A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED.
I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed With not the less of sorrow and of awe On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown, Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd
The gardener of that ground, why it might be That for this plant strangers his memory task'd Through the thick deaths of half a century; And thus he answer'd—« Well, I do not know Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so; He died before my day of sextonship, And I had not the digging of this grave. » And is this all? I thought,—and do we rip The veil of immortality? and crave
I know not what of honour and of light Through unborn ages, to endure this blight? So soon and so successless? As I said, The architect of all on which we tread, For earth is but a tombstone, did essay To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought, Were it not that all life must end in one, Of which we are but dreamers;—as he caught As 't were the twilight of a former sun, Thus spoke he,« I believe the man of whom You wot, who lies in this selected tomb, Was a most famous writer in his day,
And therefore travellers step from out their way To pay him honour,-and myself whate'er Your honour pleases, »—then most pleased I shook From out my pocket's avaricious nook
Some certain coins of silver, which as 't were Perforce I gave this man, though I could So much but inconveniently;-ye smile, I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while, Because my homely phrase the truth would tell. You are the fools, not I-for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye, On that old sexton's natural homily,
In which there was obscurity and fame, The glory and the nothing of a name.
TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity's recompense? A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.
Titan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of fate, The ruling principle of hate, Which for its pleasure doth create The things it may annihilate, Refused thee even the boon to die: The wretched gift eternity
Was thine-and thou hast borne it well. All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack; The fate thou didst so well foresee, But would not to appease him tell; And in thy silence was his sentence, And in his soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable spirit,
Which earth and heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source; And man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence : To which his spirit may oppose Itself an equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making death a victory.
DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN.
SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE.
WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day In summer's twilight weeps itself away, Who hath not felt the softness of the hour Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower? With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes, While nature makes that melancholy pause, Her breathing moment on the bridge where time Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime. Who hath not shared that calm so still and deep, The voiceless thought which would not speak but weep, A holy concord—and a bright regret,
A glorious sympathy with suns that set? 'T is not harsh sorrow-but a tenderer woe, Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below, Felt without bitterness-but full and clear, A sweet dejection—a transparent tear, Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain, Shed without shame-and secret without pain.
Even as the tenderness that hour instils When summer's day declines along the hills,
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить » |