Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/87

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS an ephemeral nature, except the poem which I would have gone far to hear him repeat in his old, old age, and for which my younger readers must always remember his venerable name.

Let us not overlook a lyric, of which many have, probably, already thought—the Rev. Charles Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore." No fugitive piece has had a wider or more potential circulation than this school-boy favorite; yet who, besides the men of letters, have troubled themselves concerning its author, or known of other graceful verses by his hand? A few have read the song which he made to the Irish air, "Grammachree." It is said that he sang the music over until it affected him to tears, and impelled him to write his equally pathetic lament, in such stanzas as the following:

But we must here cease our observation of poets who come strictly within the prescribed limits of the telescopic field. I have barely space enough for [73]