ON THE LANGUAGE 



I lifted his helmet : I saw his locks 

 Disordered, uneren in sweat. 

 My cry arose — 



And he raised with difficulty his eye. 



Death came, like a cIoud(On the sun :— 



No mor« shalt thou see thy Oscar. ■ ' 



The beauty of Evirchoma is darkened. 



Her soil, unconscious, holds the end of a spear t 



Feeble was her yoice, and few her words. 



I raised her up with my hand, 



But she laid my palm on the head of her son, 



While her sigh rose frequent. ~ 



Dear child ! vain is thy fondling ; 



Thy mother no more shall arise. > 



I will myself, be a father to thee : 



But Evirallin is no more. 



Yet the poem must not be closed without giving you its conchision - 

 its exquisite moral and its sublime epitaph. 



What is the strength of the warrior, 

 Though he scatter the battle as withered leaves ? 

 To-day though he may be valiant in the field. 

 To-morrow the beetle will triumph over him. 



Prepare, ye children of musical strings, 

 The bed of Gaul and his sun- beam [standard] by him : 

 Let his resting-place be seen from afar, 

 By high branches overshadowed ; 

 Under the wing of the oak of greenest foliage. 

 Of quickest growth, and most durable form. 

 Shooting forth its leaves to the breeze of the shower, 

 When the heath around is still withered. 



Its leaves, from the extremity of the land. 

 Shall be seen by the birds of the summer ; 

 And each bird shall perch, as it arrives, 

 On a sprig of its verdant branches. 

 Gaul, in his midst, shall hear their cheerful note, 

 While the virgins are singing of Evirchoma. 



Until all of these; shall perish. 

 Never shall your menaory be disui^t'cd, 

 Until the stone shall crumble into dust, 

 And the oak-tree decay with age ; 

 Until streams shall cease to flow. 

 And the mountain waters be dried up at their source ; 

 Until there be lost, in the flood of age. 

 Each bard, and song, and subject of story. 

 The stranger shall not ask, who was Morni's son ?" 

 Or " where was the dwelling of the king of Strumon ?" 



The voice of the passions, ihen, whether of joy or sorrow, of rage oi' 

 tenderness, is the voice of poetry ; and the voice of poetry is, in conse~ 

 quence, the voice of the passions. Jt is hence the earliest language of 

 every nation ; and it is not, therefore, to be wondered at that it should 

 have been employed from a very remote period as the medium of national 

 history, national mythology, and moral precepts ; its glowing and animated 

 style being peculiarly calculated to captivate the attention, and the recur- 

 rent measure of versification which, under some shape or other, it has 

 assumed, and could not fail to assume, in every part of the world, being 

 admirably adapted to assist tJie memory. 



Hence in the first ages of Greece, as well as of every other nation, ' 

 priests, philosophers, and statesmen, all delivered their instructions in 

 poetry. Apollo, Orpheus, and Amphion, the earliest bards of the Grecian 

 states, are represented as the first tamers of mankind, the first founders oi' 

 order and civilization. Minos and Thales sung to the lyre the laws which 

 they composed ; and, till the age immediately preceding that of Herodotus, 



