CALL it not vain:—they do not err, | |
| Who say, that when the poet dies, | |
| Mute nature mourns her worshipper, | |
| And celebrates his obsequies; | |
| Who say tall cliff, and cavern lone, | 5 |
| For the departed bard make moan; | |
| That mountains weep in crystal rill; | |
| That flowers in tears of balm distill; | |
| Through his loved groves that breezes sigh | |
| And oaks, in deeper groan, reply; | 10 |
| And rivers teach their rushing wave | |
| To murmur dirges round his grave. | |
| |
| Not that, in sooth, o’er mortal urn | |
| Those things inanimate can mourn; | |
| But that the stream, the wood, the gale, | 15 |
| Is vocal with the plaintive wail | |
| Of those, who, else forgotten long, | |
| Lived in the poet’s faithful song, | |
| And, with the poet’s parting breath, | |
| Whose memory feels a second death. | 20 |
| The maid’s pale shade, who wails her lot, | |
| That love, true love, should be forgot, | |
| From rose and hawthorn shakes the tear | |
| Upon the gentle minstrel’s bier: | |
| The phantom knight, his glory fled, | 25 |
| Mourns o’er the field he heaped with dead | |
| Mounts the wild blast that sweeps amain, | |
| And shrieks along the battle-plain: | |
| The chief, whose antique crownlet long | |
| Still sparkled in the feudal song, | 30 |
| Now, from the mountain’s misty throne, | |
| Sees, in the thanedom once his own, | |
| His ashes undistinguished lie, | |
| His place, his power, his memory die: | |
| His groans the lonely caverns fill, | 35 |
| His tears of rage impel the rill; | |
| All mourn the minstrel’s harp unstrung, | |
| Their name unknown, their praise unsung. | |
| |
