Ours be the gentler wish, the kinder task,
To give the tribute glory need not ask,
To mourn the vanished beam, and add our mite
Of praise, in payment of a long delight.
Ye orators! whom yet our councils yield,
Mourn for the veteran hero of your
field,
The worthy rival of the wonderous THREE
Whose words were sparks of immortality:
Ye bards to whom the drama's muse is dear,
He was your master-emulate him here:
Ye men of wit and social eloquence,
He was your brother-bear his ashes hence.
While
of mind almost of boundless range,
powers
Complete in kind, as various in their change;
While eloquence-wit-poesy-and mirth,
That humbler harmonist of care on earth-
Survive within our souls; while lives our sense
Of pride in merit's proud pre-eminence :—
Long shall we seek his likeness-long in vain,
And turn to all of him which may remain,
Sighing that nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan.
There is a land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth;
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so beautiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance trembles to that pole ; '·
For in this land of heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, father, friend:
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fire-side pleasures gambol at her feet.
Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
Art thou a man?-a patriot ? look around;
O thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy Home.
O'er China's garden-fields, and peopled floods;
In California's pathless world of woods;
Round Andes' heights, where winter from his throne
Looks down in scorn upon the summer zone;
By the
gay borders of Bermuda's isles,
Where spring with everlasting verdure smiles;
On pure Madeira's vine-robed hill of health;
In Java's swamp of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackalls drink;
Midst weeping willows on Euphrates' brink ;
On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanished like a dream;
Where Greece, a spectre haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonoured vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea
Around the beauteous isle of liberty;
Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot that all the rest.
How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love had spread
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome walls, whence icicles depend
So stainless, that their white and glittering spears
Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that wrapt Fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace,-all form a scene
Where musing Solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still!
GREEK FUNERAL CHANT, OR MYRIOLOGUE.
A wail was heard around the bed, the death-bed of the young,
Amidst her tears the funeral chant a mournful mother sung. Ianthis! dost thou sleep? Thou sleep'st !—but this is not the rest,
The breathing and the rosy calm, I have pillowed on my breast!
14
I lulled thee not to this repose, Ianthis! my sweet son! As in thy glowing childhood's time by twilight I have done! -How is it that I bear to stand and look upon thee now? And that I die not, seeing death on thy pale glorious brow?
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