University of Virginia Library

THE TEARS OF IERNE: AN ELEGIAC POEM;

UPON THE DEATH OF THE LATE DUKE OF RUTLAND.

Parent of Mercy, Lord benign
Who sits on high enthron'd;
Who gives the Lamp of Day to shine,
Whose mandates Nature own'd:
Who fills the sick'ning Rose with vivid Dew,
And fix'd the Cause from whence existence grew—
Look down upon a Nation's Woe;
Forbid the streams of Wretchedness to flow;
Hark! the Midnight Ravens scream,
As Bats obscure the Solar Beam;
Laughter abandons all his Vines,
And Folly ponders and reclines:
The tawny reaper quits his sheaf,
As Envy runs to meet belief:
The jocund Dryads fly their glades,
Naiads their floods, and Fawns their shades:
The herds, affrighted, leave the hills;
The thirsty flocks the bubbling rills;
As Nature's beauties drooping lay,
With all the symptoms of decay.
The isle's convuls'd, the kingdom groans,
And Peace retires from human moans;
As Desperation, roving free,
Coerces sweet Festivity.
Amazement shudders at her doom,
And Industry forsakes his loom;
While Sorrow fascinates the will
To seek for sympathetic ill:
As the wild note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
And Echo murmurs round each circling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
Behold upon the purply head
Of tow'ring Mourne our Genius fled,
In mute despondency to weep,
And madden o'er the roaring deep:
No inmate there has Horror woo'd,
Save the fierce eagle and her brood.
Scatter'd beside her vestment see
Sad emblems of her minstrelfy.
The sacred anthem Phrenzy tore,
And scrolls of incontested lore,
Expressive of th' heroic deed,
Which make men marvel as they read;
Her azure drap'ry's careless hung,
Her harp of Melody's unstrung:
That flame of fancy seems destroy'd
Which touch'd the theme the muse enjoy'd.
But lo! she starts with trembling fear,
Op'ning her apprehensive ear:
The sense, accustom'd to dismay,
Full eager drinks th' according lay,
As the wild note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
And Echo murmurs round each circling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
The fallen Chief was dear to Truth,
She hail'd, she taught the ductile youth:
Blest type of his illustrious sire,
From whom he caught the hero's fire!
By Wisdom warm'd, his earliest lays
Were wove in fair Ambition's praise.
He brac'd the nerves of feeble Worth,
And gave the nobler Graces birth;
Smooth'd the keen edge of Party-strife,
And fed each elegance of life:
True to the virtues of his race,
He scorn'd the 'semblance of Disgrace;
And equall'd, in his filial care,
Æneas or the Grecian fair.
Vast in intent, he us'd his pow'r
To subjugate the ill-charg'd hour;
Thought of his name with antique zeal,
And knew the luxury to feel,
As chaste Philosophy refin'd
The bright ideas of his mind.
But hark! the note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
As Echo murmurs round each circling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
How frail's that being which ye prize;
How weak the barriers of the wise;
When ev'ry period that is past
Is but a satire on the last!
What apothegm can maim Despair,
Or abrogate the force of Care?
The peerless nymph who blest his throne,
Illum'd with Beauty's potent zone,
Could not, with all that's good and great,
Repel th' artillery of Fate.
Weep, Hospitality, for years,
While Mem'ry's fount can yield you tears.
'Twas you blithe sorceress whose wiles
Sicklied his frame, and chill'd his smiles;
Thy witch'ries threw a base disguise
Of varying hue to cheat his eyes.
Whene'er you sat in regal pride
With him and Bacchus by your side,
He calm'd the loud perturbed throng,
And gave the points that rais'd your song.
But hark! the note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
As Echo murmurs round each circling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
Behold the infant arts decline,
Which proudly I proclaim'd as mine,
And shorn of Peace, distracted go
In all the agony of Woe.
The future each conceives in dread,
And hides his little pensive head;
Dilates the bosom with a sigh,
And wipes the sorrow-delug'd eye,
As Shannon, to secrete his pain,
Retreats with terror to the main.
But lo! the scene subdues me most,
Regard that sad afflictive host;
A fond, a faithful peasant train,
The pallid slaves of mental Pain.
No herb that decks th' enamell'd field
Consolatory charms can yield:
'Tis ours to be the thing we seem;
We boast of no Lethean stream
To deprecate Reflection's rage,
And dash the thought from Fancy's page.
As the wild note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
And Echo murmurs round each cirling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
Sedition, who had madd'ning reign'd
Ere he the foaming fiend enchain'd,
Now bursting from his iron cell,
Whispers the Instruments of hell;
Untwines the serpent from his hair,
To wander as a social snare,
And bids the wily reptile creep
Where Fraud was wont his court to keep;
As his foul breast with joys distend
That human kind has lost a friend.—
Commerce, unhappy nymph! when young,
Gigantic Pride thy ruin sung:
She found thee in Delusion's arms,
And manacled and smote thy charms:
Indignant then, with mien forlorn,
Expos'd thee to creation's scorn.
This Rutland saw with manly grief,
And flew enrag'd to your relief;
Thy fetter'd limbs the Chief unbound,
And cheer'd thy head, and clos'd thy wound.
But hark! the note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
As Echo murmurs round each circling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
Lovely Hygeia, tell me why
You suffer'd so much worth to die?
Fled his embraces by degrees,
And gave his pulses to Disease?
Could not his high-born virtues move
Thy lazy relatives to love?
With lofty majesty he trod,
Diffusing joy, and look'd a god;
But roseate nymphs, by all ador'd,
Oft banish him who most implor'd.
Serene Humanity, thy breast
Receives meek Pity, hallow'd guest.
I see your ample bosom swell;
You lov'd him, as you knew him well!
But drop those tresses, nor essay
To wipe Affection's pearl away;
It flows with irresistless grace,
And casts a radiance o'er thy face;
It calls Resentment to thy shrine,
And speaks your origin divine.
But hark! the note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
As Echo murmurs round each circling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
This world full many an age has known
Involving empires overthrown,
When the stern queen Palmira lost,
And Mars the Carthaginian crost,
When Phœbus parch'd th' Egyptian glebes,
And Alexander plunder'd Thebes;
But never has the eye of Time
Beheld affliction so sublime!
The Island bleeds at ev'ry pore,
And half its attributes are o'er.
But mark! the sable ranks give way,
And carol the sepulchral lay!
The requiem hymn on zephyr flies,
And angels echo from the skies!
See patriots leagu'd, to Honour just,
Bearing his consecrated dust;
Men who their Rutland's plaudits sought,
Whose dignity was never bought,
While Liberty bends o'er the bier,
And wets his ashes with a tear.
As the wild note of national despair
Floats on the bosom of the ambient air,
And Echo murmurs round each circling shore,
Our hope is fled!—our Rutland is no more!
Indulgent heaven, who life began,
And gave free will to wayward man,
Who bids the lightning wing its way,
And lifts the bolt to strike its prey;
Whose mandates awe the hardiest soul,
And shake th' expanse from pole to pole,
In pity tell this sorrowing band
The guilt that wreck'd their wretched land;
What treason to thy sacred laws
Has been, to generate a cause;
Why thus the destinies you sped,
And laid our hero with the dead.
Yonder he's borne, immers'd in sleep,
As pregnant matrons shriek and weep:
But Death, triumphant at the sight,
Gladdens with horrible delight.
The ghastly tyrant proudly treads,
As animated Nature dreads
His pressure of the palsied ground,
He throws his ebon darts around,
And bids us gather armour for that hour,
When he must exercise his final power,
As monumental records shall decay,
And temporal atoms perish with the day.