Marmion (ed. Henry Morley) | Page 5

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;?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,?Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause,?And brought the freeman's arm to aid the freeman's laws.
Hadst 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 propped 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.?HERE, where the end of earthly things?Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;?Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,?Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;?HERE, where the fretted aisles prolong?The distant notes of holy song,?As if some angel spoke again,?"All peace on earth, goodwill to men;"?If ever from an English heart,?Oh, HERE let prejudice depart,?And, partial feeling cast aside,?Record that Fox a Briton died!?When Europe crouched to France's yoke,?And Austria bent, and Prussia broke,?And the firm Russian's purpose brave?Was bartered by a timorous slave,?Even then dishonour's peace he spurned,?The sullied olive-branch returned,?Stood for his country's glory fast,?And nailed her colours to the mast!?Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave?A portion in this honoured grave,?And ne'er held marble in its trust?Of two such wondrous men the dust.
With more than mortal powers endowed,?How high they soared above the crowd!?Theirs was no common party race,?Jostling by dark intrigue for place;?Like fabled gods, their mighty war?Shook realms and nations in its jar;?Beneath each banner proud to stand,?Looked up the noblest of the land,?Till through the British world were known?The names of Pitt and Fox alone.?Spells of such force no wizard grave?E'er framed in dark Thessalian cave,?Though his could drain the ocean dry,?And force the planets from the sky,?These spells are spent, and, spent with these,?The wine of life is on the lees.?Genius, and taste, and talent gone,?For ever tombed beneath the stone,?Where--taming thought to human pride! -?The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.?Drop upon Fox's grave the tear,?'Twill trickle to his rival's bier;?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,?Where wilt thou find their like again?"
Rest, ardent spirits! till the cries?Of dying Nature bid you rise;?Not even your Britain's groans can pierce?The leaden silence of your hearse;?Then, oh, how impotent and vain?This grateful tributary strain!?Though not unmarked, from northern clime,?Ye heard the Border minstrel's rhyme?His Gothic harp has o'er you rung;?The bard you deigned to praise, your deathless names has sung.
Stay yet, illusion, stay a while,?My wildered fancy still beguile!?From this high theme how can I part,?Ere half unloaded is my heart!?For all the tears e'er sorrow drew,?And all the raptures fancy knew,?And all the keener rush of blood,?That throbs through bard in bardlike mood,?Were here a tribute mean and low,?Though all their mingled streams could flow -?Woe, wonder, and sensation high,?In one spring-tide of ecstasy!?It will not be--it may not last -?The vision of enchantment's past:?Like frostwork in the morning ray?The fancied fabric melts away;?Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone,?And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone;?And