For those that die
In honour’s high career.
I lament exceedingly that my plan and limits did not permit me to pay to those distinguished officers who fell in this action the tribute they individually deserved—but it is to be hoped that the Country will show its sense of their glorious services and fall by a public monument.
St. XXXV.
The author’s brother died a few months before the publication of this poem, at the age of twenty-two; at the moment when he, who had ever been a source of happiness to his family, was become its ornament and support, and had just entered on public life, with (for a person of his level) the fairest prospects, and under the happiest auspices.
NOTES.
WAR SONG.—Page 61.
These stanzas were written and published at the breaking out of the present war, when, it will be recollected, the enemy’s threats of invasion were not altogether despised in this country. Some of my readers will possibly observe, that the style and metre of this trifle are not very dissimilar from those which have been more lately used by some popular writers. I have therefore thought it necessary to state that it was published early in 1803—but the truth is, that the practice of breaking the regular eight syllable verse into distichs or ternaries, by shorter lines, is very ancient in English poetry. The Chester Mysteries, written in 1328, exhibit this metre in a tolerably perfect state. After a long disuse, it is indebted for its revival and popularity to the good taste and extraordinary talents of Mr. Scott; and I cannot but think that it is, in his hands, one of the most harmonious and delightful of our English measures: to my ear, indeed, the versification of Marmion, in which Mr. Scott has used this style very freely, is more agreeable than that of the Lady of the Lake, in which he has employed it more sparingly. 1812.
II.—SONG OF TRAFALGAR.—Page 69.
St. III. l. 4.—Aboukir’s Isle.
The western point of Aboukir Bay is formed by an island, now called in our charts, Nelson’s Island.