SPECIMENS

OF THE

EARLY NATIVE POETRY OF IRELAND.

Lov'd land of the bards and saints, to me
There's nought so dear as thy minstrelsy;
Bright is nature in every dress,

Rich in unborrow'd loveliness;

Winning in every shape she wears,
Winning she is in thine own sweet airs ;
What to the spirit more cheering can be

Than the lay, whose ling'ring notes recal
The thoughts of the holy, the fair, the free,
Belov'd in life or deplor'd in their fall?
Fling, fling the forms of art aside,-

Dull is the ear that those forms enthral;
Let the simple songs of our sires be tried,

They go to the heart, and the heart is all.
Give me the full responsive sigh,

The glowing cheek and the moisten'd eye;
Let these the minstrel's might attest,

And the vain and the idle may share the rest.

THOMAS FURLONG.

MUCH ingenuity has been needlessly expended in a vain attempt to account for the first rise of profane poetry. A somewhat fantastic hypothesis, adopted by several distinguished writers, assumes it to have had its origin in the principle of natural religion, or its perversion, and to have been addressed by the primeval inhabitants of

B

the world in grateful adoration to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other great natural objects, whose mysterious movements impressed them with awe, and whose beneficence they continually experienced.* Others have attributed the earliest poetic inspiration to the heroic age and spirit, and partial evidence might easily be found for the most opposite views on the subject, in the actual themes of the early children of song. Thus in Orpheus and Corinnus, if we may place any dependence in the existence of such shadowy and unsubstantial beings, we have some of the earliest examples (in their attributed remains) both of the heroic and devotional species. It is, however, very justly remarked by an elegant writer of the last century, to whose authority we shall have frequent occasion to refer, that "the early ages of every nation are enveloped in dark clouds, impervious to the rays of historic light. An attempt, therefore, to trace the arts of poetry and music to their source, in this or any other country, must be unsuccessful, for man is both a poet and musician by nature."†

But from whatever source the inspiration of the ear

*No such theories are necessary with regard to the noblest poetry in existence-that of the Scriptures-which, in the language of a late eloquent writer, "In lyric flow and fire, in crushing force, in majesty which seems still to echo the awful sounds once heard beneath the thunder-clouds of Sinai, is the most superb that ever burned within the breast of man."-Sir D. K. Sandford's Dissertation on the Rise and Progress of Literature, Part I.

+ Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, by J. C. WALKER, M.R.I.A.—A work in which, though the writer takes the liberty occasionally to dissent from his authority, every event connected with the bards will be found detailed with a degree of minuteness, elegance, and learning which will repay by its perusal those who may wish for more minute information than would suit the limits of present volume.