Stay, stay with us-rest, thou art weary and worn ,

And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay ; But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,

And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

LORD BYRON. (1788–1824.) Born in Holles Street, London, and received his early education at various schools in Aberdeen, whither his mother had retired on separating from her husband, Captain Byron. When ten years old he succeeded to his uncle's title and estates, and Mrs. Byron and the young peer immediately removed to the family seat, Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. Byron's education was further carried on at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. Two years were spent in foreign travel, and on his return he took his seat as a peer in the House of Lords. In 1815 he married Miss Millbanke, but the union proved an unhappy one, and in twelve months it was dissolved. In 1816 Byron left England, and never returned to it. He led a restless and wandering life for several years, and, in 1823, threw himself with much enthusiasm into the Greek war of independence against the Turks. He helped the Greeks with his money and advice ; and was looking forward with much eagerness to an attack on Lepanto, when he was seized by fever, of which he died at Missolonghi in 1824. The poet's body was brought to England and interred at Hucknall, near Newstead.

Byron's chief works åre, Hours of Idleness; The Giaour ; The Bride of Abydos ; English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; The Prisoner of Chillon ; Hebrew Melodies ; Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; Don Juan, etc.

ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll !
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths—thy fields
Are not a spoil for him—thou dost arise,
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling to his gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth :—there let him lay.?

The armaments? which thunder-strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake
And monarchs tremble in their capitals ;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator* the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiters of war :
These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake,

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride and spoils of Trafalgàr. 8

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee:-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, where are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :—not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving ; boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity—the throne
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

Lay, a poetical license for lie. • Armaments, guns and other forces used in war.

3 Oak leviathans, large men-of-war which in Byron's time were built of oak, but now of iron. 4 Clay creator, man.

5 Arbiter, one who decides or judges. 6 Yeast, foam or froth.

7 Armada, the Spanish fleet intended for the conquest of England (1588).

8. Trafalgar, cape Trafalgar, south of Spain, off which a famous battle was fought (1805). Azure, blue.

9

And I have loved thee, ocean ! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles onward : from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers—they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror—'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.

Childe Harold, canto IV., stanzas 179-184.

MRS. HEMANS. (1794–1835.) BORN at Liverpool, where her father (whose name was Browne) was engaged as a merchant, Felicia Browne began to write poetry before she was nine years of age ; and her mother, a woman of intellectual culture and taste, encouraged her in the pursuit. In 1812 Miss Browne became the wife of Captain Hemans. The union, however, was not a happy one, and just before the birth of their fifth son a separation took place, Mrs. Hemans going to live with her widowed mother, near St. Asaph, (North Wales). Here she devoted herself to literature and the education of her family. In 1828 went to reside at Wavertree, near Liverpool ; afterwards removed to Dove's Nest, near Windermere, for one summer, and finally settled in Dublin, where she died in 1835, and was interred in St. Anne's church.

Mrs. Hemans' principal works are, Hymns for Childhood; Songs of the Affections, etc., including some of the most beautiful lyrical pieces in the language.

CASABIANCA."
The boy stood on the burning deck,

Whence all but him had fled ;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm ;

1 At the battle of the Nile, 1798, the French admiral, in the L'Oriert, ordered his son Casabianca (a lad about thirteen years of age) not to quit his post until he told him. In the course of the action, the admiral was killed, the ship caught fire, and was blown up. The boy, unconscious that his father was dead, remained at his post, and permitted himself to be launched into eternity rather than disobey his father's orders.

A creature of heroic bloed,

A proud, though child-like form.
The flames rolled on-he would not go

Without his father's word ;
That father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.
He called aloud,“ Say, father, say

If yet my task is done,”-
He knew not that the chieftain lay

Unconscious of his son.
“ Speak father," once again he cried,

“If I may yet be gone"-
And but the booming shots replied,

And fast the flames rolled on.
Upon his brow he felt their breath,

And in his waving hair ;
And looked from that lone post of death,

In still yet brave despair :
And shouted but once more, aloud,

“ My father, must I stay ?"
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud '

The wreathing fires made way.
They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,

They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,

Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder sound-

The boy-oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around

With fragments strewed the sea ;
With mast, and helm, and pennon' fair,

That well had borne their part-
But the noblest thing that perished there

Was that young faithful heart.

i Shroud, a range of ropes extending from the sides of a ship to the head of the mast.

THE CHILD'S FIRST GRIEF. “Oh! call my brother back to me !

I cannot play alone :
The summer comes with flower and bee-

Where is my brother gone ?
“ The butterfly is glancing bright

Across the sunbeam's track;
I care not now to chase its flight-

Oh! call my brother back ! “The flowers run wild-the flowers we sowed

Around our garden tree;
Our vine is drooping with its load-

Oh! call him back to me!”
“ He could not hear thy voice, fair child,

He may not come to thee;
The face that once like spring-time smiled,

On earth no more thou'lt see.
“A rose's brief bright life of joy,

Such unto him was given;
Go-thou must play alone, my boy!

Thy brother is in heaven !”
“ And has he left his birds and flowers,

And must I call in vain ! And, through the long, long summer hours,

Will he not come again?
6 And by the brook, and in the glade,

Are all our wanderings o'er ?
Oh, while my brother with me played,

Would I had loved him more !"

! Glade, an opening in a wood.