The lump of gold: and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Most sad! most beautiful! the calm, clear stars
Shine on us, through the soundless deeps of time:
The moaning sea strikes chafing on the bars
Of the restraining land; its voice sublime
Making sonorous music evermore—
A wail, a chant, a requiem, on the shore.

II

Around the lonely room, where sleeps in death
Britain's great hero—friend of human kind—
There are no sounds but Ocean's, save a breath,
Fitful and low, of the expiring wind;

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And at short intervals the measured beat,
Solemn and slow, of the night-watcher's feet.

III

These sounds but mark the silence, as pale lights
In deep, wide darkness, show it darker still.
All silently, from out the heavenly heights,
The stars look down on human joy or ill;
All beauteously the Night pursues her way,
And breathes her prayerful thoughts to coming Day.

IV

To musing Fancy, Walmer's lonely pile
Seems as if conscious of her sacred trust,
She hushed to breathless awe the moaning isle
Over her Wellington's lamented dust.
Looking far out upon the restless main,
The one sad sentinel of England's pain.

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V

How sad, but yet how beautiful the scene!
'Tis Death that lends the music to the sea;
'Tis that High Presence, solemn and serene,
Which robes all Nature with such sympathy;
And gives the stars of heaven a voice to tell
Things felt, but never known—ineffable.

VI

We gaze and sigh;—but here we cannot weep;
'Tis Reverence and Religion, and meek Faith,
That fill us with emotion, pure and deep,
And waft our heavenward thoughts to Life from Death,—
To Life Eternal: tears we may not shed,
We are alone with Nature and the dead.

VII

The tears shall fall to-morrow, but not here!—
'Mid pomp and show, and blazonry and pride,

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And slow funereal march and gorgeous bier,
The sorrow shall have vent for him who died;—
So great, so simple, and so calmly grand—
So like the staff and father of the land.

VIII

But, ah! not here! We can but breathe a prayer,
Awed by the spiritual beauty spread around.
The foremost man of all our time lies there;
The tree has fallen, and sanctifies the ground.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, tears may flow;
But Hope is with the stars, and chides our woe.

November, 1852.