Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave grave, And ne'er held marble in its trust Of two such wondrous men the dust. With more than mortal powers endow'd, How high they soar'd above the crowd ! Theirs was no common party race, Jostling by dark intrigue for place ; The names of Pitt and Fox alone. Spells of such force no wizard grave Though his could drain the ocean dry, Genius, and taste, and talent gone, For ever tomb’d beneath the stone, Where--taming thought to human pride ! O'er Pitt's the mournful requiem sound, And Fox's shall the notes rebound. The solemn echo seems to cry, “ Here let their discord with them die. “ Speak not for those a separate doom, “ Whom Fate made Brothers in the tomb ; “ But search the land of living men, Not even your Rest, ardent Spirits ! till the cries Of dying Nature bid you rise ; Britain's groans can pierce The leaden silence of your hearse; Then, O, how impotent and vain This grateful tributary strain ! Though not unmark'd from northern clime, His Gothic harp has o'er you rung ; names has sung. Stay yet, illusion, stay a while, And all the raptures fancy knew, That throbs through bard in bard-like mood, Like frost-work in the morning ray, The fancied fabric melts away ; Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone, Prompt on unequal tasks to run, Thus Nature disciplines her son : Meeter, she says, for me to stray, And waste the solitary day, In plucking from yon fen the reed, And watch it floating down the Tweed; Or idly list the shrilling lay With which the milk-maid cheers her way, Marking its cadence rise and fail, But thou, my friend, can’st fitly tell, (For few have read romance so well,) How still the legendary lay O’er poet's bosom holds its sway; How on the ancient minstrel strain Time lays his palsied hand in vain ; |