The works, in verse and prose, of the late Robert Treat Paine, Jun. Esq ::

Pale sleeps the moonbeam on the shadowy surf;
Lorn to the gale, elegiack willows wave;
Cold-glistening, fall the night-dews on the turf;
And Nature leans upon her Pollio's grave.

Clouds veil the moon—'tis Nature garbed in woe;
The willow droops—'tis plaintive Nature sighs;
The night-dews fall—they are the tears, that flow
On Pollio's flower-wreathed urn, from Nature's eyes.

Yes!—he was doating Nature's favourite son;
The fostering muses fondly nursed the child;
His infant prattle into numbers run,
And Genius, from his opening eyelids, smiled.

In life maturing, Fancy's attick germ
The stalk of judgment with its blossoms graced;
Nor feared corroding Envy's latent worm,
The frost of criticks, nor the drought of taste.

At length full beamed the summer of his prime;
No fixed star—a rolling sun, he shone;
Now glanced his rays on Beauty's temperate clime;
Now flamed his orb o'er Grandeur's torrid zone.

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As burnt the bush to Moses' raptured gaze,
Nor lost its verdure 'mid the flame divine;
Thus bloomed his song in rhetorick's splendid blaze,
Nor drooped the vigour of his nervous line.

With charms to move, with dignity to awe,
His tragick muse the lyre of pathos strung;
Loud wailed the horrors of fraternal war,
And dying Andre struggled on her tongue.

In either eye, a liquid mirror moved;
A tender ray illumed each crystal sphere;
While thus she sung the hapless chief beloved,
His life, the smile received—his fate, the tear.

With features, formed the moral laugh to hit,
Thalia knew his useful scene to frame;
And, scorning ribaldry, that trull of wit,
Preserved the chastity of lettered fame.

Ithaca's queen, his comick pencil drew,
Whom suitor-hosts, so long, in vain, adored;
Who, to the widowed bed of wedlock true,
Lived Sorrow's nun at riot's festive board.

His prose, like song, without its numbers, glowed;
Correctly negligent, with judgment bold:
Here reasoned sentiment, there humour flowed;
Now flashed the thought, and now the period rolled.

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Swift, as the light to Nature's suburbs wings;
Quick, as the wink of Heaven's electrick eye;
Lo! Pollio's mind, with subtle vigour, springs;
And volumes, sketched in thoughts, perspective lie.

Not Cato-like, a miser of applause,
He loved the genius, that eclipsed his own;
Nor dreamt, like Johnson, that by Nature's laws,
He reigned the Sultan of the classick throne.

To censure, modest—generous, to commend;
To veteran bards he left of taste the van;
A keen eyed critick—still, a tender friend;
An idol'd poet—but, a modest man.

Such Pollio was!—but heaven, with hand divine,
Deducts in period, what it adds in boon;
Life's April day, with brighter beams, may shine,
But meets a sunset, in a cloud, at noon.

Felt ye the gale?—It was the Sirock blast,
That spreads o'er burning climes Death's gelid sleep!
Hear ye that groan? 'tis dying Pollio's last;
And Friendship, Genius, Virtue, speechless, weep!

“Oh, Pollio, Pollio!”—all Parnassus cries!—
Their breasts the grief-delirious muses beat;
Torn from their brows, the withering garland dies;
And drooping groves this funeral dirge repeat:

“Lamented Pollio, o'er thy sacred tomb,
“The laurel-sprig we plant, the turf to shade;
“Bathed by our tears, its spreading boughs shall bloom,
“'Till Fame's most verdant amaranths shall fade!

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“No towering marble marks thy humble dust,
“Yet there shall oft our pensive choir repair;
“Thy modest grave can boast no sculptured bust,
“Yet Nature stands a weeping statue there!”

University of Virginia Library

A MONODY, TO THE MEMORY OF W. H. BROWN.