For the Southern Literary Messenger.
LINES
Written on the Pillar erecting by Mrs. Barlow,
to the memory of her husband, Minister of the United States at Paris.
| Where o'er the Polish desarts trackless way, Relentless Winter rules with savage sway, Where the shrill polar storms, as wild they blow, Seem to repeat some plaint of mortal woe; Far o'er the cheerless space, the traveller's eye Shall this recording pillar long descry, And give the sod a tear where Barlow lies, He who was simply great and nobly wise; Here led by Patriot zeal, he met his doom, And found amid the frozen wastes a tomb— Far from his native soil the Poet fell, Far from that Western World he sung so well. Nor she, so long beloved, nor she was nigh, To catch the dying look—the parting sigh! She, who, the hopeless anguish to beguile, In fond memorial rears the funeral pile; Whose widowed bosom, on Columbia's shore, Shall mourn the moments that return no more— While bending o'er the broad Atlantic wave, Sad fancy hovers on the distant grave. |
H. M. WILLIAMS.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.