O wayfarer, beneath his household shrine
Here Cowley lies, closed in a little den;
A life too empty and his lot combine
To give him rest from all the toils of men.
Not shining with unseemly shows of want,
Nor noble with the indolence of ease;
Fearless of spirit as a combatant
With mob-loved wealth and all its devotees.That you may fairly speak of him as dead,
Behold how little earth contents him now!
Pray, wayfarer, that all his cares be fled,
And that the earth lie lightly on his brow.Strew flowers here, strew roses soon to perish,
For the dead life joys in all flowers that blow;
Crown with sweet herbs, bank blossoms high, to cherish
The poet’s ashes that are yet aglow.
Henry Morley.
A FEW NOTES.
Page 15. Fertur equis, &c. From the close of Virgil’s first Georgic:
said of horses in a chariot race,
Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threatening cries they fear,
But force along the trembling charioteer.Dryden’s translation.
Page 16. En Romanos, &c. Virgil, Æneid I., when Jove says,
The people Romans call, the city Rome,
To them no bounds of empire I assign,
Nor term of years to their immortal line.Dryden’s Virgil.
Page 18. “Laveer with every wind.” Laveer is an old sea term for working the ship against the wind. Lord Clarendon used its noun, “the schoolmen are the best laveerers in the world, and would have taught a ship to catch the wind that it should have gained half and half, though it had been contrary.”
Page 24. Amatorem trecentæ Pirithoum cohibent catenæ. Horace’s Ode, Bk. IV., end of ode 4. Three hundred chains bind the lover, Pirithous: