the poets we have been reviewing, but that we deduce from their existence, the author's right to possess a respectable position among the leading poets of his country. Francis Davis is essentially a lyric poet, and one of a truly passionate and energetic order. His fiery ballads swell out into full toned magnificence, as when a master hand sweeps the diapason of an organ. His music like that of Mozart combines volume, glorious harmony, variety, resistless impetuosity, and peerless grandeur. He is not only “as full of spirit as the month of May,” he is also "gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.” His fancy is elevated, luxuriant, and bewitching: the fruits of his Muse are unexceptionably national, and in addition to all these excellencies, the bright spirit of independence crowns with a halo of undying light, the works of his triumphant genius, He, alone, of those to whom these pages refer, is still alive, and from his comparative youth, we have every reason to expect that he will yet present his countrymen with gifts as brilliant as those he has already bestowed on them, and naturally more characterized than their predecessors, by all those solid beauties which age alone can ripen. Long may he continue (is our earnest wish) to adorn our literature by gems from the casket of his radiant intellect, long may he continue to foster those generous impulses and noble principles which are alone the nursling seeds of liberty, and which when he tends and propagates them, constitute one of the highest avocations of, and form one of the most exalted honors which can be conferred on man.

Davis too, like those we have been considering, entered on the wide field of nationality : he, like many of those gifted men, whose genius shall never be forgotten, had thought that his talents and energies could not have been better einployed than in working for his country's welfare. So, giving up all dreams of glory in another sphere, all ambition for literary distinction in contemplative abstract subjects, or in universal themes, which might be more pleasing to a foreiga ear, he set himself right manfully to carry out the great object, which had patriotism for its motto. A poor weaver by trade, hard at work from morning until night, in earning his bread, he still continued to soatch a moment at intervals, to devote to his darling occupation. But indeed Davis does not confine himself merely to patriotic subjects : well does he know the art, to make the tears of sympathy to flow.'' Power

fully can he touch the tender chords in our hearts, which melt us to compassion, or chill us to despair. He affords us sufficient instances of that wonderful ability, which can realize the agonized incurable state of the human breast, which forbids all consolation, renders useless all attempts to assuage its intensity, and feeds with a sullen eagerness on the object of its grief. In evidence we shall lay before the reader, a graphic illustration of this species of poetical creation, which merely to peruse is to behold the greatness of its high dramatic merit.

A MOTHER'S LAMENT.
They tell me that I should not weep

When Heaven calls its own;
Ah, think they that a mother's heart

Is but a living stone ?
They tell me that my constant tears

Will waste the mother's cheek;
Ab, know they not were these to cease

The mother's heart would break ?
When o er my soul there hangs a cloud,

With no redeeming ray, Win Heaven blame me if I try To weep that cloud away?

Sweet Saviour, dear,

Look down, and tear Her shadow from my view ;

Or take-oh, take,

For mercy's sake, The mother to thee too.

I see the blackness of my soul,

Where all looked bright before :
My homely hearth, the willow seat,

The waves before my door ;
I see my babes steal round my knee,

Half weeping, half in shame :
And hang their heads, and whisper low,

When breathing sister's name :
And then my wandering fancy wings

Some shadow by my door:
I start, I shriek-oh no! oh no!
My Lizzie comes no more.

Oh no! oh no!

My lamb of snow,
There's glory round your brow;

And broad and bright

With holy light,
Are all your play-grounds now!

Here, many a holy hour I've sat,

When none bat God did see;
And on this heaving heart, my bird,

My beauty, pillowed thee;
And wept in pride of soul, and looked

O'er thee and future years ;
And kissed each dimple till it shone

A little well of tears;
Or soothed, and made thy wordless mirth

In infant chuekling rise,
Till all my joyful spirit reeled
In frenzy through my eyes.

My babe, my dove!

Oh, father above,
What now of coming years ?

She's thine, she's thine!

But what are mine?
Her green grave, and these tears!

I look upon the flowery mounds

Her snowy hands did make;
I kneel, and bless the dying tlowers,

And kiss them for her sake;
And oft as drops the fuschia bell

Beneath my scalding tear,
The phantom-echo of her voice,

Mounts, laughing on my ear!
Then can you blame a mother's hands,

For twining through her hair,
When all within that mother's heart
Is boiling in despair?

