Fitz-Greene Halleck
[From Marco Bozzaris.]
Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!
Come to the mother’s when she feels
For the first time her first-born’s breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption’s ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet-song, and dance, and wine:
And thou art terrible—the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought—
Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought—
Come in her crowning hour—and then
Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight
Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind, from woods of palm,
And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o’er the Haytian seas.
Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory’s time,
Rest thee—there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,
Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume,
Like torn branch from death’s leafless tree
In sorrow’s pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb;
But she remembers thee as one
Long loved, and for a season gone;
For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes’ first lisping tells;
For thine her evening prayer is said,
At palace couch and cottage bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears.
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth
Talk of thy doom without a sigh:
For thou art Freedom’s now and Fame’s,
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.
On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake
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.
When hearts, whose truth was proven
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth;
And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine—
It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow;
But I’ve in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.