When summer's throned on high, And the world's warm breast is in verdure drest, Go, stand on the hill where they lie. The earliest ray of the golden day On that hallowed spot is cast; And the evening sun, as he leaves the world, Looks kindly on that spot last. The Pilgrim spirit has not fled: It walks in noon's broad light; And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, With the holy stars by night. It watches the bed of the brave who have bled, And still guard this ice-bound shore, Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay, Shall foam and freeze no more. When, at the cool, gray break With my first breathing of the morning air My soul goes up, with joy, To Him who gave my boy, Then comes the sad thought that — he is not there! When at the day's calm close, Before we seek repose, I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer, AT midnight, in his guarded tent, In dreams his song of triumph heard; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, At midnight, in the forest shades, Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades, Heroes in heart and hand. a There had the Persian's thousands stood, There had the glad earth drunk their blood On old Platæa's day; And now there breathed that haunted air An hour passed on-the Turk awoke; He woke to die midst flame, and smoke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; They fought-like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered - but Bozzaris fell, His few surviving comrades saw Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible - the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony are thine. But to the hero, when his sword The thanks of millions yet to be. Of sky and stars to prisoned men; When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babe's first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace-couch and cottage-bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears; And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's: ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH GREEN be the turf above thee, Tears fell when thou wert dying, From eyes unused to weep, And long, where thou art lying, Will tears the cold turf steep. When hearts, whose truth was proven, To tell the world their worth; And I who woke each morrow It should be mine to braid it Around thy faded brow, But I've in vain essayed it, And feel I cannot now. While memory bids me weep thee, ALNWICK CASTLE HOME of the Percys' high-born race, Home of their beautiful and brave, Alike their birth and burial-place, Their cradle and their grave! Still sternly o'er the castle gate Their house's Lion stands in state, As in his proud departed hours; And warriors frown in stone on high, And feudal banners flout the sky Above his princely towers. A gentle hill its side inclines, As silently and sweetly still, As when at evening on that hill, While summer's wind blew soft and low, Seated by gallant Hotspur's side, His Katherine was a happy bride A thousand years ago. Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile: Still tells, in melancholy glory, The Percys' proudest border story. That day its roof was triumph's arch; Then rang from isle to pictured dome The light step of the soldier's march, The music of the trump and drum; And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long, Wild roses by the Abbey towers Are gay in their young bud and bloom; They were born of a race of funeral-flowers That garlanded, in long-gone hours, A templar's knightly tomb. When blood ran free as festal wine, Was thick with the darts of death. Wise with the lore of centuries, The welcome and farewell, I wandered through the lofty halls Each high heroic name, Scots, Men in the coal and cattle line; These are not the romantic times So dazzling to the dreaming boy: Has called "the era of good feeling": And leave off cattle-stealing: The Douglas in red herrings; The age of bargaining, said Burke, For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven, You'll ask if yet the Percy lives In the armed pomp of feudal state? The present representatives Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate " And I have stood beside the pile, Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that spot, The pride that lifted Burns from earth, And if despondency weigh down And his that music, to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time, And who hath heard his song, nor knelt O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm, O'er the heart's sunshine and its showers, O'er Passion's moments bright and warm, O'er Reason's dark, cold hours; On fields where brave men "die or do," In halls where rings the banquet's mirth, |