The Rhode Island Republican

POETRY:

From the Boston Palladium, Feb. 13.

PRIZE ADDRESS.

On Wednesday evening the public were favored with the Shakespeare Jubilee, and Mr. Straughan's Prize Ode. This last is a lyric, one of whose main beauties is its extreme diversity of measure, and was recited by Mr. Finn with a happy conformation of elocution to metre, with a classic propriety of emphasis, and a colloquial familiarity of manner.

GOD of the glorious Lyre!
Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang.
While Jove's exulting quire
Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang,
Come! bless the service and the shrine
We consecrate to Thee and Thine.

Fierce from the frozen North,
When Havoc led his legions forth,
O'er Learning's sunny groves the dark destroyers
In dust the sacred statue slept,
Despread,
Fair science round her altars wept,
And Wisdom couched his head.

At length, Olympian Lord of Morn
The raven veil of Night was torn,
When through golden clouds descending,
Thou didst hold thy radiant light,
O'er Nature's lovely pageant bending,
Till Avon rolled all sparkling to thy sight

There, on its bank, beneath the Mulberry's shade,
Wrapped in young dreams wild-eyed Minstrel
strayed.
Lighting there and lingering long,
Strayed.
Thou didst teach the Bard his song.
Thy fingers strung his sleeping shell,
And round his brows a garland curled,
On his lips thy spirit fell,
And bade him wake and warm the world!

Then SHAKESPEARE rose!
Across the trembling strings
His daring hand he flings,
And, lo! a new creation glows!
There clustering round, submissive to his will.
Fate's vassal train his high commands fulfill.
Madness with his frightful scream,
Vengeance leaning on his lance,
Avarice with his blade and beam,
Hatred blasting with a glance,
Remorse that weeps, and Rage that roars,
And Jealousy that dotes but dooms, and murders yet adores.
Mirth, his face with sunbeams lit,
adores.
Waking Laughter's merry swell.
Arm in arm with fresh eyed wit,
Rebel.
That waves his tingling lash, while Folly shakes his bells.
From the feudal tower pale Terror rushing.
Where the prophet bird's wail
Dies along the dull gale,
And the sleeping monarch's blood is gushing!
Despair that haunts the gurgling stream,
Kissed by the virgin moon's cold beam,
Where some lost maid wild chaplets wreathes
And swan-like there her own dirge breathes,
Then broken-hearted sinks to rest,
breast.
Beneath the bubbling wave that shrouds her maniac

Young Love, with eye of tender gloom,
Now drooping o'er the hallowed tomb
Where his plighted victims lie,
Where they met, but met to die--
And now, when crimson buds are sleeping.
Through the dewy arbor peeping.
Where Beauty's child, the frowning world forgot,
To Youth's devoted tale is listening.
Rapture on her dark lash glistening,
While fairies leave their cowslip cells and guard the
Thus rise the phantoms throng,
happy spot.
Obedient to their Master's song.
And lead in willing chain the wond'ring soul along,

For other worlds War's Great One sighed in vain,
O'er other worlds see SHAKESPEARE rove and reign
The rapt Magician of his own wild lay.
Earth and her tribes his mystic wand obey.
Old Ocean trembles, Thunder cracks the skies,
Air teems with shapes, and tell-tale spectres rise
Time yields his trophies up, and Death restores :
The mouldered victims of his voiceless shores :
Night's paltering hags their fearful orgies keep.
And faithless Guile unseals the lip of sleep.
The fireside legend, and the faded page,
The crime that cursed, the deed that blessed an age,
All, all come forth-the good to charm and cheer,
To scourge bold Vice, and start the generous tear:
With pictured Folly gazing fools to shame,
And guide young Glory's foot along the path of fame

Mark the sceptred Traitor slumbering!
There flit the slaves of Conscience round :
With boding tongue foul murders numbering.
Sleep's leaden portals catch the sound.
In his dream of blood for mercy quaking.
At his own dull scream behold him waking!
Soon that dream to fate shall turn,
For him the living furies burn:
For him the vulture sits on yonder misty peak,
And chides the lagging night, and wets her hungry
Hark! the trumpets warning breath
beak.
Echoes round the vale of Death,
Where through the maddening ranks the God of
Slaughter rides,
Slaughter
And o'er their spouting trunks his reeking axle
grides!
Unhorsed, unhelmed, disdaining shield,
The panting Tyrant scours the field.
Vengeance! he meets thy dooming blade!
The scourge of earth, the scorn of Heaven,
He falls ! unwept and unforgiven,
And all his guilty glories fade.
Like a crushed reptile in the dust he lies,
And Hate's last lightning quivers from his eyes.

Behold yon crownless King.
Yon white-locked, weeping Sire:
Where Heaven's unpillared chambers ring
And burst their streams of flood and fire!
He gave them all ! the daughters of his love:
That recreant pair !-they drive him forth to rove.
In such a night of wo.
The cubless regent of the wood
Forgets to bathe her fangs in blood,
And caverns with her foe.-
Yet One was ever kind.
Why lingers She behind ?-
Pity! view him by her dead form kneeling
Even in wild frenzy holy nature feeling:
His aching eyeballs strain
To see those curtained orbs unfold,
That beauteous bosom heave again,
But all is dark and cold.
In agony the Father shakes;
Grief's choking note
Swells in his throat,
Each withered heart-string tugs and breaks!
Round her pale neck his dying arms he wreathes,
And on her marble lips his last, his death kiss breathes.

Down! trembling wing-shall insect weakness keep
The sun-defying Eagle's sweep?
A mortal strike celestial strings,
And feebly echo what a seraph sings ?
Who now shall grace the glowing throne,
Where all unrivalled, all alone,
Bold SHAKESPEARE sat, and looked creation through,
The Minstrel-Monarch of the world he drew ?

That throne is cold-that Lyre in death unstrung
On whose proud note delighted wonder hung :
Yet old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps.
One spot shall spare-the grave where SHAKESPEARE
Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie,
But nature's laureate Bards shall never die
Art's chiselled boast, and Glory's trophied shore,
Must live in members, or can live no more.
While sculptured Jove, some nameless waste may
Still rolls th' Olympic Car in Pindar's fame;
Troy's doubtful walls in ashes passed away,
Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay:
Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes,
Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains .-
So, too, yon giant Empress of the Isles,
On whose broad sway the sun forever smiles,
To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend;
. And all her triumphs in her SHAKESPEARE end.

O Thou! to whose creative power
We dedicate the festal hour
While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand
Learning's anointed train, and beauty's rose-lipped
Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown,
Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own.
Deep in the West, as Independence roves,
His banners planting round the land he loves,
Where Nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace,
In Time's full hour shall spring a glorious race;
Thy name, thy verse, thy language shall they
And deck for Thee the vaulted Temple there.-
Our Roman-hearted Fathers broke
Thy parent empire's galling yoke,
But, Thou, harmonious Monarch of the Mind,
Around their Sons a gentler chain shall bind;
.Once more, in Thee, shall Albion's sceptre wave,
And what her mighty Lion lost, her mightier Swan
shall save ?