The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thus amidst the boom of bells
Tolling their funereal-knells,
The organ-peal, and cannon-roar
Re-echoed round the temple-door,
With all due pomp of heraldry,
With each befitting pageantry,
'Mid waving banners to his tomb is borne
Great Wellington!—and soon shall wailing horn
And cadence of the muffled drum
Tell the awed Soul the last is come!
For, ducal crown and scutcheon'd bier
Will be engulph'd, and disappear;
Down the chasm, dark and deep
Yearning eyes will strain and weep;
Then, the staff of office broken
Will reveal its sign and token;
And the Garter-King proclaim
More than ever earth-wide fame
Gave heroic Man before,
Or the brightest patriot bore.

THE BURIAL.

Like dream-heard music when it melts away
Serenely dying, sad and slow,
Thus from the living air and light of day
Adown the vaulted crypt below
The coffin'd frame of Wellington
Descends,—recedes,—and all is gone!
And o'er it deepens with expressive gloom
The yawning darkness of that open Tomb,
Where Nelson sleeps, but now, where two are laid
In death's cold slumber, side by side;
Of whom hereafter 'twill be nobly said,
Millions were mourners when they died!

And in the Temple, where he lies
Entomb'd with martial obsequies,
Oh! never since that Shrine of prayer
Lifted its cross in sun and air,
Or choral praise with chanted swell
Upon the ears of Godhead fell,
Have quiring voices breathed an anthem-tone,
From sixteen thousand melted into one,
The diapàson of whose deep Amen
To earth seem echo'd back from glory-realms again!