582 REPEAL. 



Pindar has sung horse races how sublime 



The dashing Pythian with its deep reflections ! 

 The subject I've selected for my rhyme 



Is not so vulgar quite. /'// take elections, 

 As being more suited to the modern times 



The age of constitutions, conic sections, 

 Speeches, and bustling, senatorial chat, 

 Reform, and revolution, and all that." 



In conformity with all the great epic examples that have preceded 

 him, he next proceeds to state the subject of his poem ; and \ve do 

 not think that the admirers of the sublime simplicity of the epic 

 models will find any thing to disparage in this stanza of our bard. 

 We believe he had the 



" Canto 1'arme pietose e el Capitano" 

 of Tasso in his eye, or rather in his ear : 



I sing Repeal, and the illustrious band 

 Of forty senators, who, nobly daring, 

 Voted and spoke to free their native land, 



Declaiming by the powers of brogue, and flaring 

 Up with their oratory gay and grand, 



The public time and patience noways sparing ; 

 Dashing away through history and chronology 

 Like auctioneers or doctors of theology. 



This opening led us to expect that he would have plunged in me- 

 dias res, and placed us in the midst of the agitation for repeal by the 

 side of Eberiezer Jacob, at the Dungarvan election; or with King 

 Feargus O'Connor in Cork's own town ; or, as some of his illustrious 

 contemporaries of the " Tail" not unaptly designate him. the " Cove 

 of Cork :" but he commences with the commencement, and stays his 

 flight to celebrate the antiquity of the scene of the great events he is 

 about to describe : 



There lies an island in the wat'ry space 



Where the outstretch'd Atlantic swells and rages, 

 So very old it were in vain to trace 



Its story backwards through the night of ages. 

 Some say it cradled once the human race, 



And prove it clearly in some quarto pages; 

 Others assert that Noah in his round 

 Dropped a stray couple on this holy ground. 



