| |
| PARK ROW and Broadway—rush and din, | |
| Turmoil of men in their strong, brief years, | |
| Conquest, honour, failure and sin!— | |
| Rest for a moment the eyes and the ears; | |
| Step through this gate for a while with me | 5 |
| Where struggles pause, and thought is free. | |
| |
| Look at the words on this little stone | |
| Under the trees of old St. Paul’s. | |
| Ninety summers have flowered and flown, | |
| Round these ivied Georgian walls, | 10 |
| Since they cut in the headstone grey | |
| The name of “Antipass Hathaway.” | |
| |
| Only fourteen! Boy-gladness, his, | |
| Touched—would you say?—by the lips of joy | |
| Into eternal youthfulness— | 15 |
| Spirit abiding forever boy! | |
| “March 29th,”—so they brought him here | |
| In the very bud of the welling year. | |
| |
| Across the walk, quaint-carven French, | |
| Line after line in martial row, | 20 |
| Hinting at bivouac, storm, and trench | |
| Under the Comte de Rochambeau: | |
| Valiant indeed, from far Champagne | |
| Adventured the “Sieur de Rochefontaine.” | |
| |
| Follow me over this stretch of sod; | 25 |
| Mark the shaft with its moral urn; | |
| There, where the red rose-bushes bud, | |
| A few spent petals, you notice, burn | |
| Against the letters chiselled plain: | |
| “Of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.” | 30 |
| |
| And a name now vague to you and me, | |
| An actor renowned in his day, forsooth; | |
| See how they loved his memory: | |
| “Repaired by” … “Sothern,” “Kean,” and “Booth,” | |
| “And by The Players.”—Such fame’s enough! | 35 |
| “Dreams” made his life: We are all “such stuff!” | |
| |
| Oh, but the schoolboy rolling hoops | |
| Over the grasses of Bowling Green, | |
| And the brave young captain with his troops | |
| Charging into the battle-scene, | 40 |
| And the actor accomplished, praised by all— | |
| Who gathered them here ’neath the churchyard wall? | |
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