Byron's "Maid of Athens," Shelley's "Epithalamium," and Coleridge's "Geneviève," we must be content with naming.

5. Revelry is a lyrical theme which has been largely illustrated by our poets, especially by those of the seventeenth century. We must confine ourselves to a single specimen, taken from Cowley:

"The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair;
The sea itself, which one would think
Should have but little need of drink,
Drinks ten thousand rivers up
So filled that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would guess
By his drunken fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea; and, when he's done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own light;
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in Nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high;
Fill all the glasses there; for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, men of morals, tell me why?"

6. The lyrics of war, whatever may be the reason, are not found in great numbers, nor of extraordinary merit, in English literature. We might mention Campbell's "Hohenlinden" and "Battle of the Baltic," the stirring ballad of "Count Albert," and the gathering song "Pibroch of Donuil Dhu," both by Scott; and Macaulay's ballads of "Naseby" and "Ivry," and "Lays of Rome." In Dryden's great lyric, "Alexander's Feast," the "mighty master" of the lyre, after successfully preluding upon the themes of love and revelry, thus in a bolder strain summons the hero to war:

"Now strike the golden lyre again,
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain:
Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder.

Hark, hark! the horrid sound

Has raised up his head,

As awaked from the dead,

And amazed he stares around:

Revenge, revenge! Timotheus cries,

See the Furies arise!

See the snakes that they rear!

How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!

Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,

And unburied remain

Inglorious on the plain;

Give the vengeance due

To the valiant crew!

Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of the hostile gods.

The princes applaud with a furious joy,

And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy!"

Elegiac Poetry: "Fidele," "The Castaway," "Lycidas," "Adonais."

English poetry, in sympathy with the sad and lowering skies of our northern climate, is never more powerful and pathetic than when heard in the accents of mourning. The influences of external nature and of the national temperament dispose our poets to taciturnity and thoughtfulness; and, in a world so full of change and death, thoughtfulness easily passes into sadness. Elegiac poems may be distinguished as objective or subjective, according as their tenor and general aim may be, either simply to occupy themselves

with the fortunes, character, and acts of the departed, or to found a train of musings, having reference to self, or at least strongly colored by the writer's personality, upon the fact of bereavement. Among those of the former class may be specified, the dirge in Cymbeline, Milton's sonnet on Shakspeare, Dryden's elegy on Cromwell, Tickell's on Addison, Cowper's lines on "The Loss of the Royal George," Campbell's "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the song of Harold in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," Cowper's "Castaway," and Pope's Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady." Nothing can exceed the simple beauty of the song of the brothers over the body of Fidele: 1_

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"Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home thou art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' the great,

Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;

To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,

Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;

Thou hast finished joy and moan;
All lovers young, all lovers, must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy grave!"

1 Cymbeline, Act iv. Scene 2.

Cowper's lines on the loss of the Royal George sound like the passing bell:

"Toll for the brave, —

The brave that are no more!

All sunk beneath the wave
Fast by their native shore!"

"The Castaway," by the same author, combines what is most touching in both kinds of elegy. After a minute description of the long struggle for life of the sailor lost overboard, the interest of the tale, great in itself, is suddenly rendered tenfold more intense by the application of it in the last stanza to the case of the unhappy writer:

"No voice divine the storm allayed,
No light propitious shone,

When, far from all effectual aid,

We perished, each alone;

But I beneath a rougher sea,

And whelmed in blacker gulfs than he."

A similar turn is given to the conclusion of Pope's "Elegy: "

"So peaceful rests without a stone, a name,

What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How loved, how honored once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;

A heap of dust alone remains of thee:

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Poets themselves must fall like those they sung;
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue;
E'en he whose soul now melts in mournful lays
Shall shortly want the generous tear he pays.
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart;
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er;

The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more!"

Among elegies of the subjective class may be mentioned the lines written by Raleigh the night before

his death, Cowley's elegy on Crashaw, Milton's "Lycidas," Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” and Shelley's "Adonais." At the close of his meteor-like career, the gallant Raleigh wrote his own epitaph in these few pious and feeling lines:

"Even such is Time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust."

"Lycidas" was written by Milton to commemorate the death of a college friend, Mr. King, who was drowned on the passage from England to Ireland. But Milton's grief sets him thinking; and, in this remarkable poem, the monotone of a deep sorrow is replaced by the linked musings of a mind, which, once set in motion by grief, pours forth abundantly the treasures of thought and imagination stored up within it. The following eloquent passage contains a line that has almost passed into a proverb:

"Alas! what boots it with incessant care

To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise,'
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears:

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