To watch with tip-toe foot and eager eye The void of Truth to hide ? To feed some popular lust which cautious power Not bartering to the passion of an hour Thanks, thanks to Heaven, that in these evil days, Days where no love is found in all our ways, And loathes all tender mutual offices, My soul the gracious privilege of this sight, A people of too simple faith to slight Not in low flattery, not in selfish dread, A People, a whole People, prostrated, Infant and veteran. K By that High-Priest in prelude of deep prayer Implored and sanctified, The benediction of paternal care Most surely from that narrow gallery Rome and the orbed world. The faintest wretch may catch the dew that falls And take away a wealth that never palls, Old pines that darkly skirt the circling hills, Bear the glad tidings to your sister seas, Let every muttering storm be hushed in peace, And would my spirit from Earth's embasing rule That I might pass through such fit vestibule SIR WALTER SCOTT AT THE TOMB OF THE STUARTS IN ST. PETER'S.* EVE's tinted shadows slowly fill the fane -A sculptured tomb of regal heads discrown'd, There lie the Stuarts !-There lingers Walter Scott! The power of Genius and the fall of Kings. * When Sir Walter Scott was at Rome, the year of his death, the history and localities of the Stuarts seemed to absorb all other objects of his interest. The circumstance of this poem fell within the observation of the writer. The curse on lawless Will high-planted there, He rests his chin upon a sturdy staff, Each figure in its pictured place is seen, grace of life, which shame could never mar! But purpled mantle, and blood-crimson'd shroud, Are gone, like dreams by daylight disallow'd; A few more moments and that labouring brow Thus, face to face, the dying and the dead, TEMPLE! where Time has wed Eternity, But yet how sweet the hardly-waking sense, That when the strength of hours has quenched those gems, Disparted all those soft-bright diadems, Still in the Sun thy form will rise supreme In its own solid clear magnificence, Divinest substance then, as now divinest dream. |