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REPEAL: AN EPIC POEM, 



BY AN HYBERNIAN. 



THIS poem reached us so late in the month, that both space and 

 time stand in the way of our giving it that detailed investigation to 

 which its elaborate execution and momentous subject seem so justly 

 to entitle it. However we have no objection to strain a point in its 

 favour, as it may afford no slight consolation to the genuine wor- 

 hippers of the Muses, to find that the epic fire is not all extinguished 

 upon earth that it still slumbers in some heaven-favoured bosoms 

 and that great circumstances and men are all that are wanted to rouse 

 its dormant energies, and cause it to blaze forth, or if you will to 

 ' flare up," with all the steadiness and brilliancy of the Maronian or 

 Tassonian days. We had begun to be apprehensive that the divine 

 gift of inspiration, like that of miracles, had been lost to this prosaic 

 age ; and that we were henceforward to be condemned to the unvary- 

 ing round of its " hack sounds and sights/' unrelieved by any of that 

 sacred light of the imagination which hallowed and purified the 

 earlier times. But we are glad that poesy is not 



" Like the lost Pleiad seen on earth no more." 



As a proof whereof, we shall proceed without further preliminary to 

 the poem before us. 



Like many other great poets, our Hybernian seems to have been 

 urged ' ' 'gainst rhymes to knock his brows," by a feeling of patriotic 

 indignation, to redeem his country from the stigma cast upon it by a 

 writer of our day, of never having produced an epic poet. This 

 sentiment is finely embodied in the opening stanzas ; and the con- 

 fident promise of the young bard, as he expands his wings to take 

 his eagle flight, is finely characteristic of his country : 



" One Keightly somewhere states complacently, 

 That Ireland ne'er has grown an epic poet. 

 I mean to give the sland'rous rogue the lie ! 



And in my verse demonstrate, prove it, show it. 

 Soaring beyond the reach of calumny, 



Till the applauding millions shout out, ' Go it !' 

 And linked together in the rolls of fame, 

 Immortalize my country and my name. 



