Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional :: :: University of Virginia Library

O skilled with all thy Vergil's elder art,
The magic of the Muses to impart;
To sing of England as of Rome he sang,
With grand hexameter that rolled and rang.
And able with a far instructed might
The Latin lamp of splendour to relight;
Though on a northern shore by sullen foam,
Re-capture the dead melodies of Rome.
Thou too didst feel the passion of the past,
Things irretrievable and fading fast.
And thou didst hear aright the human cry
The sea-like strivings of mortality.
Though not to thee was his full utterance given,
Born to a different tongue and later heaven.
Tongue that alone in Milton could uphold
That lyre of thunder and the trump of gold.
But thou still following with faithful feet,
The charm of field and woodland couldst repeat;

Re-paint the faint vermilion of the morn,
And all the colours wherewith day is born;
And strangely sweet, as unto him to thee,
Of waking birds the mournful melody;
Voices of kine, in dark uncomforted,
In the dim hour, and ere the skies are red.
And yet wast thou content in mist, to be
World-sundered by the billows of the free,
And from that Island-eyrie to descry
The widening march of England's destiny.
Like him thou didst the courtier's part rehearse,
But never didst attain Marcellus' verse,
Nor ever the dread world beyond the tomb
Didst thou explore with Orpheus, and the gloom
Where armed Æneas frighted half the shades,
Coming in splendour on the dimmer glades.
But this we feel, when thou hadst crossed the bar
The pilot of thy music was not far.

“Tu Marcellus eris.”