Within whose quiet sphere, no vanities
Or low desires had place. Nor were the seeds
Of excellence thus largely given, and left
To struggle with impediment of clime
Austere, or niggard soil; all circumstance
Of happy fortune was to him vouchsafed;
His way of life was as through garden-walks
Wherein no thorns are seen, save such as grow,
Types of our human state, with fruits and flowers.
In all things favoured thus auspiciously,
But in his father most. An intercourse
So beautiful no former record shows
In such relationship displayed, where through
Familiar friendship's perfect confidence,
The father's ever-watchful tenderness
Meets ever in the son's entire respect
Its due return devout, and playful love
Mingles with every thing, and sheds o'er all
A sunshine of its own. Should we then say
The parents purchased at too dear a cost
This deep delight, the deepest, purest joy
Which Heaven hath here assign'd us, when they saw
Their child of hope, just in the May of life,
Beneath a slow and cankering malady,
With irremediable decay consumed,
Sink to the untimely grave? Oh, think not thus!
Nor deem that such long anguish, and the grief
Which in the inmost soul doth strike its roots
There to abide through time, can overweigh
The blessings which have been, and yet shall be !
Think not that He in Whom we live, doth mock
Our dearest aspirations! Think not love,
Genius, and virtue should inhere alone
In mere mortality, and Earth put out
The sparks which are of Heaven! We are not left
In darkness, nor devoid of hope. The Light
Of Faith hath risen to us: the vanquish'd Grave
To us the great consolatory truth
Proclaim'd that He who wounds will heal; and Death
Opening the gates of Immortality,
The spirits whom it hath dissevered here,
In everlasting union re-unite.
SOME there will be to whom, as here they read,
While yet these lines are from the chisel sharp,
The name of Clement Francis, will recall
His countenance benign; and some who knew
What stores of knowledge and what humble thoughts,
What wise desires, what cheerful piety,
In happy union form'd the character
Which faithfully impress'd his aspect meek.
And others too there are, who in their hearts
Will bear the memory of his worth enshrined,
For tender and for reverential thoughts,
When grief hath had its course, a life-long theme,
A little while, and these, who to the truth
Of this poor tributary strain could bear
Their witness, will themselves have pass'd away,
And this cold marble monument present
Words which can then within no living mind
Create the ideal form they once evoked;
This, then, the sole memorial of the dead.
So be it. Only that which was of earth
Hath perish'd; only that which was infirm,
Mortal, corruptible, and brought with it
The seed connate of death. A place in Time
Is given us, only that we may prepare
Our portion for Eternity: the Soul
Possesseth there what treasures for itself,
Wise to salvation, it laid up in Heaven.
O Man, take thou this lesson from the Grave!
There too all true affections shall revive,
To fade no more; all losses be restored,
All griefs be heal'd, all holy hopes fulfill'd.
TIME and the world, whose magnitude and weight
Bear on us in this Now, and hold us here
To earth enthrall'd, what are they in the Past?
And in the prospect of the immortal Soul
How poor a speck! Not here her resting-place,
Her portion is not here; and happiest they
Who, gathering early all that Earth can give,
Shake off its mortal coil, and speed for Heaven.
Such fate had he whose relics moulder here.
Few were his years, but yet enough to teach
Love, duty, generous feelings, high desires,
Faith, hope, devotion: and what more could length
Of days have brought him? What, but vanity,
Joys frailer even than health or human life;
Temptation, sin and sorrow, both too sure,
Evils that wound, and cares that fret the heart.
Repine not, therefore, ye who love the dead.
May boast this proud expenditure, begun
By Britain in a time of arduous war;
Through all the efforts and emergencies
Of that long strife continued, and achieved
After her triumph, even at the time
When national burdens bearing on the state
Were felt with heaviest pressure. Such expense
Is best economy. In growing wealth,
Comfort, and spreading industry, behold
The fruits immediate! And, in days to come,
Fitly shall this great British work be named
With whatsoe'er of most magnificence
For public use, Rome in her plenitude
Of power effected, or all-glorious Greece,
Or Egypt, mother-land of all the arts.
THOU who hast reach'd this level where the glede,
Wheeling between the mountains in mid air,
Eastward or westward as his gyre inclines,
Descries the German or the Atlantic Sea,
Pause here; and, as thou seest the ship pursue
Her easy way serene, call thou to mind
By what exertions of victorious art
The way was open'd. Fourteen times upheaved,
The vessel hath ascended, since she changed
The salt sea water for the highland lymph;
As oft in imperceptible descent
Must, step by step, be lower'd, before she woo
The ocean breeze again.
