Sermons Practical and Occasional Dissertations, Translations, Including New Versions of Virgil's Bucolica, and of Milton's Defensio Secunda, Seaton Poems, &c. &c. By the Rev. Francis Wrangham ... In Three Volumes |
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PROLOGUE ON GENERAL WOLFE. |
 | Sermons Practical and Occasional |  |
479
PROLOGUE ON GENERAL WOLFE.
When great and little felt the common blow,And mingled sorrows o'er Æmilius low,
While funeral games the hero gone record,
Rome her lost favourite with these scenes deplored:
And who to-night shall view them re-appear,
Nor to our hero give as true a tear?
480
Where Phœbus darts his earliest, latest beam;
Even 'midst our very torrent triumphs springs
Some bitter tear, some lawful sorrowings.
If aught of fair contains the thirst of fame,
If genius, faith immutably the same,
If arduous laurels, and in youth's sweet prime
Valour and virtue cropt before their time—
If aught of fair in these, or lovely be,
That fair, that lovely, Wolfe, belongs to thee!
Nor diest thou all: for aye the wreath shall bloom,
Which weeping Britain hangs upon thy tomb:
The massive marble royal hands shall rear,
Destined thy glory's deathless tale to bear:
Thither in crowds shall England's heroes flow,
And from thy ashes catch a kindred glow;
While, as they read in victory's lap thy fall,
“Be such,” they cry, “our course—be such its goal.”
| Sermons Practical and Occasional | |