Classic Poem

TWENTY-FOURTH OF OCTOBER , 1852

Comes there a frigate home? what mighty bark
Returns with torn, but still triumphant sails?
Such peals awake the wondering Sabbath — hark!
How the dread echoes die among the vales!

What ails the morning, that the misty sun
Looks wan and troubled in the autumn air?
Dark over Marshfield! — 't was the minute gun:
God! has it come that we foreboded there?

The woods at midnight heard an angel's tread;
The sere leaves rustled in his withering breath;
The night was beautiful with stars; we said,
" This is the harvest moon, " — 't was thine, O Death!

Gone, then, the splendor of October's day!
A single night, without the aid of frost,
Has turned the gold and crimson into gray,
And the world's glory, with our own, is lost.

A little while, and we rode forth to greet
His coming with glad music, and his eye
Drew many captives, as along the street
His peaceful triumph passed, unquestioned, by.

Now there are moanings by the desolate shore
That are not ocean's; by the patriot's bed
Hearts throb for him whose noble heart no more —

Break off the rhyme, for sorrow cannot stop
To trim itself with phrases for the ear;
Too fast the tears upon the paper drop:

Fast as the leaves are falling on his bier,
Thick as the hopes that clustered round his name,
While yet he walked with us, a pilgrim here.

He was our prophet, our majestic oak,
That, like Dodona's, in Thesprotian land,
Whose leaves were oracles, divinely spoke.

We called him giant, for in every part
He seemed colossal; in his port and speech,
In his large brain and in his larger heart.

And when his name upon the roll we saw
Of those who govern, then we felt secure,
Because we knew his reverence for the law.

So the young master of the Roman realm
Discreetly thought, we cannot wander far
From the true course, with Ulpian at the helm.

But slowly to this loss our sense awakes;
To know what space it in the forum filled,
See what a gap the temple's ruin makes!

Kings have their dynasties, but not the mind;
Caesar leaves other Caesars to succeed,
But Wisdom, dying, leaves no heir behind.

Who now shall stand the regent at the wheel?
Who knows the dread machinery? who hath skill
Our course through oceans unsurveyed to feel?

Her mournful tidings Albion lately sent,
How he, the victor in so many fields,
Fell, but not fighting, in the fields of Kent;

The chief whose conduct in the lofty scene
Where England stood up for the world in arms,
Gave her victorious name to England's queen.

But peaceful Britain knows, amid her grief,
She could spare now the soldier and his sword;
What can our councils do without our chief?

Blest are the peacemakers! — and he was ours,
Winning, by force of argument, the right
Between two kindred, more than rival powers.

Resume the rhyme, and end the funeral strain;
Dying, he asked for song, — he did not slight
The harmony of numbers, — let the main
Sing round his grave great anthems, day and night.

The autumn rains are falling on his head,
The snows of winter soon will shroud the shore,
The spring with violets will adorn his bed,
And summer shall return, — but he, no more!

We have no high cathedral for his rest,
Dim with proud banners and the dust of years;
All we can give him is New England's breast
To lay his head on, — and his country's tears.