Thou hast beheld
What basins, most capacious of their kind,
Enclose her, while the obedient element
Lifts or depones its burthen. Thou hast seen
The torrent hurrying from its native hills
Pass underneath the broad canal inhumed,
Then issue harmless thence; the rivulet
Admitted by its intake peaceably,
Forthwith by gentle overfall discharged:
And haply too thou hast observed the herds
Frequent their vaulted path, unconscious they
That the wide waters on the long low arch
Above them, lie sustained. What other works
Science, audacious in emprize, 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 scoop'd to form this navigable way;
Huge rivers were controll'd, or from their course
Shoulder'd 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 plann'd 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 enterprize
Than minstrels in the age of old romance
To their own Merlin's magic lore ascribed.
Nor hath he for his native land perform'd
Less in this proud design; and where his piers
Around her coast from many a fisher's creek
Unshelter'd 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 sustain'd, and now
Across ravine, or glen, or estuary,
Opening a passage through the wilds subdued.
EPITAPH IN BUTLEIGH CHURCH.
DIVIDED far by death were they, whose names
In honour 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
Inculcated within these hallow'd walls
The truths in mercy to mankind reveal'd.
Worthy were these three brethren each to add
New honours to the already honour'd name:
But Arthur, in the morning of his day,
Perish'd amid the Caribbean sea,
When the Pomona, by a hurricane
Whirl'd, riven and overwhelm'd, with all her crew
Into the deep went down. A longer date
To Alexander was assign'd, 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 reach'd
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 train'd
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 plough'd
The ensanguined deep, his thunders have been heard,
His flag in brave defiance hath been seen;
And bravest enemies at Sir Samuel's name
Felt fatal presage in their inmost heart,
Of unavertible defeat foredoom'd.
Thus in the path of glory he rode on,
Victorious alway, adding praise to praise;
Till full of honours, 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.
To Butler's venerable memory
By private gratitude for public worth
This moument 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 convey'd 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 honour 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
Reveal'd 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.
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MEMORY OF THE REVEREND HERBERT HILL, Formerly Student of Christ Church, Oxford: successively Chaplain to the British Factories at Porto and at Lisbon; and late Rector of Streatham; who was released from this life, Sept. 19. 1828, in the 80th year of his age.
Nor upon marble or sepulchral brass
Have I the record of thy worth inscribed,
Dear Uncle! nor from Chantrey's chisel ask'd
A monumental statue, which might wear
Through many an age thy venerable form.
Such tribute, were I rich in this world's wealth,
Should rightfully be rendered, in discharge
Of grateful duty, to the world evinced
When testifying so by outward sign
Its deep and inmost sense. But what I can
Is rendered piously, prefixing here
Thy perfect lineaments, two centuries
Before thy birth by Holbein's happy hand
Prefigured thus. It is the portraiture
Of More, the mild, the learned, and the good;
Traced in that better stage of human life,
When vain imaginations, troublous thoughts,
And hopes and fears have had their course, and left
The intellect composed, the heart at rest,
Nor yet decay hath touch'd our mortal frame.
Such was the man whom Henry, of desert
Appreciant alway, chose for highest trust;
Whom England in that eminence approved;
Whom Europe honoured, and Erasmus loved.
Such was he ere heart-hardening bigotry
Obscured his spirit, made him with himself
Discordant, and contracting then his brow,
With sour defeature marr'd his countenance.
What he was, in his best and happiest time,
Even such wert thou, dear Uncle! such thy look
Benign and thoughtful; such thy placid mien;
Thine eye serene, significant and strong,
Bright in its quietness, yet brightening oft
With quick emotion of benevolence,
Or flash of active fancy, and that mirth
Which aye with sober wisdom well accords.
Nor ever did true Nature, with more nice
Exactitude, fit to the inner man
The fleshly mould, than when she stampt on thine
Her best credentials, and bestow'd on thee
An aspect, to whose sure benignity
Beasts with instinctive confidence could trust,
Which at a glance obtain'd respect from men,
And won at once good will from all the good.
