A WEARY lot is thine, fair maid,
A weary lot is thine!
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And
press the rue for wine.
A lightsome eye, a soldier’s mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln
green—
No more of me ye knew,
My Love!
No more of me ye knew.
‘This morn is merry June, I trow,
The rose is budding fain;
But she shall bloom in winter snow
Ere
we two meet again.’
—He turn’d his charger as he spake
Upon the river shore,
He gave the bridle-reins a
shake,
Said ‘Adieu for evermore,
My Love!
And adieu fo r evermore.’Patriotism
BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
‘This is my
own, my native land!’
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From
wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures
swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles,
power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall
go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
TO mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature
hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But oh, my Country’s wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What
powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike and the wise;
The mind that thought for Britain’s weal,
The
hand that grasp’d the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly
may he shine
Where glory weeps o’er Nelson’s shrine;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom
That shrouds,
O P, thy hallow’d tomb!
Deep graved in every British heart,
O never let those names depart!
Say to your sons,—Lo,
here his grave,
Who victor died on Gadite wave!
To him, as to the burning levin,
Short, bright, resistless
course was given.
Where’er his country’s foes were found
Was heard the fated thunder’s sound,
Till burst
the bolt on yonder shore,
Roll’d, blazed, destroy’d—and was no more.
Nor mourn ye less his perish’d worth,
Who bade the conqueror go forth,
And launch’d that
thunderbolt of war
On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar;
Who, born to guide such high emprise,
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,
Spurn’d at the sordid lust of pelf,
And served his
Albion for herself;
Who, when the frantic crowd amain
Strain’d at subjection’s bursting rein,
O’er their wild
mood full conquest gain’d,
The pride he would not crush, restrain’d,
Show’d their fierce zeal a worthier
cause,
And brought the freeman’s arm to aid the freeman’s laws
Hadst thou but lived, though stripp’d 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 propp’d the tottering
throne.
Now is the stately column broke,
The beacon-light is quench’d in smoke,
The trumpet’s silver voice
is still,
The warder silent on the hill!
O think, how to his latest day,
When Death, just hovering, claim’d his prey,
With Palinure’s
unalter’d mood
Firm at his dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest repell’d,
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
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