ページの画像
PDF
ePub

Again the hawthorn shall supply

The garlands you delight to tie;
The lambs upon the lea shall bound,

The wild birds carol to the round,

And while you frolic light as they,
Too short shall seem the summer day.

To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory re-appears.

But Oh! my country's wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise

The buried warlike, and the wise;
The mind, that thought for Britain's weal,

The hand, that grasped the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows

Even on the meanest flower that blows;

But vainly, vainly, may he shine,

Where Glory weeps o'er NELSON's shrine;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom,

That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallowed tomb!

Deep graved in every British heart,

O never let those names depart!

Say to your sons,-Lo, here his grave,
Who victor died on Gadite wave;

To him, as to the burning levin,

Short, bright, resistless course was given;
Where'er his country's foes were found,

Was heard the fated thunder's sound,

Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,

Rolled, blazed, destroyed,—and was no more.

Nor mourn ye less his perished worth,

Who bade the conqueror go forth,

And launched that thunderbolt of war

On Egypt, Hafnia,* Trafalgar ;

• Copenhagen.

Who, born to guide such high emprize,

For Britain's weal was early wise:

Alas! to whom the Almighty gave,

For Britain's sins, an early grave;
His worth, who, in his mightiest hour,
A bauble held the pride of power,
Spurned at the sordid lust of pelf,
And served his Albion for herself;
Who, when the frantic crowd amain
Strained at subjection's bursting rein,
O'er their wild mood full conquest gained,
The pride, he would not crush, restrained,
Shewed their fierce zeal a worthier cause,

And brought the freeman's arm to aid the freeman's laws.

Had'st thou but lived, though stripped of power,

A watchman on the lonely tower,

Thy thrilling trump had roused the land,

When fraud or danger were at hand;

By thee, as by the beacon-light,

Our pilots had kept course aright;

As some proud column, though alone,

Thy strength had propp'd the tottering throne.

Now is the stately column broke,

The beacon-light is quenched in smoke,

The trumpet's silver sound is still,

The warder silent on the hill!

Oh, think, how to his latest day,

When Death, just hovering, claimed his

prey,

With Palinure's unaltered mood,

Firm at his dangerous post he stood;

Each call for needful rest repelled,

With dying hand the rudder held,

Till, in his fall, with fateful sway,

The steerage of the realm gave way!

Then, while on Britain's thousand plains,

One unpolluted church remains,

Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around

The bloody tocsin's maddening sound,

But still, upon the hallowed day,
Convoke the swains to praise and pray;

While faith and civil peace are dear,

Grace this cold marble with a tear,—

He, who preserved them, PITT, lies here!

Nor yet suppress the generous sigh,

Because his Rival slumbers nigh;
Nor be thy requiescat dumb,

Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb.

For talents mourn, untimely lost,
When best employed, and wanted most;
Mourn genius high, and lore profound,
And wit that loved to play, not wound;
And all the reasoning powers divine,
To penetrate, resolve, combine;

And feelings keen, and fancy's glow,-
They sleep with him who sleeps below:
And, if thou mourn'st they could not save
From error him who owns this grave,
Be every harsher thought suppressed,

And sacred be the last long rest.

« 前へ次へ »