"And fast and far, before the star Of dayspring, rushed we through the glade, And saw at dawn the lofty bawn Of Castle Connor fade. Sweet was to us the hermitage Of this unploughed, untrodden shore; For man's neglect we loved it more; hair Their bloody bands had tracked us out; Up listening starts our couchant hound, And hark! again that nearer shout Brings faster on the murderers. 'Spare-spare him, Brazil, Desmond fierce! In vain no voice the adder charms; Their weapons crossed my sheltering arms; Another's sword has laid him low, Another's and another's; And every hand that dealt the blow Ah me! it was a brother's! "Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred, Dragged to their hated mansion back, I know not, for my soul was black And knew no change of night or day. One night of horror round me grew; Or if I saw or felt or knew, 'Twas but when those grim visages, The angry brothers of my race, Glared on each eyeball's aching throb And checked my bosom's power to sob, Or when my heart with pulses drear Beat like a death-watch to my ear. 6 For sooner guilt the ordeal brand And fired me with the wrathful mood; Dire was the look that o'er their backs The angry parting brothers threw ; But now, behold! like cataracts Come down the hills in view Were marching to their doom. "Stranger, I fled the home of grief, "They would have crossed themselves all I found the helmet of mute; my chief, They would have prayed to burst the And took it down, and vowed to rove spell; But at the stamping of my foot Each hand down powerless fell. 'And go to Athunree,' I cried; High lift the banner of your pride; That mantles by your walls shall be Where, downward when the sun shall fall, "A bolt that overhung our dome, This desert place a huntress bold, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. BYRON. HE Hon. George Gordon Byron, afterward Lord Byron, was born in London on the 22d of January, 1788. His father was a bad man and abandoned his wife and child, and his mother, though fond, was of a very violent temper. The boy was slightly lame from his birth, and always very sensitive in regard to his infirmity. He inherited his mother's temper. In 1798, on the death of his grand-uncle, he became Lord Byron, with his ancestral seat at Newstead Abbey. After attending a child's school at Aberdeen he was sent to Harrow, where he was esteemed by his companions, but not distinguished for scholarship. Thence he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lived an idle, self-indulgent life, reading constantly but discursively. As early as November, 1806, Byron published his first volume, Poems on Various Occasions, which, with alterations and additions, he issued as Hours of Idleness. . . . By George Gordon, Lord Byron, a Minor. This volume was severely and unjustly handled by the Edinburgh Review, and the author was so stung that he vented his wrath in a satire, imitated from Juvenal, entitled "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Of this he was afterward very much ashamed. He then set out to travel, and, stopping in Spain, Italy and Malta, he went as far as Greece. In 1815, Lord Byron made an unfortunate marriage with Miss Milbanke. After the birth of a daughter they separated, on account of entire incompatibility, never again to meet as man and wife. He once more left England for the Continent, an embittered and a misanthropic man. At Geneva he continued to work upon "Childe Harold" with no diminution of poetic power; there, also, he wrote the story of Bonnivard, "The Prisoner of Chillon." From 1817 until his departure for Greece he resided in Italy, leading a dissolute life, at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, where he wrote numerous other poems, several of his dramas and "Don Juan." The immoral tone of the last named shocked the public taste, but it contains passages of rare pathos, power and beauty, such as "The Isles of Greece, "The Shipwreck," "The Storming of Belgrade.' The struggles of Greece for independence of Turkey enlisted Byron's heartiest sympathies. He espoused the cause of Philhellenism with all his vigor, raised troops and accepted a command, and was determined to do or die in behalf of Grecian liberty. This promise was never fulfilled. He was seized 66 with a malarial fever, of which he died, on the 19th of April, 1824, amid the mourning of the Grecian people. Macaulay, in his epigrammatic style, compares him to Napoleon: Two men have died within our recollection who, at a time of life at which few people have completed their education, had raised themselves, each in his own department, to the height of glory. One of them died at Longwood; the other, at Missolonghi." In his tales in verse and in his dramas Byron is always unconsciously his own hero -"Lara," "The Corsair," "The Giaour." He had none of the objective Shakesperean power: he could only present himself, and that self an evil example; and yet he was a great poet, in spite of his immorality and his misanthropy. Collins became a prey to melancholy, and during the latter part of his life his friends were obliged to place him under the restraints of an asylum. He died in 1756. BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. RYAN WALLER PROCTER-Barry B Cornwall-was born in Wiltshire, England, on the 21st of November, 1789. In 1819 he made his first venture in a literary career by the publication of a volume, entitled Dramatic Scenes, and Other Poems. THI This was followed, in 1821, by Mirandola, a tragedy, which met with brilliant success. He died in London on the 5th of October, 1874. Procter is more familiarly known under the pseudonym "Barry Cornwall," which is an imperfect anagram of his true name. The following is but a partial list of his published works: Marcian Colonna: An Italian Story; The Flood of Thessaly, and Other Poems and Poetical Works; Effigies Poetica; English Songs, and Other Small Poems; Lives of Edmund Kean and Charles Lamb; and a Memoir of Shakespeare. He is esteemed SIR JOHN BOWRING. HIS author was born in Exeter, England, on the 17th of October, 1792. In 1825 he became editor of the Westminster Review. He was well versed in modern languages, especially the Slavonic, and made a collection of the ancient and popular poems of almost all the countries of Europe, translating them into verse. He was elected to Parliament in 1835, and in 1854 received the honor of knighthood. He died November 22, 1872. Among the numerous writings of Bowring may be mentioned The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Specimens of the Russian Poets, Poetry of the Magyars and The Kingdom |