Such as in semblance, such in word and deed
Lisbon beheld him, when for many a year
The even tenour of his spotless life
Adorn'd the English Church,. her minister
In that strong hold of Rome's Idolatry,
To God and man approved. What Englishman,
Who in those peaceful days of Portugal
Resorted thither, curious to observe
Her cities, and the works and ways of men,
But sought him, and from his abundant stores
Of knowledge profited? What stricken one,
Sent thither to protract a living death,
Forlorn perhaps, and friendless else, but found
A friend in him? What mourners, . . who had seen
The object of their agonizing hopes
In that sad cypress ground deposited,
Wherein so many a flower of British growth,
Untimely faded and cut down, is laid,
In foreign earth compress'd,.. but bore away
A life-long sense of his compassionate care,
His Christian goodness? Faithful shepherd he,
And vigilant against the wolves, who there,
If entrance might be won, would straight beset
The dying stranger, and with merciless zeal
Bay the death-bed. In every family
Throughout his fold was he the welcome guest,
Alike to every generation dear,
The heroic rise, the glories, the decline,
Of that fallen country, dear to us, wherein
The better portion of thy days was pass'd;
And where, in fruitful intercourse with thee,
My intellectual life received betimes
The bias it hath kept. Poor Portugal,
In us thou harbouredst no ungrateful guests!
We loved thee well; Mother magnanimous
Of mighty intellects and faithful hearts, ..
For such in other times thou wert, nor yet
To be despair'd of, for not yet, methinks,
Degenerate wholly, . . yes, we loved thee well!
And in thy moving story, (so but life
Be given me to mature the gathered store
Of thirty years,) poet and politick,
And Christian sage, (only philosopher
Who from the Well of living water drinks
Never to thirst again,) shall find, I ween,
For fancy, and for profitable thought,
The children's favourite, and the grandsire's friend; Abundant food.
Tried, trusted and beloved. So liberal too
In secret alms, even to his utmost means,
That they who served him, and who saw in part.
The channels where his constant bounty ran,
Maugre their own uncharitable faith,
Believed him, for his works, secure of Heaven.
It would have been a grief for me to think
The features, which so perfectly express'd
That excellent mind, should irretrievably
From earth have pass'd away, existing now
Only in some few faithful memories
Insoul'd, and not by any limner's skill
To be imbodied thence. A blessing then
On him, in whose prophetic counterfeit
Preserved, the children now, who were the crown
Of his old age, may see their father's face,
Here to the very life pourtray'd, as when
Spain's mountain passes, and her ilex woods,
And fragrant wildernesses, side by side,
With him I traversed, in my morn of youth,
And gather'd knowledge from his full discourse.
Often in former years I pointed out,
Well-pleased, the casual portrait, which so well,
Assorted in all points; and haply since,
While lingering o'er this meditative work,
Sometimes that likeness, not unconsciously,
Hath tinged the strain; and therefore, for the sake
Of this resemblance, are these volumes now
Thus to his memory properly inscribed.
O friend! O more than father! whom I found
Forbearing alway, alway kind; to whom
No gratitude can speak the debt I owe;
Far on their earthly pilgrimage advanced
Are they who knew thee when we drew the breath
Of that delicious clime! The most are gone;
And whoso yet survive of those who then
Were in their summer season, on the tree
Of life hang here and there like wintry leaves,
Alas! should this be given,
Such consummation of my work will now
Be but a mournful close, the one being gone,
Whom to have satisfied was still to me
A pure reward, outweighing far all breath
Of public praise. O friend revered, O guide
And fellow-labourer in this ample field,
How large a portion of myself hath pass'd
With thee, from earth to Heaven! . . Thus they who
Grey hairs die piecemeal. But in good old age
Thou hast departed; not to be bewail'd, . .
Oh no! The promise on the Mount vouchsafed,
Nor abrogate by any later law
Reveal'd to man, .. that promise, as by thee
Full piously deserved, was faithfully
In thee fulfill'd, and in the land thy days
Were long. I would not, as I saw thee last,
For a king's ransom, have detain'd thee here, . .
Bent, like the antique sculptor's limbless trunk,
By chronic pain, yet with thine eye unquench'd,
The ear undimm'd, the mind retentive still,
The heart unchanged, the intellectual lamp
Burning in its corporeal sepulchre.
No; not if human wishes had had power
To have suspended Nature's constant work,
Would they who loved thee have detain'd thee thus,
Waiting for death.
That trance is over.
Art enter'd on thy heavenly heritage;
And I, whose dial of mortality
Points to the eleventh hour, shall follow soon.
