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* * * * * HOWARD! it matters not that far away | |
| From Albion’s peaceful shore thy bones decay: | |
| Him it might please, by whose sustaining hand | |
| Thy steps were led through many a distant land, | |
| Thy long and last abode should there be found, | 5 |
| Where many a savage nation prowls around: | |
| That Virtue from the hallowed spot might rise, | |
| And, pointing to the finished sacrifice, | |
| Teach to the roving Tartar’s savage clan | |
| Lessons of love, and higher aims of man. | 10 |
| The hoary chieftain, who thy tale shall hear, | |
| Pale on thy grave shall drop his faltering spear; | |
| The cold, unpitying Cossack thirst no more | |
| To bathe his burning falchion deep in gore; | |
| Relentless to the cry of carnage speed, | 15 |
| Or urge o’er gasping heaps his panting steed! | |
| Nor vain the thought that fairer hence may rise | |
| New views of life and wider charities. | |
| Far from the bleak Riphean mountains hoar, | |
| From the cold Don, and Wolga’s wandering shore, | 20 |
| From many a shady forest’s lengthening tract, | |
| From many a dark-descending cataract, | |
| Succeeding tribes shall come, and o’er the place, | |
| Where sleeps the general friend of human race, | |
| Instruct their children what a debt they owe; | 25 |
| Speak of the man who trode the paths of woe; | |
| Then bid them to their native woods depart, | |
| With new-born virtue stirring in their heart. | |
| When o’er the sounding Euxine’s stormy tides | |
| In hostile pomp the Turk’s proud navy rides, | 30 |
| Bent on the frontiers of the Imperial Czar, | |
| To pour the tempest of vindictive war; | |
| If onward to those shores they haply steer, | |
| Where, Howard, thy cold dust reposes near, | |
| Whilst o’er the wave the silken pennants stream, | 35 |
| And seen far off the golden crescents gleam, | |
| Amid the pomp of war, the swelling breast | |
| Shall feel a still unwonted awe impressed, | |
| And the relenting Pagan turn aside | |
| To think,—on yonder shore the Christian died. * * * * * | 40 |
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