Lyric Notes on the Russian War. It is difficult just
now to satisfy the mind by poetry on the Russian war, because the reality equals or surpasses the powers of the imagination, the actual heroism rising to the ideal. In this point of view, the author of these Lyric Yotes would not have done amiss in keeping down the actual conflict at the Alma, and dwelling upon the duplicity of the Czar, the union of England and France, and the miseries resulting from war.
"Lo, from the East a message brief, And over bold for weak belief, Dropt like a prophet's word that runs Before the event,—a message swift As lightning, and which comes to lift The veil of time, drowned in the guns Of raging war ! More full of sorrow May be the message of tomorrow. It must be heavy news ! Although the battle be not lost, Although we rout the Russian host, It must be heavy news.
What if a husband fall ?
What if the chock a mother's heart bereave ?
What if a father leave, Stretched on the trampled sod, His children there to God ? What if a heart more dear than kin alterations indicate the objections of the legal mind.] Oh, tis the grief of all ! of "Laura Temple."
though he fell into it on the Wellington Funeral poem. In the pre-
wanders we know not whither, till we are brought by a roundabout reign Literature, -Volume III.)
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