity of their present sacrifice. The plaintive melodies of Carolan take us back to the times in which he lived, when our poor countrymen were driven to worship their God in caves, or to quit for ever the land of their birth, (like the bird that abandons the nest which human touch has violated ;) and in many a song do we hear the last farewell of the exile, mingling regret for the ties he leaves at home, with sanguine expectations of the honours that await him abroad-such honours as were won on the field of Fontenoy, where the valour of Irish Catholics turned the fortune of the day in favour of the French, and extorted from *There are some gratifying accounts of the gallantry of these Irish auxiliaries in The Complete History of the Wars in Scotland under Montrose, (1660., Clarendon owns that the Marquis of Montrose was indebted for much of his miraculous success to this small band of Irish heroes under Macdonnell. George II, that memorable exclamation, "Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects !” Though much has been said of the antiquity of our music, it is certain that our finest and most popular airs are modern; and perhaps we may look no further than the last disgraceful century for the origin of most of those wild and melancholy strains which were at once the offspring and solace of grief, and which were applied to the mind as music was formerly to the body, "decantare loca dolentia Mr. Finkerton is of opinion that none of the Scotch popular airs are as old as the middle the sixteenth century; and though musical antiquaries refer us some of our melodies to so early a period as the fifth century, I am persuaded that there are few of a crainted description (and by this I mean to exclude all the savage ceanans, cries, &c.) which can claim quite so ancient a date as Mr. Pinkerton allows to the Scotch. But music is not the only subject upon which our taste for antiquity is rather unreasonably indulged; and, however heretical it may be to dissent from these romantic speculations, I cannot help thinking that it is possible to love our country very zealously, and to feel deeply interested in her honour and happiness, without believing that Irish was the language spoken in Paradiset-that our ancestors were kind enough to take the trouble of polishing the Greeks—or that Abaris, the Hyperborean, was a native of the north of Ireland. § By some of these archaeologists it has been imagined that the Irish were early acquainted with the counterpoint, and they endeavour to support this conjecture by a well-known passage in Giraldus, where he dilates with such elaborate praise upon the beauties of our national minstrelsy. But the terms of this eulogy are too vague, too deficient in technical accuracy, to prove that even Giraldus himself knew anything of the artifice of counterpoint. There are many expressions in the Greek and Latin writers which might be cited with much more plausibility to prove that they understood the arrangement of music in parts; yet I believe *Of which some genuine specimens may be found at the end of Mr. Walker's work upon the Irish Bards. Mr. Bunting has disfigured his last splendid volume by too many of these barbarous rhapsodies. + See Advertisement to the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin. O'Halloran, vol. i., part i., chap. vi. § Id. ib., chap. vii. It is also supposed, but with as little proof, that they understood the diésis, or enharmonic interval. The Greeks seem to have formed their ears to this delicate gradation of sound; and, whatever difficulties or objections may lie in the way of its practical use, we must agree with Mersenne, (Preludes de l'Harmonie, quest. 7,) that the theory of music would be imperfect without it; and, even ir. practice, as Tosi, among others, very justly remarks, (Observations on Florid Song, chap. i., § 16,) there is no good performer on the violin who does not make a sensible difference between D sharp and E flat, though, from the imperfection of the instrument, they are the same notes upon the pianoforte. The effect of modulation by enharmonic transitions is also very striking and beautiful, - The words ποικιλια and ἑτεροφωνια, in a passage of Plato, and some expressions of Cicero, in fragment, lib. ii., De Republ., induced the Abbé Fraguier to maintain that the ancients had a knowledge of counterpoint. M. Burette, however, has answered him, I think, satisfactorily, ("Examen d'un Passage de Platon," in the third volume of Histoire de l'Acad.) M. Huet is of opinion (Pensées Diverses) that what Cicero says of the music of the |