Such heart-felt pangs on thy sad bier attend;
Companion ! Brother ! all in one---my friend !
Unless the soul a wound eternal bears,
Sighs are but air, but common water, tears ;
The proud, relentless, weep in state, and how
Not forrow, but magnificence of woe.
Thus in the fountain, from the sculptor's hands,
With imitated life, an image stands ;
From rocky entrails, through his stony eyes,
The mimic tears in streams incessant rise ;
Unconscious! while aloft the waters flow,
The gazers wonder, and a public how.
Ye hallow'd domes, his frequent visits tell, Thou court, where God himself delights to dwell ; Thou mystic table, and thou holy feast, How often have ye seen the sacred guest ! How oft his soul with heavenly manna fed ! His faith enliven'd, while his sin lay dead ! While listening angels heard such raptures rise, As, when they hyır.n th' Almighty, charm the skies? But where, now where, without the body's aid, New to the heavens, subsists thy gentle shade ? Glides it beyond our grofs imperfect sky, Pleas'd high o'er stars, from world to world, to fly! And fearless marks the comet's dreadful blaze, While monarchs quake, and trembling nations gaze? Or holds deeps converse with the mighty dead, Champions of virtue, who for virtue bled ? Or joins in confort with angelic choirs, Where hymning seraphs found their golden lyres, 7
Where
Where raptur’d faints unfading crowns inwreath,
Triumphant o'er the world, o'er fin, and death?
O! may the thought his friend's devotion raise!
O!
may
he imitate, as well as praise !
Awake, my heavy foul! and upward fly,
Speak to the faint, and meet him in the sky,
And alk the certain way to rise as high.
I
Prefix your name to the following poem, as a monn
ment of the long and sincere friendship I have borne you : I am sensible you are too good a judge of poetry to approve it; however, it will be a testimony of my respect : You conferred obligations upon me very early in life, almost as soon as I was capable of receiving them : May these verses on Death long survive my uwn! and remain a memorial of our friendship, and my gratitude when I am no more.
WILLIAM BROOME.
Τις ολιδεν εί το ζήν μίν εςι κατθανείν,
Το κατθανείν δε ζην και
EURIP. 0
! for Elijah's car, to wing my way
O'er the dark golph of death to endless day!
A thousand ways, alas ! frail mortals lead
To her dire den, and dreadful all to tread!
See! in the horrors of
yon
house of woes,
Troops of all maladies the fiend enclose!
High on a trophy rais’d of human bones,
Swords, spears, and arrows, and sepulchral stones,
In horrid state the reigns ! attendant ills
Besiege her throne, and when the frowns, she kills :
Through the thick gloom the torch red-gleaming burns
O'er shrouds, and sable palls, and mouldering nrns :
While flowing stoles, black plumes, and scutcheons spread
An idle pomp around the silent dead :
Unaw'd by power, in common heap the flings
The scrips of beggars, and the crowns of kings :
Here gales of sighs, instead of breezes, blow,
And streams of tears for ever-murmuring flow :
The mournful yew with solemn horror waves
His baleful branches, saddening even the graves ;
Around all birds obscene loud-screaming fly,
Clang their black wings, and shriek along the sky:
The ground perverse, though bare and barren, breeds
All poisons, foes to life, and noxious weeds :
But, blasted frequent by th' unwhoisome sky,
Dead fall the birds, the very poisons die.
Full in the entrance of the dreadful doors,
Old age, half vanish'd to a ghost, deplores :
Prop'd on his crutch, he drags with many a groan
The load of life, yet dreads to lay it down.
There, downward driving an unnumber'd band,
Intemperance and Disease, walk hand in hand :
These, Torment, whirling with remorseless sway
A scourge of iron, lashes on the way.
There frantic Anger, prone to wild extremes,
Grasps an ensanguin'd sword, and heaven blafphernes.
There heart-lick Agony distorted stands,
Writhes his convulsive limbs, and wrings his hands.
There Sorrow droops his ever-pensive head,
And Care still tofies ou his iron bed :
Or, musing, fastens on the ground his eye,
With folded arms; with every breath, a ligh.
Hydrops unwieldy wallows in a flood,
And Murther rages, red with human blood,
With Fever, Famine, and afflictive Pain,
Plague, Pestilence, and War, a dismal train !
These, and a thousand more, the fiend surround,
Shrieks pierce the air, and groans to groans resound.
0! Heavens! is this the pasage to the skies
That man must tread, when man your favourite dies ?
Oh! for Elijah's car, to wing iny way
O’er the dark gulph of death to endless day!
Confounded at the fight, my spirits fled,
My eyes raind tears, my very heart was dead !
I wail'd the lot of man, that all would sun,
And all must bear that breathe beneath the sun.
When lo! an heavenly form, divinely fair,
Shoots from the starry vault through fields of air ;
And, swifter than on wings of lightning driven,
At once seems here and there, in earth and heaven !
A dazzling brightness in refulgent streams
Flows from his locks inwreath'd with funny beams;
His roseate cheeks the bloom of heaven display,
And from his eyes dart glories, more than day:
A robe,
A robe, of light.condens'd, around him Thone,
And his loins glitter'd with a starry zone :
And while the listening winds lay huih'd to hear,
Thus spoke the vision, amiably severe !
Vain man! would'st thou escape the common lot,
To live, to suffer, die, and be forgot ?
Look back on ancient times, primæval years,
All, all are past! a mighty void appears !
Heroes, and kings, those Gods of earth, whose fame
Aw'd half the nations, now are but a name!
The great in arts, or arms; the wite, the just,
Mix with the meanest in congenial dust!
Ev'n Saints and Prophets the same paths have trod,
Ambassadors of heaven, and friends of God!
And thou, would'st thou the general sentence fly?
Moses is dead! thy Saviour deign'd to die!
Mortal, in all thy acts regard thy end;
Live well, the time thou liv'st, and death 's thy friend :
Then curb each rebel thought against the sky,
And die resign’d, O! Man ordain’d to die!
He added not, but spread his wings in flight,
And vanish'd instant in a blaze of light.
Abashid, alham’d, I cry, Eternal Power,
I yield! I wait resign’d the appointed hour!
Man, foolish man, no more thy soul deceive !
To die, is but the surest way to live :
When age we ask, we ask it in our wrong,
And pray our time of suffering may be long ;
The nauseous draught, and dregs of life to drain,
And feel infirmity, and length of pain !
K
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