That the wide waters on the long, low arch
Above them lie sustained. What other works
Science, audacious in emprise, hath wrought,
Meet not the eye, but well may fill the mind.
Not from the bowels of the land alone,
From lake and stream, hath their diluvial wreck
Been scooped to form this navigable way:
Huge rivers were controlled, or from their course
Shouldered aside; and at the eastern mouth,
Where the salt ooze denied a resting-place,
There were the deep foundations laid, by weight
On weight immersed, and pile on pile down driven,
Till steadfast as the everlasting rocks

The massive outwork stands. Contemplate now
What days and nights of thought, what years of toil,
What inexhaustive springs of public wealth,
The vast design required; the immediate good,
The future benefit progressive still;

And thou wilt pay thy tribute of due praise

To those whose counsels, whose decrees, whose care, For after-ages formed the generous work.

WHERE these capacious basins, by the laws
Of the subjacent element, receive

The ship, descending or upraised, eight times,
From stage to stage with unfelt agency

Translated,

fitliest may the marble here

Record the Architect's immortal name.

Telford it was, by whose presiding mind

The whole great work was planned and perfected;
Telford, who o'er the vale of Cambrian Dee,
Aloft in air, at giddy height upborne,
Carried his navigable road, and hung
High o'er Menaï's straits the bending bridge;
Structures of more ambitious enterprise
Than minstrels in the age of old romance
To their own Merlin's magic lore ascribed.
Nor hath he for his native land performed
Less in this proud design; and where his piers
Around her coast from many a fisher's creek
Unsheltered else, and many an ample port,
Repel the assailing storm; and where his roads,
In beautiful and sinuous line far seen,

Wind with the vale, and win the long ascent,
Now o'er the deep morass sustained, and now
Across ravine or glen or estuary,

Opening a passage through the wilds subdued.

XLIII.

EPITAPH IN BUTLEIGH CHURCH.

DIVIDED far by death were they whose names,
In honor here united as in birth,

This monumental verse records. They drew
In Dorset's healthy vales their natal breath,

And from these shores beheld the ocean first,
Whereon in early youth, with one accord,
They chose their way of fortune; to that course
By Hood and Bridport's bright example drawn,
Their kinsmen, children of this place, and sons
Of one who in his faithful ministry

Inculeated within these hallowed walls

The truths in mercy to mankind revealed.
Worthy were these three brethren each to add
New honors to the already honored name;
But Arthur, in the morning of his day,
Perished amid the Caribbean Sea,

When the Pomona, by a hurricane

Whirled, riven, and overwhelmed, with all her crew

Into the deep went down. A longer date

To Alexander was assigned,

for hope,

For fair ambition, and for fond regret,

Alas, how short! for duty, for desert,
Sufficing; and, while Time preserves the roll
Of Britain's naval feats, for good report.
A boy, with Cook he rounded the great globe;
A youth, in many a celebrated fight

With Rodney had his part; and having reached
Life's middle stage, engaging ship to ship,
When the French Hercules, a gallant foe,
Struck to the British Mars his three-striped flag,
He fell, in the moment of his victory.
Here his remains, in sure and certain hope,
Are laid, until the hour when Earth and Sea
Shall render up their dead. One brother yet

Survived, with Keppel and with Rodney trained
In battles, with the Lord of Nile approved,
Ere in command he worthily upheld

Old England's high prerogative. In the east,
The west, the Baltic and the Midland Seas,
Yea, wheresoever hostile fleets have ploughed
The ensanguined deep, his thunders have been
His flag in brave defiance hath been seen; [heard,
And bravest enemies at Sir Samuel's name

Felt fatal presage, in their inmost heart,
Of unavertible defeat foredoomed.
Thus in the path of glory he rode on,
Victorious alway, adding praise to praise,
Till, full of honors, not of years, beneath
The venom of the infected clime he sunk,
On Coromandel's coast, completing there
His service, only when his life was spent.

To the three brethren, Alexander's son,
(Sole scion he in whom their line survived,)
With English feeling, and the deeper sense
Of filial duty, consecrates this tomb.

1827.

XLIV.

ЕРІТАРН.

To Butler's venerable memory,

By private gratitude for public worth,

This monument is raised, here where twelve years

Meekly the blameless Prelate exercised

His pastoral charge, and whither, though removed
A little while to Durham's wider See,

His mortal relics were conveyed to rest.
Born in dissent, and in the school of schism
Bred, he withstood the withering influence
Of that unwholesome nurture.

To the Church,

In strength of mind mature and judgment clear, A convert, in sincerity of heart

Seeking the truth, deliberately convinced,

And finding there the truth he sought, he came.
In honor must his high desert be held
While there is any virtue, any praise;
For he it was whose gifted intellect
First apprehended, and developed first,
The analogy connate which in its course
And constitution Nature manifests
To the Creator's word and will divine,
And, in the depth of that great argument
Laying his firm foundation, built thereon.
Proofs never to be shaken of the truths
Revealed from Heaven in mercy to mankind;
Allying thus Philosophy with Faith,

And finding, in things seen and known, the type
And evidence of those within the veil.