University of Virginia Library


6

SONNET, Written February 24th, between three and four in the afternoon, when the funeral procession was advancing towards Truro, and the minute bell at St. Mary's tolling:—

Dunstanville! is it not the funeral knell
That deepens, amidst visionary glooms,
The long, long shadows of the nodding plumes,
O'er “down and dell,” to where thy Fathers rest?
Again—again—I hear its solemn swell,
Sad monitor of frail mortality!
Oh! in that sudden stillness—in that pause
“Without a breath,” my bosom beats to applause
That shames the shouts of millions. Every eye

7

I hail in all that countless multitude,
Set on thy Coronet—in sooth to say;
Number'd on earth amongst the great and good,
Be thine, in blessing others only blest,
The incorruptible Crown, through Heaven's eternal day!