| |
| ’T IS 1 well to see these accidental great, | |
| Noble by birth, or Fortune’s favor blind, | |
| Gracing themselves in adding grace and state | |
| To the more noble eminence of mind, | |
| And doing homage to a bard | 5 |
| Whose breast by Nature’s gems was starred, | |
| Whose patent by the hand of God himself was signed. | |
| |
| While monarchs sleep, forgotten, unrevered, | |
| Time trims the lamp of intellectual fame; | |
| The builders of the pyramids, who reared | 10 |
| Mountains of stone, left none to tell their name. | |
| Though Homer’s tomb was never known, | |
| A mausoleum of his own | |
| Long as the world endures his greatness shall proclaim. | |
| |
| What lauding sepulchre does Campbell want? | 15 |
| ’T is his to give, and not derive renown. | |
| What monumental bronze or adamant, | |
| Like his own deathless lays can hand him down? | |
| Poets outlast their tombs: the bust | |
| And statue soon revert to dust; | 20 |
| The dust they represent still wears the laurel crown. | |
| |
| The solid Abbey walls that seem time-proof, | |
| Formed to await the final day of doom; | |
| The clustered shafts and arch-supported roof, | |
| That now enshrine and guard our Campbell’s tomb, | 25 |
| Become a ruined, shattered fane, | |
| May fall and bury him again: | |
| Yet still the bard shall live, his fame-wreath still shall bloom. | |
| |
| Methought the monumental effigies | |
| Of elder poets that were grouped around, | 30 |
| Leaned from their pedestals with eager eyes, | |
| To peer into the excavated ground | |
| Where lay the gifted, good, and brave, | |
| While earth from Kosciusko’s grave | |
| Fell on his coffin-plate with freedom-shrieking sound. | 35 |
| |
| And over him the kindred dust was strewed | |
| Of Poets’ Corner. O misnomer strange! | |
| The poet’s confine is the amplitude | |
| Of the whole earth’s illimitable range, | |
| O’er which his spirit wings its flight, | 40 |
| Shedding an intellectual light, | |
| A sun that never sets, a moon that knows no change. | |
| |
| Around his grave in radiant brotherhood, | |
| As if to form a halo o’er his head, | |
| Not few of England’s master spirits stood, | 45 |
| Bards, artists, sages, reverently led | |
| To wave each separating plea | |
| Of sect, clime, party, and degree, | |
| All honoring him on whom Nature all honors shed. | |
| |
| To me the humblest of the mourning band, | 50 |
| Who knew the bard through many a changeful year, | |
| It was a proud sad privilege to stand | |
| Beside his grave and shed a parting tear. | |
| Seven lustres had he been my friend, | |
| Be that my plea when I suspend | 55 |
| This all-unworthy wreath on such a poet’s bier. | |
