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Home  »  Specimens of American Poetry  »  I. M’Lellan

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

By The Pride of the Village

I. M’Lellan

THIS grassy hillock, with its rustic urn,

And its light hedge of snowy roses, train’d

By some sweet hand, is the abiding place

Of one most beautiful. A sweeter child

Than this frail tenant of the churchyard cell,

You would not meet through all the village round.

She perish’d in the heyday of her life,

Ere yet the frosts of trouble or of care

Had chill’d the gentle freshness of her youth.

She was of all the rural feasts the queen—

The merriest when the dance wheel’d round the tree

At summer eventide, or when it swept

The hearth-stone of the jocund husbandman,

In winter’s chilly and tempestuous night.

Oh! there is not a happy bird that fills

The open valley with her sylvan song,

When night is darkening all the golden woods,

That might surpass the compass of her voice

In its deep, delicate richness! In the grave

She sleepeth now, where everything is mute!

Long shall the poor man, and the aged dame,

And orphan child, remember her sweet smile

And her benignant acts; for well she loved

To minister unto the broken heart,

And help the poor blind beggar on his way,

And succor him with travel sore athirst,

And shelter, from the rain and wintry hail,

The man that had not where to lay his head;

And ever there the grateful traveller bless’d

That sweet, young face, that smiled his gloom away,

And woke the song of gladness in his heart.

And here her lover rests!

Beneath yon ridge,

Whereon the weeds grow rank, is hid the dust,

The plume, the bloody sword, the spur, and scarf

Of one who fought for fame, and found it not.

He was a wild and reckless, wayward boy,

The leader of the noisy village troop

In all their careless sports—one stout of heart

And strong of hand, and foremost in the rush

Of boyish battle. Yet his fiery soul

Would melt when Sorrow told her wretched tale,

Or Pain the gloomy history of her grief,

Or Age her melancholy words.

The youth

Had pledged his honest love to that meek girl,

And in the innocent fondness of her heart,

She bless’d him with her love.

But time wore on,

And he had heard the savage trump of war

Sound in the peaceful vale, and heard the tramp

And neighing of the charger, and the clang

Of martial arms, and shouts of armed men,

And saw the gairish flag of battle float

Beside the cottage of his infancy.

He clothed him in the garb of strife, and placed

Its sword upon his thigh, and search’d for fame

“E’en at the cannon’s mouth.”

And he came back

A bruised, and sick, and broken-hearted man,

To linger out his few sad days on earth

And die, and be at rest;—and by his side

They placed that bruised reed that leant on him.

“After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.”