The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 | Page 7

deeper, sweeter, Than 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."
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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 embrace. The canker of
Rome's guilt shall be Upon his dying name; And as he lived in slavery,
So shall he fall in shame.
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