International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 8, August 19, 1850. Various

International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 8, August 19, 1850 - Various


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on a rose bank to lie dreaming

      With folded eye;

      And then alone, amid the beaming

      Of love's stars, thou'lt meet her

      In eastern sky."

      WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED

      Praed, it has always seemed to us, was the cleverest writer in his way that has ever contributed to the English periodicals. His fugitive lyrics and arabesque romances, half sardonic and half sentimental, published with Hookham Frere's "Whistlecraft" and Macaulay's Roundhead Ballads, in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and after the suspension of that work, for the most part in the annual souvenirs, are altogether unequaled in the class of compositions described as vers de societie.—Who that has read "School and School Fellows", "Palinodia", "The Vicar", "Josephine", and a score of other pieces in the same vein, does not desire to possess all the author has left us, in a suitable edition? It has been frequently stated in the English journals that such a collection was to be published, under the direction of Praed's widow, but we have yet only the volume prepared by a lover of the poet some years ago for the Langleys, in this city. In the "Memoirs of Eminent Etonians," just printed by Mr. Edward Creasy, we have several waifs of Praed's that we believe will be new to all our readers. Here is a characteristic political rhyme:

      VERSES

ON SEEING THE SPEAKER ASLEEP IN HIS CHAIR IN ONE OF THE DEBATES OF THE FIRST REFORMED PARLIAMENT

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, 'tis surely fair

      If you mayn't in your bed, that you should in your chair.

      Louder and longer now they grow,

      Tory and Radical, Aye and Noe;

      Talking by night and talking by day.

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker; slumber lies

      Light and brief on a Speaker's eyes,

      Fielden or Finn in a minute or two

      Some disorderly thing will do;

      Riot will chase repose away

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker. Sweet to men

      Is the sleep that cometh but now and then,

      Sweet to the weary, sweet to the ill,

      Sweet to the children that work in the mill.

      You have more need of repose than they—

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, Harvey will soon

      Move to abolish the sun and the moon;

      Hume will no doubt be taking the sense

      Of the House on a question of sixteen pence.

      Statesmen will howl, and patriots bray—

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, and dream of the time,

      When loyalty was not quite a crime,

      When Grant was a pupil in Canning's school,

      And Palmerston fancied Wood a fool.

      Lord, how principles pass away—

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may.

      The following is a spirited version of a dramatic scene in the second book of the Annals of Tacitus:

      ARMINIUS

      Back, Back;—he fears not foaming flood

      Who fears not steel-clad line:—

      No warrior thou of German blood,

      No brother thou of mine.

      Go earn Rome's chain to load thy neck,

      Her gems to deck thy hilt;

      And blazon honor's hapless wreck

      With all the gauds of guilt.

      But wouldst thou have me share the prey?

      By all that I have done,

      The Varian bones that day by day

      Lie whitening in the sun;

      The legion's trampled panoply

      The eagle's shattered wing.

      I would not be for earth or sky

      So scorned and mean a thing,

      Ho, call me here the wizard, boy,

      Of dark and subtle skill,

      To agonize but not destroy,

      To torture, not to kill.

      When swords are out, and shriek and shout

      Leave little room for prayer,

      No fetter on man's arm or heart

      Hangs half so heavy there.

      I curse him by the gifts the land

      Hath won from him and Rome.

      The riving axe, the wasting brand,

      Rent forest, blazing home.

      I curse him by our country's gods,

      The terrible, the dark,

      The breakers of the Roman rods,

      The smiters of the bark.

      Oh, misery that such a ban

      On such a brow should be!

      Why comes he not in battle's van

      His country's chief to be?

      To stand a comrade by my side,

      The sharer of my fame,

      And worthy of a brother's pride,

      And of a brother's name?

      But it is past!—where heroes press

      And cowards bend the knee,

      Arminius is not brotherless,

      His brethren are the free.

      They come around:—one hour, and light

      Will fade from turf and tide,

      Then onward, onward to the fight,

      With darkness for our guide.

      To-night, to-night, when we shall meet

      In combat face to face,

      Then only would Arminius greet

      The renegade's


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