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142

Virtue and
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As near Porto-Bello lying
On the gently-swelling flood,
At midnight, with streamers flying,
Our triumphant navy rode;
There while Vernon sat all glorious
From the Spaniard's late defeat,
And his crews with shouts victorious,
Drank success to England's fleet:

On a sudden, shrilly sounding,

Hideous yells and shrieks were heard; Then each heart with fear confounding, A sad troop of ghosts appear'd,

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and its moral grandeur is happily contrasted with that of, Xerxes, the proud but mean leader of the millions who crushed the handful of patriots at Thermopylæ The poet was especially fortunate in his management of the catastrophe; the death of the self-devoted band is never for a moment considered in any other light than that of an, entire triumph; they fall amid heaps of their slaughtered enemies; but their blood has purchased the freedom of their country, Considerations of the glory they achieve and the liberty they win, bear away the reader from thought of what the victory has cost; and the poet has produced that which is produced so rarely, a sensation of delight when they perish; for whom his sympathies have been so long excited.

We have extracted one of the miscellaneous poems of Glover; it is, we think, among the most beautiful and pathetic ballads in the language; the compliment which the unfortunate Hosier pays to the successful Vernon has perhaps been

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As near Porto-Bello lying
On the gently-swelling flood,
At midnight, with streamers flying,
Our triumphant navy rode;
There while Vernon sat all glorious
From the Spaniard's late defeat,
And his crews with shouts victorious,
Drank success to England's fleet:

On a sudden, shrilly sounding,
Hideous yells and shrieks were heard;
Then each heart with fear confounding,
A sad troop of ghosts appear'd,

All in dreary hammocks shrouded,
Which for winding sheets they wore,
And with looks by sorrow clouded,
Frowning on that hostile shore.

On them gleam'd the moon's wan lustre,
When the shade of Hosier brave
His pale bands were seen to muster,
Rising from their wat'ry grave:
O'er the glimmering wave he hied him,
Where the Burford rear'd her sail,
With three thousand ghosts besides him,
And in groans did Vernon hail.

Heed, O heed, our fatal story,
I am Hosier's injur'd ghost,
You, who now have purchas'd glory
At this place where I was lost;
Though in Porto-Bello's ruin

You now triumph free from fears,
When you think on our undoing,
You will mix your joy with tears.

See these mournful spectres sweeping
Ghastly o'er this hated wave,

Whose wan cheeks are stain'd with weeping,
These were English captains brave:
Mark those numbers, pale and horrid,
Those were once my sailors bold,
Lo, each hangs his drooping forehead,
While his dismal tale is told.

I, by twenty sail attended,

Did this Spanish town affright;
Nothing then its wealth defended
But my orders not to fight:
O! that in this rolling ocean

I had cast them with disdain,

And obey'd my heart's warm motion,
To have quell'd the pride of Spain;

For resistance I could fear none,
But with twenty ships had done
What thou, brave and happy Vernon,

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