Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By Dirge of Alaric

Edward Everett (1794–1865)

Who stormed and spoiled the city of Rome, and was afterwards buried in the channel of the river Busentius, the water of which had been diverted from its course that the body might be interred.

WHEN I am dead, no pageant train

Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,

Nor worthless pomp of homage vain,

Stain it with hypocritic tear;

For I will die as I did live,

Nor take the boon I cannot give.

Ye shall not raise a marble bust

Upon the spot where I repose;

Ye shall not fawn before my dust,

In hollow circumstance of woes:

Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath,

Insult the clay that moulds beneath.

Ye shall not pile, with servile toil,

Your monuments upon my breast,

Nor yet within the common soil

Lay down the wreck of Power to rest;

Where man can boast that he has trod

On him, that was “the scourge of God.”

But ye the mountain stream shall turn,

And lay its secret channel bare,

And hollow, for your sovereign’s urn,

A resting-place for ever there:

Then bid its everlasting springs

Flow back upon the King of Kings;

And never be the secret said,

Until the deep give up his dead.

My gold and silver ye shall fling

Back to the clods, that gave them birth;—

The captured crowns of many a king,

The ransom of a conquered earth:

For e’en though dead will I control

The trophies of the capitol.

But when beneath the mountain tide,

Ye ’ve laid your monarch down to rot,

Ye shall not rear upon its side

Pillar or mound to mark the spot;

For long enough the world has shook

Beneath the terrors of my look;

And now that I have run my race,

The astonish’d realms shall rest a space.

My course was like a river deep,

And from the northern hills I burst,

Across the world in wrath to sweep,

And where I went, the spot was cursed.

Nor blade of grass again was seen

Where Alaric and his hosts had been.

See how their haughty barriers fail

Beneath the terror of the Goth,

Their iron-breasted legions quail

Before my ruthless sabaoth,

And low the queen of empires kneels,

And grovels at my chariot-wheels.

Not for myself did I ascend

In judgment my triumphal car;

’T was God alone on high did send

The avenging Scythian to the war,

To shake abroad, with iron hand,

The appointed scourge of his command

With iron hand that scourge I rear’d

O’er guilty king and guilty realm;

Destruction was the ship I steer’d,

And vengeance sat upon the helm,

When, launch’d in fury on the flood,

I plough’d my ways through seas of blood,

And in the stream their hearts had spilt

Wash’d out the long arrears of guilt.

Across the everlasting Alp

I pour’d the torrent of my powers,

And feeble Cæsars shriek’d for help

In vain within their seven-hill’d towers;

I quench’d in blood the brightest gem

That glitter’d in their diadem,

And struck a darker, deeper die

In the purple of their majesty,

And bade my northern banners shine

Upon the conquer’d Palatine.

My course is run, my errand done:

I go to Him from whence I came,

But never yet shall set the sun

Of glory that adorns my name;

And Roman hearts shall long be sick,

When men shall think of Alaric.

My course is run, my errand done—

But darker ministers of fate,

Impatient, round the eternal throne,

And in the caves of vengeance, wait

And soon mankind shall blench away

Before the name of Attila.