THE DEAD OF 1832.
BY R. C. SANDS.
Ob: 1832, æt. 33.
Oh Time and Death! with certain pace, Though still unequal, hurrying on, O'erturning, in your awful race, The cot, the palace, and the throne!
Not always in the storm of war, Nor by the pestilence that sweeps From the plague-smitten realms afar, Beyond the old and solemn deeps:
In crowds the good and mighty go, And to those vast dim chambers hie:— Where, mingled with the high and low, Dead Cæsars and dead Shakspeares lie!
Dread Ministers of God! sometimes Ye smite at once, to do His will, In all earth's ocean-sever'd climes, Those—whose renown ye cannot kill!
When all the brightest stars that burn At once are banished from their spheres, Men sadly ask, when shall return Such lustre to the coming years?
For where is he [A]—who lived so long— Who raised the modern Titan's ghost, And showed his fate, in powerful song, Whose soul for learning's sake was lost?
Where he—who backwards to the birth Of Time itself, adventurous trod, And in the mingled mass of earth Found out the handiwork of God? [B]