Let us laugh, and make our mirth,
At the shadows of the earth,

As dogs bay the moonlight clouds,
That, like spectres wrapt in shrouds,
Pass o'er night in multitudes.

All the wide world beside us

Are like multitudinous

Shadows shifting from a scene—

What but mockery may they mean?

Where am I?-Where thou hast been.

I

AN ARIETTE FOR MUSIC.

TO A LADY SINGING TO HER ACCOMPANIMENT ON THE GUITAR.

As the moon's soft splendour

O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven

Is thrown,

So thy voice most tender

To the strings without soul has given

Its own.

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later

To-night :

No leaf will be shaken

Whilst the dews of thy melody scatter

Delight.

Though the sound overpowers,

Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing

A tone

Of some world far from ours,

Where music and moonlight and feeling

Are one.

[Note.-This Ariette has been very beautifully set to music by Mr. Henry Lincoln.]

LINES

WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH

ADMINISTRATION.

CORPSES are cold in the tomb;

Stones on the pavement are dumb;

Abortions are dead in the womb,

And their mothers look pale, like the white shore

Of Albion, free no more!

Her sons are as stones in the way;
They are masses of senseless clay;

They are trodden, and move not away ;-
The abortion with which she travaileth,
Is Liberty, smitten to death.

Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!

For thy victim is no redresser;

Thou art sole lord and possessor

Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions-they pave

Thy path to the grave.

Hearest thou the festal din

Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin,
And Wealth crying Havock! within?

'Tis the Bacchanal triumph which makes truth
dumb-

Thine Epithalamium!

CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION.

117

Aye, marry thy ghastly wife!

Let Fear, and Disgust, and Strife,

Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life : Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and God be thy guide To the bed of thy bride!

WITH A GUITAR.

THE artist who this idol wrought,

To echo all harmonious thought,

Felled a tree, while on the steep

The winds were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;

And dreaming some of Autumn past,

And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,