That eye, that cheek-

Speak, Heaven! speak !
She's not a putrid clod;

My child, my child,

Thy mother's wild:
Forgive ine, oh my God!

Like every one deserving the name of a Poet, Francis Davis can nourish in his inmost heart the most sensitive feelings of Love, can conjure up before his mind the most golden imaginings of a lover's bliss, and can express with nature's most graphic power, the spiritualized sentiments which are akin to the tender passion. It would not be perhaps altogether just to compare him in this particular to those whose works bave occupied the preceding pages, as they have been so eminent in iuditing love songs, that they are as remarkable for excellence in this branch of the poetic art, as they are in any of its others. However, that all votaries of Venus will willingly concede to him a respectable share of admiration for his accomplishments as an amatory minstrel, will not be doubted by the reader of the lines that follow.

MY BETROTHED.
Oh, come my betrothed, to thine anxious bride,
Too long bave they kept thee from my side!
Sure I sought thee by mountain and mead, asthore!
And I watched and I wept till my heart was sore,

While the false to the false did say:
We will lead her away by the mound and the rath,
And we'll nourish her beart in its worse than death,
Till her tears shall have traced a pearly path,

· For the work of a future day,
Ah, little they knew what their guile could do!
It has won me a host of the stern and true,
Who have sworn by the eye of the yellow sun
That my home is their hearts till thy hand be won :

And they're gathered my tears and sighs;
And they've woven them into a cloudy frown,
That shall gird my brow like an ebony crown,
Till these feet in my wrath shall have trampled down

All, all that betwixt us rise.
Then come, my betrothed, to thine anxious bride,
Thou art dear to my breast as my heart's red tide,
And a wonder it is you tarry so long,
And your soul so proud, and your arm so strong,

And your limb without a chain;
And your fiet in their flight like the midnight wind,
When he bahs at the flask that he leaves behind;
And your heart so warm, and your look so kind

Oh, come to my breast again!
Oh my dearest has eyes like the noontide sun;
So bright, that my own dare scarce look on:
And the clouds of a thousand years gone by,
Brought back, and again on the clouded sky,

Heared haughtily pile o'er pile;
Then all in a boundless blaze outspread,
Rent, shaken, and tossed o'er their flaming bed,
Till each heart by the light of the heavens was read,

Were as nought to his softest smile:
And to hear my love in his wild mirth sing
To the flap of the battle-god's fiery wing!
How his chorus shrieks through the iron tones
Of crashing towers and creaking thrones,

And the crumbling of bastions strong!
Yet, sweet to my ear as the sigh that slips
From the nervous dance of a maiden's lips,
When the eye first wancs in its love eclipse,

1s his soul-creating song!
Then come, my betrothed, to tbine anxious bride!
Thou hast tarried too long, but I may not chide ;
For the prop and the hope of my home thou art,
Ay, the vein that suckles my growing heart::

Oh, I'd frown on the world for thee!
And it is not a dull, cold, soulless clod,
With a lip in the dust at a tyrant's nod,
Unworthy one glance of the patriot's god,

That you ever shall find in me!

In the true spirit of literature, which never permits the gall

of political acerbity to interfere with our appreciation of that which is beautiful, and apparently the warm outpouring of the heart, we must needs (whatever vur creed or principles inay be,) divest ourselves of all prejudices, if we wish to form an estimate of the worth of the fiery poeins of Francis Davis. Let us regard them in the light of compositions created for a certain end, an end which by every appearance the author considered a correct and honest one, and which, if it fell short of being so, was more occasioned by the want of clear-sightedness on his part, than by any other cause. Those narrowing influences which have, alas, too often regulated the taste, or distaste of many, for cotemporary literature, cannot be indulged in, with any semblance either of reason, becoming feeling, or common justice, and we are as much bound to admire the literary beauties (provided they are unstained by vicious thoughts,) of the poet whose volume was brought out yesterday, with mayhap the approving stamp of some sect obnoxious to the generality of readers, merely because they profess different religious principles, as we are to admire the artistic beauties and sublimities of the ancient writers. Convinced that none of our readers will peruse any of the following patriotic ballads in any other than a generous, and impartial spirit, we will now offer them a specimen worthy their attentionON AGAIN.

