Song of the Sea.*

"Woe to us when we lose the watery wall!"-TIMOTHY TICKLER.

Ir e'er that dreadful hour should come-but God avert the day!
When England's glorious flag must bend, and yield old Ocean's sway;
When foreign ships shall o'er that deep, where she is empress, lord;
When the cross of red from boltsprit-head is hewn by foreign sword;
When foreign foot her quarter-deck with proud stride treads along;
When her peaceful ships meet haughty check from hail of foreign tongue;-
One prayer, one only prayer, is mine, that, ere is seen that sigh,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelm'd in night.

If ever other prince than ours wield sceptre o'er that main,
Where Howard, Blake, and Frobisher, the Armada smote of Spain;
Where Blake, in Cromwell's iron sway, swept tempest-like the seas,
From North to South, from East to West, resistless as the breeze;
Where Russell bent great Louis' power, which bent before to none,
And crush'd his arm of naval strength, and dimm'd his Rising Sun-
One prayer, one only prayer is mine — that, ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelm'd in night!

If ever other keel than ours triumphant plough that brine,

Where Rodney met the Count De Grasse, and broke the Frenchman's line,
Where Howe, upon the first of June, met the Jacobins in fight,

And with Old England's loud huzzas broke down their godless might;
Where Jervis at St. Vincent's fell'd the Spaniards' lofty tiers,
Where Duncan won at Camperdown, and Exmouth at Algiers-
One prayer, one only prayer, is mine-that, ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelin'd in night!

But oh! what agony it were, when we should think on thee,
The flower of all the Admirals that ever trod the sea!

I shall not name thy honoured name-but if the white-cliff'd Isle
Which rear'd the Lion of the deep, the Hero of the Nile,
Him who, 'neath Copenhagen's self, o'erthrew the faithless Dane,
Who died at glorious Trafalgar, o'er-vanquished France and Spain,
Should yield her power, one prayer is mine—that, ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelm'd in night!

*This spirited lyric, "occasioned by seeing, in the Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Magazine, some gloomy anticipations of the effects of the change in the Navigation Code," was published in Blackwood for September, 1823-M.

New Horatian_Readings.*

"SIR,-You know, of course, the many charges against the unfaithfulness of translators, and against their frequent destruction of all the force, power, tenderness, sublimity, wit, &c., of the original; but I have never seen yet any satisfactory project proposed, by which the powers of the translator and original. author could be both fairly represented in one book. True it is that you may print the original in one page and the translation in the opposite, but this is a poor mechanical bookbinding expedient. Dean Swift, you may remember, on getting a translation of Horace thus arranged, very quietly tore out the English part, and declared that he could safely say that half the book was good, and was much obliged to the compiler for giving him. so easy a method of separating the worthy from the unworthy. But a project which I have devised will save the translator from such wicked waggery, while it will do as well to show off the original.

66

'I have begun on Horace, he being a jocose and handy author, and I send you a specimen of my labours.

"You will perceive that my plan is to give lines alternately English and Latin, the former my own, the latter from my friend Flaccus. We are both thus fairly represented, just as in divided counties a Whig and Tory member are returned to satisfy both parties without giving trouble. If the public approve, I shall publish a translation of all the odes in this style; and if the public be a person of any taste, I am sure of general approbation. Meanwhile, Sir, believe me to be

"Your most obediant servant,

"DIONYSIUS DUGGAN."

“P. S.—Mind to pronounce my Latin lines with Latin accents, not Anglically. Thus, do not say,

Apros in ob-stántes plágas

Aprós in ób-stantés plagás

* From the Literary Gazette. — M.

SECOND EPODE OF HORACE DONE IN A NEW STYLE.

BLEST man! who far from busy hum,

Ut prisca gens mortalium,

Whistles his team afield with glee
Solutus omni fœnore:

He lives in peace, from battles free,

Neq' horret iratúm mare;

And shuns the forum, and the gay

Potentiorum limina.

Therefore to vines of purple gloss
Alta maritat populos,

Or pruning off the boughs unfit
Feliciores inserit;

Or in a distant vale at ease
Prospectat errantes greges;
Or honey into jars conveys,

Aut tondet infirmas oves.

When his head decked with apples sweet

Autumnus agris extulit

At plucking pears he's quite au-fait

Certant, et uvam purpuræ.

Some for priapus, for thee some

Sylvane, tutor finium!

Beneath an oak 'tis sweet to be

Mod' in tenaci gramine:

The streamlet winds in flowing maze;

Queruntur in sylvis aves;

The fount in dulcet murmur plays

Somnos quod invitet leves.

But when the winter comes (and that

Imbres nivesque comparat)

With dogs he forces oft to pass

Apros in obstantes plagus;

Or spreads his nets so thick and close,

Turdis edacibus dolos;

Or hares, or cranes, from far away

Jucunda captat præmia:

The wooer love's unhappy stir

Hæc inter obliviscitur.

His wife can manage without loss

Domum et parvos liberos;

(Suppose her Sabine, or the dry
Pernicis uxor Appuli.)

Who piles the sacred hearthstone high
Lassi sub ad-ventúm viri.

And from his ewes, penned lest they stray,
Distenta siccet ubera;

And this year's wine disposed to get

Dapes inemptus apparet.

Oysters to me no joys supply,

Magisve rhombus, aut scari.

(If when the east winds boisterous be

Hyems ad hoc vertat mare)

Your Turkey pout is not to us,
Non attagen Ionicus.

So sweet as what we pick at home
Oliva ramis arborum;

Or sorrel, which the meads supply,
Malvæ salubres corpori-

Or lamb, slain at a festal show,
Vel hædus ereptus lupo.

Feasting, 'tis sweet the creature's dumb,

Videre prop'rantés domum,

Or oxen with the ploughshare go,

Collo trahente languido;

And all the slaves stretched out at ease,

Circum renidentes Lares.

Alphius the usurer, babbled thus,

Jam jam futurus rusticus,

Called in his cash on th' Ides-but he

Quærit Calendis ponere.

First Love."

I SHALL never forget the first time I ever drank rum-punch after having been smoking cigars. Dates, says De Quincy, may be forgotten-epochs never. That formed an epoch in my

existence;

"And the last trace of feeling with life shall depart,

Ere the smack of that moment shall pass from my heart.”

Let me recall it to my memory, with all its attendant circumstances, and while my soul broods over the delicious recollection, forget the present day, with its temporary miseries, and shut out from its views the follies, the frivolities, the wickedness, the baseness, the ingratitude of the world.

It happened, that though, like most men who, in my day, were reared in Trinity College, juxta Dublin, I had been tolerably well initiated into the theory and practice of compotation, I had never much taken to its greatest adjunct, smoking. I do not think that the Trinity men (Dublin) smoke-it certainly, as long as I remember that seminary, of which I cannot think with affection, never was a fashion there. Particular pipemen, and solitary cigarers, no doubt, always existed, but just as you now and then see a pig-tail (I do not allude to tobacco) dangling behind an elderly gentleman, or hear a shoe creak under the foot of a decent man. Smoking, in short, was the excep tion-non-smoking the rule. But the men of my time drank hard, though, as youths always do, unscientifically. I therefore, as the rest, drank, and did not smoke.

I was about twenty when I left the University, and went down to live with my father in a pretty seaport town. Here I mixed a good deal in boating-parties, and other such excursions with sea-faring men, and from them, after much persuasion on their parts, I learned to smoke. My first preceptors preferred the pipe. I shall not here enter into the controversy which has

"From Blackwood for August, 1826.-M.