Favorite of hope! each lovely grace To soothe the suffering soul was thine; Nor could the eye but choose to trace Thy mind of heaven, thy form divine. Soft be the turf, that clothes thy breast, There choicest flowers their blossoms wave; For thou wast spotless, as the blest, And thou shalt charm beyond the grave. 1803. MONODY, ON THE DEATH OF ISAAC STORY, ESQ. SPIRIT of him, whose chastened soul Could touch each chord of pure desire, Whence, flown beyond the mind's control, Thy brilliant thought, thy Druid fire? Lost in thy manhood's chariest bloom, O'er thee shall pity meekly mourn, And many a Sylph, who haunts the gloom, Yet may the willow love to bend, And there the gentler myrtle woo, While softly sighs each passing friend, "Ah! YORICK, bard of truth, adieu !” 1803. MONODY, TO THE MEMORY OF COL. MARSTON WATSON. MUSE of the melancholy power, Who lovest in wayward fits to rove, The shivering throes of hopeless love; Oh come! and while the funeral lay With heartfelt sadness swells along, In no unhallowed mood to pay The votive eulogy of song; Perchance to grace thy WATSON's tomb The embalming flower may spring in nature's fairest bloom. Ah! what avails the manly mind, The boasted energies of thought, The soul, by virtue's beams refined, Whence reason's subtler force is caught? Ah! what the judgment's regal sway, The generous sympathies of heart, Which glow in feeling's purer day, Beyond the aspiring reach of art? Since, swept by death's relentless power, They fade in ripening life, the pageants of an hour. No, from the unerring shafts of fate The wise, the eloquent, the great, To time's resistless influence yield: But, tyrant, here thy triumph ends; Sublimely towering o'er the dust, Fame thro the world exulting sends "The sweet remembrance of the just ;" And, graved in glory's marble page, Their brilliant virtue lives, the grace of every age. But, thou, whose timeless doom demands While widowed love a statue stands, To breathe its anguish o'er thy bier; How shall the humbler minstrel dare Thy matchless powers, thy worth declare, Which claim the noblest meed of praise; Ah, in the heart alone portrayed, They bloom in speaking life, that scorns the pencil's aid. How changed the scene, from what erewhile With hope and rapture hailed the day; And cheerly flew the hours away : |