By our massacred patriots, our children in chains, Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious. A breath of submission we breathe not: The sword that we've drawn we will sheathe not; Earth may hide waves ingulf— fire consume us, If they rule, it shall be o'er our ashes and graves: To the charge!- Heaven's banner is o'er us. Or brighten your lives with its glory?— Our women O, say, shall they shriek in despair, Or embrace us from conquest with wreaths in their hair? Accursed may his memory blacken, If a coward there be that would slacken, Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth Being sprung from, and named for, the godlike of earth. Strike home! and the world shall revere us, As heroes descended from heroes. Old Greece lightens up, with emotion, Her inlands, her isles of the ocean: Fanes rebuilt, and fair towns, shall with jubilee ring, That were cold, and extinguished in sadness; Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white waving arms. Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms, When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens Shall have crimsoned the beaks of our ravens. LESSON CLXX. Irish National Hymn.-J. C. MANGAN. O! IRELAND! Ancient Ireland! Ancient! yet forever young! Thou, our mother, home and sireland Resistest in triumphant strength. Thy flag of freedom floats unfurled; Who giveth victory when and where he listeth, Thou yet shalt wake and shake the nations of the world For this dull world still slumbers, Weetless of its wants or loves, Though, like Galileo, numbers Cry aloud, "It moves! it moves ! " In a midnight dream, Drifts it down Time's wreckful stream All march, but few descry the goal, O! Ireland! be it thy high duty To teach the world the might of moral beauty, And stamp God's image truly on the struggling soul. Strong in thy self-reliance, Not in idle threat or boast, At the haughty Saxon host Thou hast claimed, in sight Of high Heaven, thy long-lost right. Upon thy hills along thy plains In the green bosom of thy valleys, The new-born soul of holy Freedom rallies, And calls on thee to trample down in dust thy chains. * Unknowing. Deep, saith the Eastern story, But from human eyes Hidden there it ever lies! The ever-travailing Gnomes alone, Who toil to form the mountain's treasure, So is it with a nation, Which would win, for its rich dower, It must labor hour by hour. Strangers, who travail' * To lay bare the gem, shall fail; Within itself must grow, must glow Within the depths of its own bosom Must flower in living might, must broadly blossom, The hopes that shall be born ere Freedom's tree can blow. God will aid thee in thy need The time, the hour, the power are near— Be sure thou soon shalt form the vanguard Of that illustrious band whom Heaven and man guard. And these words come from one whom some have called a Seer *This accent is a poetic license. LESSON CLXXI. Lines written in 1821; on hearing that the Austrians had entered Naples-with scarcely a show of resistance on the part of the Neapolitans, who had declared their independence, and pledged themselves to maintain it. — MOORE. Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are! From this hour let the blood in their dăstardly veins, That shrunk from the first touch of Liberty's war, Be sucked out by tyrants, or stagnate in chains! On -on, like a cloud, through their beautiful vales, Ye locusts of tyranny! -blasting them o'er : Fill-fill up their wide, sunny waters, ye sails, From each slave-mart in Europe, and poison their shore! May their fate be a mock-word—may men of all lands And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driven, Base slaves! may the whet of their agony be, To think- as the damned haply think of the heaven They had once in their reach,—that they might have been free. Shame! shame! when there was not a bosom, whose heat And send back its prayers with your Liberty's start! When the world stood in hope-when a spirit that breathed And the swords of all Italy, half-way unsheathed, When around you the shades of your mighty in fame, Filicaias and Petrarchs seemed bursting to view, And their words and their warnings, — like tongues of bright flame Over Freedom's apostles-fell kindling on you!... Good God! that in such a proud moment of life, Between freemen and tyrants had spread through the world.. ... That then-O, disgrace upon manhood! e'en then You should falter- should cling to your pitiful breath, Cower down into beasts, when you might have stood men, And prefer a slave's life, to a glorious death! It is strange!—it is dreadful! Shout, Tyranny, shout For if such are the braggarts that claim to be free, ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tap ping, |