I.
INTRODUCTION.
Through England's capital no rest tonight!
Where sleepless myriads watch for morning light,
Whose hearts concentre in one vast regret
To feel the fullness of that awful debt
A shielded Empire to her saviour owes,
When grey-hair'd Glory finds its last repose
Under the crypt, where storied banners wave
Their drooping pageant o'er some public grave.
With a fev'rish awe opprest,
And a something in the breast
Neither tones nor tears explain,
Like a mute and mighty pain,
Or a pulse of voiceless grief
Too august for word-relief,
Millions now are slumberless;
And in thinking loneliness
Are brooding o'er the unbreath'd thought,—
To-morrow down to dust is brought
That hoary Chief, whose high career
Will range half Europe round his bier;
Who fifteen battles fought and won
Nor left nor lost a British gun,
But took three thousand cannon from the foe
The thunder of his charge had laid in battle low!
A COMPARISON.
But while the riband, star, and coronet
With mingled radiance in one warrior met,
Austerely simple to the last he stood,
A hero great by being good!
In unity of heart and mind
Thus he and Nelson are combined
For prowess, deeds, and all we prize
When perils round a nation rise:
The first became the Nelson of all lands,
The second proved our Wellington by sea;
And both were weapon'd by Almighty hands
To guard the island-fortress of the free:
Nor when the bomb-shell blazed, and roll'd the culverin
From iron lips of death its thunder and its din,
From Tagus to the Thames
From Sambre to the Seine
Is there a brand that shames
The spot where he hath been!—
The Man was never in the Hero lost
Nor Valour glorified at Virtue's cost.
