THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott

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       When fraud or danger were at hand;

       By thee, as by the beacon-light,

       Our pilots had kept course aright;

       As some proud column, though alone,

       Thy strength had propped the tottering throne:

       Now is the stately column broke,

       The beacon-light is quenched in smoke,

       The trumpet’s silver sound is still,

       The warder silent on the hill!

      Oh think, how to his latest day,

       When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey,

       With Palinure’s unaltered mood,

       Firm at his dangerous post he stood;

       Each call for needful rest repelled,

       With dying hand the rudder held,

       Till in his fall, with fateful sway,

       The steerage of the realm gave way!

       Then, while on Britain’s thousand plains

       One unpolluted church remains,

       Whose peaceful bells ne’er sent around

       The bloody tocsin’s maddening sound,

       But still, upon the hallowed day,

       Convoke the swains to praise and pray;

       While faith and civil peace are dear,

       Grace this cold marble with a tear -

       He who preserved them, Pitt, lies here!

      Nor yet suppress the generous sigh,

       Because his rival slumbers nigh;

       Nor be thy requiescat dumb,

       Lest it be said o’er Fox’s tomb.

       For talents mourn, untimely lost

       When best employed, and wanted most;

       Mourn genius high, and lore profound,

       And wit that loved to play, not wound;

       And all the reasoning powers divine,

       To penetrate, resolve, combine;

       And feelings keen, and fancy’s glow -

       They sleep with him who sleeps below:

       And if thou mourn’st they could not save

       From error him who owns this grave,

       Be every harsher thought suppressed,

       And sacred be the last long rest.

       HERE, where the end of earthly things

       Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;

       Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,

       Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;

       HERE, where the fretted aisles prolong

       The distant notes of holy song,

       As if some angel spoke again,

       “All peace on earth, goodwill to men;”

       If ever from an English heart,

       Oh, HERE let prejudice depart,

       And, partial feeling cast aside,

       Record that Fox a Briton died!

       When Europe crouched to France’s yoke,

       And Austria bent, and Prussia broke,

       And the firm Russian’s purpose brave

       Was bartered by a timorous slave,

       Even then dishonour’s peace he spurned,

       The sullied olive-branch returned,

       Stood for his country’s glory fast,

       And nailed her colours to the mast!

       Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave

       A portion in this honoured grave,

       And ne’er held marble in its trust

       Of two such wondrous men the dust.

      With more than mortal powers endowed,

       How high they soared above the crowd!

       Theirs was no common party race,

       Jostling by dark intrigue for place;

       Like fabled gods, their mighty war

       Shook realms and nations in its jar;

       Beneath each banner proud to stand,

       Looked up the noblest of the land,

       Till through the British world were known

       The names of Pitt and Fox alone.

       Spells of such force no wizard grave

       E’er framed in dark Thessalian cave,

       Though his could drain the ocean dry,

       And force the planets from the sky,

       These spells are spent, and, spent with these,

       The wine of life is on the lees.

       Genius, and taste, and talent gone,

       For ever tombed beneath the stone,

       Where—taming thought to human pride! -

       The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.

       Drop upon Fox’s grave the tear,

       ‘Twill trickle to his rival’s bier;

       O’er Pitt’s the mournful requiem sound,

       And Fox’s shall the notes rebound.

       The solemn echo seems to cry -

       “Here let their discord with them die.

       Speak not for those a separate doom,

       Whom Fate made brothers in the tomb;

       But search the land of living men,

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