Poetical fragments of the late Richard Alfred Millikin ::

If unharmonious flow these humble strains;
If to the Critic eye their faults appear;
Lo! here the Muse in no feigned grief complains,
Tis wounded Friendship pours the genuine tear.—

For she from pompous phrase disgusted turns
Her sorrowing song courts not the public ear;
Retir'd to silent Solitude, she mourns
Where none but Echo may her wailing hear.

Let Pride, insulting to the titled dead,
O'er their frail dust the trophied marble raise;
In vain the monumental honour's paid,
If Infamy belie the Sculptor's praise.—

What tho' for him no Grecian columns rear
Their forms august to catch admiring eyes,
The Spring shall spread its choicest verdure there,
And earliest flowrets ope their tenderest dyes.—

There hush'd the winds their softest breath shall blow,
There shall the woodlark chant the live-long day;
No noxious plant shall there polluted grow,
Where sacred Virtue sanctifies the clay.—

Ye gentle nymphs who Taio's banks adorn,
Attend with sighs a hapless stranger's grave;
Nor pass, ye youths, the lowly sod in scorn;
For know, that pity dignifies the brave.—

His was the breast that throb'd at mis'ry's call,
His was the hand that wiped the wretch's tear,
That eager stretch'd to stay a Brother's fall
Or dissipate the writhings of despair.—

On him the milder virtues beam'd serene,
His honest heart forbade a vicious thought;
Oft too, to glisten in his eye was seen,
The sympathetic dew from sorrow caught.—

When the bright day it's transient course hath run,
And all the beauties of the forest fly;
Look, from the western hills the setting sun
Leaves a long track of glory in the sky.—

So sinks the good man to the silent tomb,
But that his fame shall find a longer date;
The wreath that virtue twines shall ever bloom,
The sun that gilds his name shall never set.—

Mr. John Simcocks who died in Lisbon whither he went by the advice of his Physicians.—

University of Virginia Library

ELEGY ON A FRIEND.