 | Plays and poems |  |
386
TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN SERGEANT.
The world may wait a century to seeThy equal mourned. When great men die, we say—
“Just here they missed, or there they went astray:
Alas! alas! that sweet morality
Locks not her hand with greatness!” But in thee
Heaven lit a lamp, to show how, day by day,
The highest flame may shed the purest ray,
Burning undimmed into eternity.
There 's much of goodness, much of grandeur, gone
To neighboring slumbers in our ancient earth;—
Here some bewail a hero, some bemoan
A saintly pilgrim; yet I doubt if worth,
Religion, greatness, and their active birth,
Were e'er before so mingled into one.
November 27th, 1852.
| Plays and poems | |