4 INTRODUCTION. 



These are the rural sights and sounds 

 With which the valley here abounds. 

 And here, in Spring, the Nightingale 

 Charms, with his song, the listening vale, 

 What time vibrations of delight 

 The Cuckoo's monotones excite, 

 While the wild warbler train attend, 

 And with his notes their music blend ; 

 To grove, to wood, to shady dell, 

 Echo responds in wavy swell ; 

 All Nature rapturous appears, 

 And Fancy vegetation hears.* 

 Nor will the churchyard sod refuse 

 Its sombrous strains by rustic muse ; 

 Where, too, sleeps Genius, wild and free, 

 Within the grave of Dermody. f 



* Madame Cottin has a similar, but, I think, more happy 

 thought, — " On croiroit presque entendre le bruit da la vegetation." 

 — Elizabeth ou Les Exiles de Siberie. 



t A poet of some promise, whose malignant planet marred 

 his best efforts. The fate of this young man reminds us of the 

 fate of Savage, who had, like Dermody, been consigned 

 to neglect in his earlier years: hence the unfortunate impres- 

 sions which both received could not, as it appears, be coun- 

 teracted in their effects by any subsequent attempts, either 

 of others or of themselves; a convincing proof of the power 

 of early circumstances in forming character; and a proof, also, 

 of the necessity of early attention to such surrounding media, 

 in order that the best character may be fashioned and brought 

 out. Dermody was a native of Ireland ; but died at Lewishaui, 

 or in the neighbourhood, in 1802, at the age of twenty-eight. 



