Yes! by their memories! by all
The honours which their tomb surround!
Theirs was the noblest, happiest fall
Which ever mortal courage crown’d.
Then bear them to their glorious grave
With no weak tears, no woman’s sighs;
Theirs was the death-bed of the brave,
And manly be their obsequies!
Haul not your colours from on high,
Nor down the flags of victory lower:—
Give every streamer to the sky,
Let all your conq’ring cannon roar;
That every kindling soul may learn
How to resign its patriot breath;
And from a grateful country, earn
The triumphs of a trophied death.
IV.
Rear high the monumental stone!—
To other days, as to his own,
Belong the Hero’s deathless deeds,
Who greatly lives, who bravely bleeds.
Not to a petty point of time
Or space, but wide to every clime
And age, his glorious fall bequeaths
Valour’s sword, and victory’s wreaths.
The rude but pious care of yore
Heap’d o’er the brave the mounded shore;
And still that mounded shore can tell
Where Hector and Pelides fell.
There, over glory’s earthly bed,
When many a wasting age had fled,
The world’s Great Victor pour’d his pray’rs
For fame, and monuments like theirs.
Happy the brave! whose sacred tomb
Itself averts the oblivious doom,
Bears on its breast unfading bays,
And gives eternity of praise!