Meantime, with dutiful and patient hope,
I labour that our names conjoin'd may long
Survive, in honour one day to be held
Where old Lisboa from her hills o'erlooks
Expanded Tagus, with its populous shores
And pine woods, to Palmella's crested height:
Nor there alone; but in those rising realms
Where now the offsets of the Lusian tree
Which the first breeze will from the bough bring Push forth their vigorous shoots, . . from central
I, too, am in the sear, the yellow leaf.
And yet, (no wish is nearer to my heart,)
One arduous labour more, as unto thee
In duty bound, full fain would I complete,
(So Heaven permit,) recording faithfully
Whence rivers flow divergent, to the gulph
Southward, where wild Parana disembogues
A sea-like stream; and northward, in a world
Of forests, where huge Orellana ciips
His thousand islands with his thousand arms.
FOR THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE YEAR 1814.
"Illi justitiam confirmavere triumphi,
Præsentes docuere Deos."
IN happy hour doth he receive The Laurel, meed of famous Bards of yore, Which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore,.. In happy hour, and well may he rejoice, Whose earliest task must be To raise the exultant hymn for victory, And join a nation's joy with harp and voice, Pouring the strain of triumph on the wind, Glory to God, his song, Deliverance for Mankind!
Wake, lute and harp! My soul take up the strain !
Glory to God! Deliverance for Mankind!
Joy,.. for all Nations, joy! But most for thee,
Who hast so nobly fill'd thy part assign'd,
O England! O my glorious native land!
For thou in evil days didst stand
Against leagued Europe all in arms array'd,
Single and undismay'd,
Thy hope in Heaven and in thine own right hand.
Now are thy virtuous efforts overpaid,
Thy generous counsels now their guerdon find,. . Glory to God! Deliverance for Mankind!
Dread was the strife, for mighty was the foe
Who sought with his whole strength thy overthrow.
The Nations bow'd before him; some in war
Subdued, some yielding to superior art;
Submiss, they follow'd his victorious car.
Their Kings, like Satraps, waited round his throne;
For Britain's ruin and their own,
By force or fraud in monstrous league combined.
Alone, in that disastrous hour,
Britain stood firm and braved his power;
Alone she fought the battles of mankind.
"Can any man of sense," said the Edinburgh Review, "does any plain, unaffected man, above the level of a drivelling courtier or a feeble fanatic, dare to say he can look at this impending contest, without trembling every inch of him, for the result?"- No. XXIV. p. 441.
With all proper deference to so eminent a critic, I would venture to observe, that trembling has been usually supposed to be a symptom of feebleness, and that the case in point has certainly not belied the received opinion.
2 Of Busaco, which is now as memorable in the military, as it has long been in the monastic history of Portugal, I have given an account in the second volume of Omniana. Doña
O virtue which, above all former fame,
Exalts her venerable name!
O joy of joys for every British breast!
That with that mighty peril full in view,
The Queen of Ocean to herself was true!
That no weak heart, no abject mind possess'd
Her counsels', to abase her lofty crest,.
(Then had she sunk in everlasting shame,)
But ready still to succour the oppress'd,
Her Red Cross floated on the waves unfurl'd,
Offering Redemption to the groaning world.
First from his trance the heroic Spaniard woke;
His chains he broke,
And casting off his neck the treacherous yoke,
He call'd on England, on his generous foe:
For well he knew that wheresoe'er
Wise policy prevail'd, or brave despair,
Thither would Britain's liberal succours flow,
Her arm be present there.
Then, too, regenerate Portugal display'd
Her ancient virtue, dormant all-too-long.
Rising against intolerable wrong,
On England, on her old ally, for aid
The faithful nation call'd in her distress:
And well that old ally the call obey'd,
Well was that faithful friendship then repaid.
Say from thy trophied field how well,
Vimeiro! Rocky Douro tell!
And thou, Busaco, on whose sacred height
The astonished Carmelite,
While those unwonted thunders shook his cell,
Join'd with his prayers the fervour of the fight.
Bernarda Ferreira's poem upon this venerable place contains much interesting and some beautiful description. The first intelligence of the battle which reached England was in a letter written from this Convent by a Portugueze Commis. sary. "I have the happiness to acquaint you," said the writer, "that this night the French lost nine thousand men near the Convent of Busaco... I beg you not to consider this news as a fiction, . . for I, from where I am, saw them fall. This place appears like the antechamber of Hell.".. What a contrast to the images which the following extracts present!
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