Then on again, And so the would-be storm is past,

A chain's a chain, And truemen have outlived it ;

And though a king should make it, Can truth be bowed by falsehood's blast,

A slave, though freed,

Were he indeed,
They're slaves who e'er believed it:
Let cravens crawl and adders hiss,

Who dare not try to break it.
And foes look on delighted !
To one and all our answer's this,
We're wronged and must be righted. And while ye guard against the shoals
Then on again,

That hide each past endeavour,
A chain's a chain,

Give freemen's tongues to truemen's souls, And though a king should make it,

Or damn the terms for ever :
Be this our creed,

Let baseness wander through the dark,
A slave indeed

And hug its own restriction, Is he who dare not break it.

But, oh! be ours the guiding spark ! 'Tis not in slander's poisonous lips

Produced by mental friction :

Then on again,
To kill the patriot's ardour;
Their blight may reach the blossom-tips,

A chain's a chain,

And though a king should make it, But not the fount of verdure :

Be this our creed, For he who feels his country's dole,

d slave indeed By nought can be confounded,

Is he who dare not break it. But onward sweeps his fearless soul,

Though death be walking round it:

Davis is a “facile princeps” in his choice and management of metre, that truant and rebellious offspring of the Muse, which it requires so much carefulness to keep in anything like order. With inimitable taste he selec's a light and easy flowing measure to suit his ingenious and fancy-clad thoughts, and blending with admirable skill, the art of the scholar with the active imaginings of the poet, he weaves, as we shall now behold, a brilliant woof of Poesy, remarkable for its rich colouring, and epigrammatic point.

FOUR ON THE STEM.

And now that our elves and their castle

of ether Oh, who has not heard of the mystical (Since Erin and knowledge were talking power,

together) Which lives in that sweet little emerald Have changed into goblins of sabie and flower,

feather,
So rare in the valley, so prized in the bower, The four-in-one-flower shall reason cone
Our dear little, rare little, cye-opening gem? demn?
So beaming, so teeming

Oh no, men for foemen
With beauty and wonder,

And malice and knavery,
When magic and logic

Slipped round us, and bound as
Are sporting their thunder;

In darkness and slavery,
And riving and driving

Then led us and bled us,
Your senses asunder:

In spite of our bravery, Oh, seek ye a shamrock with four on the For this we could number but three en stem!

the stem! When wizards were charming, with mysti- Then bail to the union of spirits and cal bothers,

flowers The eyes and the ears of our elf-fearing the past to the foe, but the fature be mothers,

ours, It winged each delusion, or 60 said our For Ulster has found in her own blooming fathers,

bowers, And why should their children its powers The gay golden leaf that completed the condemn ?

gen. Then ap with it, step with it,

Then up with it, step with it,
Up with it merrily ;

Up with it merrily ;
Roses and posies

Forward 1 from norward
Are drooping so drearily;

And southward come cheerily: :
Lying and dying,

Munster and Leinster,
And Erin so cheerily,

And Connaught an wearily, Mocking delusion with four on the stem! Tell Erin's foes she has four on the stem !

We are compelled very reluctantly to pass over great numbers of the beautiful pieces of poetry with which the volume before us abounds. They who wish to fathom the bright depths of Davis's fancy must read for themselves; we cannot do more than exhibit a few brilliants from the inexhaustible mine of his prolific and sparkling genius. The following lines are typical of almost oriental, imaginative opulence.

DREAM OF A WANDERER.

I looked upon the ocean,

And I looked upon the strand; I looked upon the heaven

That o'erhung the stranger's land:
But the brilliant blue was wanting,

And the robe of many dyes,
That each sea-sprung vale displayeth

Where my native mountains rise.
And the waves, like warlike spirits,

In their darkly-glistening shrouds, Rose and tlung their silvery helmets

In the pathway of the clouds :

But the breeze of bracing freshness,

That my fevered frame did seek,
In an icy odour only,
Wantoned o'er my wasted check.

And I found me,

As around me
Rung the elemental roar,

Heart stricken

And forsaken,
On a sterile, stranger shore.