How sad the note of that funereal drum,
That's muffled by indifference to the dead!
And how reluctantly the echoes come,
On air that sighs not o'er that stranger's bed,
Who sleeps with death alone. O'er his young head
His native breezes never more shall sigh;
On his lone grave the careless step shall tread,
And pestilential vapors soon shall dry
Each shrub that buds around—each flow'r that blushes nigh.
Let Genius, poising on her full-fledg'd wing,
Fill the charm'd air with thy deserved praise!
Of war, and blood, and carnage let her sing,
Of victory and glory!—let her gaze
On the dark smoke that shrouds the cannon's blaze,
On the red foam that crests the bloody billow;
Then mourn the sad close of thy shorten'd days—
Place on thy country's brow the weeping willow,
And plant the laurels thick around thy last cold pillow.
No sparks of Grecian fire to me belong:
Alike uncouth the poet and the lay;
Unskill'd to turn the mighty tide of song,
He floats along the current as he may,
The humble tribute of a tear to pay.
Another hand may choose another theme,
May sing of Nelson's last and brightest day,
Of Wolfe's unequall'd and unrivall'd fame,
The wave of Trafalgar—the fields of Abraham:
But if the wild winds of thy western lake
Might teach a harp that fain would mourn the brave,
And sweep those strings the minstrel may not wake,
Or give an echo from some secret cave
That opens on romantic Erie's wave,
The feeble cord would not be swept in vain;
And though the sound might never reach thy grave,
Yet there are spirits here that to the strain
Would send a still small voice responsive back again.
John G. C. Brainard.
The death of Joseph Rodman Drake, on September 21, 1820, deserves mention here, not so much because of Drake's prominence as a poet as because of the admirable lyric which it called forth—one of the most perfect in American literature.
ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE
[September 21, 1820]
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell, when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.