For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery sooth the dull cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The applause of listening senates to command, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their names, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse, And many a holy text around she strews, For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured dead, Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he; The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne Approach and read, (for thou canst read,) the lay, Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." THE EPITAPH. HERE rests his head upon the lap of earth, He gained from Heaven, 'twas all he wished, a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode; (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. CATO'S SOLILOQUY ON THE IMMORTALITY IT must be so-Plato, thou reasonest well!- Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, 'Tis Heaven itself that points out—a hereafter, Eternity!-thou pleasing dreadful thought! Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ! Through all her works,) He must delight in virtue : And that which He delights in must be happy. [Laying his hand on his sword. Thus am I doubly armed. My death and life, The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds. THE DIAL. THIS shadow on the Dial's face, It is the scythe of TIME: -A shadow only to the eye; It levels all beneath the sky; And still, through each succeeding year, Right onward, with resistless power, Its stroke shall darken every hour, Till Nature's race be run, And TIME's last shadow shall eclipse the sun. |