1823.] 
Well may we glorify our God, and say 
Onr oft-repeated thanks for brighter day, 
The Pagan age of follies now gone by, 
A nobler worship reigns beneath the sky! 
Hang out our carpets, decorate our streets 
With virgin blankets and unspotted sheets, 
Well pleas’d our God beholds the priestly 
throng, 
Delighted listens to the holy song; 
And feathers, beads, and drums and 
swords, 
Must be most pleasing to the Lord of 
Lords, 
Tnspir’d priests and soldiers! goodly band,— 
Merey and murder marching hand in 
hand! 
This is the work of Europe’s potent kings, 
Whose armies have reviv’d these holy 
things : 
France has her Bourbons and her priests 
again ; 
Their -blood,—their money,—was not 
spent in vain. 
Britons rejoice! such things are cheaply 
bought ; 
It was for this that you so bravely fought ; 
And on the page of history will be told 
How British valour, join’d to British gold, 
Combin’d to raise the lilied flag on high, 
Triumphant o’er philosophy. 
——Re 
———— 
TO CHARLES NICHOLSON; 
Occasioned by hearing him Play a Concerto 
. onthe Flute, ut one of the recent Oratorios. 
Nemo vir magnus, sine aliquo afflatu divius, unquam 
fuit. Cicero. 
O rxHov ! whose soul-enliv’ning flute 
Surpasses Orpheus’ fabled shell, 
What time it tam’d the fiercest brute, 
And made the woods with rapture swell, 
Accept this unassuming song, 
In praise of thy transcendant skill, 
For thou of all the tuneful throng 
Remain’st the sweetest minstrel still: 
Harmonious spirit ! when I hear 
Thy liquid strains in their career 
Of pathos and voluptuous tone, 
I deem thee of that starlight sphere 
Where none but angel-forms appear, 
And demigods are known! 
"Lis not the rapid tide of sound, 
Wherein all feeling must be drown’d, 
Which ev’ry tuneful dunce may reach,— 
*Tis not the foreign *Flautist’s bound 
From depth to height of music’s 
speech,— $ 
Nor all the tricks and quirks of art, 
Which make the dull with wonder start ; 
Nor yet the loftiest notes his skill 
Can plunge upon the sense at will, 
That charm the tasteful ear ; 
Bat that superior style and tone 
Which still are thine, and thine alone, 
And own no equal near, 
* Drouett, 
Original Poetry. 
SL 
"Tis that unrivall’d breathing out 
Of pathos, which thy lips diffuse, 
Which seems to linger round about 
Thy magic flute, as loth to lose 
Itself in air, or fly from thee, 
The source of its divinity. 
Proceed then, highly-gifted spirit! 
Through all the labyrinth of sound, 
And still from heavenly souls inherit 
Strains which in heav’n alone abound. 
Oh, breathe us still that matchless *song, 
That rich and taste-attemper’d air, 
Whose silvery links seem borne along, 
By “‘angels ever bright and fair,” 
The atmosphere, which thrills with plea» 
sure 
In yielding to its plaintive measure. 
But, wond’rous artist! Nature’s child! 
Be not by loud applause beguil’d,— 
Court not the flights the scales admit, 
But curb thy genius in her soarings, 
And seek th’ approval of the pit, 
In pref’rence to the gods’ adorings. 
Yet, if thou must wanton at times through 
the keys, 
To astonish the vulgar, whom taste cannot 
please, 
And deal in chromatics, to show them the 
height 
And the maze thro’ which music extends; 
Let it still be thy chief and peculiar delight 
To reflect on the ears of thy friends, 
To pluck from the brow of the critic the 
sneer 
That might serve to retard thy resplendent 
career ; 
For the shouts of the vulgar no recom- 
pense leave, 
And “make the judicious incessantly 
grieve!” 
But these are mere fancies the Muse must 
reject, 
For the genius thou own’st cannot err ; 
Thy taste is too perfect for once to select 
‘The applause which would pity incur! 
Let it, therefore, O Nicholson! still be 
thy aim, 
Both to rival thy father in talentand fame, 
To call down to the smiles of the angels in 
< Heav'n, 
To make the immortalst with rapture 
confess, 
That a part of their powers to thee has 
been giv’n, 
To add to thy weakness and worldly 
success ! 
To give to new concords and harmonics 
birth, 
And prove that an Orpheus still paces 
the earth. G. 
Islington ; June 1823, 
* Roslin Castle, in four flats. 
+ Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, 
NEW 
