University of Virginia Library

Nine years have come and gone, the tenth begun,
Since here, amidst these haunts of my young life—
These well-known hills and valleys,—in the shade
Of these rich natural woods,—along the banks
Of yonder stream, my boyhood's Helicon,
Wandering in pensive leisure, I awoke
My slumbering muse, and sang, as she inspired,
My soul's meridian song:—not then had life
Lost its full summer fervour,—no decline
Of body or of mind had yet been felt;
Each organ of corporeal sense remain'd
Uninjured, undecay'd;—not one grey hair
Streak'd the original brown;—on cheek or brow
No wrinkle had appear'd;—and if the blood
No longer now ran riot in the veins,
As in the petulant lustihood of youth,
Yet still with unabated force it flow'd,—
No more a brawling torrent, but a stream
Calm, full, continuous,—fit to bear the frieght
Of thought's maturer fruitage:—'twas the noon
Of life's advancing day,—a cloudless noon;
For sorrow, which had come, seven years before,
And cast upon our startled home and hearth
The darkness of death's shadow, pass'd away
And had not re-appear'd:—long time unscathed
Three generations of our race still lived,
And still enjoy'd their life;—the parent stems
Flourish'd in green decline, scarce yet decay;
And of their ten primæval branches, seven
Wore their full lustihood of leaf, while three
Were rich in bud and blossom:—still yon house
(The general birth-place) trimm'd its Christmas hearth,
And spread its Christmas board to mirthful groups
Of children and of grandchildren;—'twas sweet
To think that each familiar haunt beloved
By our own childhood was scarce less beloved
By hearts which should inherit when we died,
Among their best remembrances, the thought
Of those domestic gatherings. Since the last,
And haply the most joyous, six swift years
Have vanish'd, and again my footsteps tread—
Not now the time-worn floors, the garden walks
Of that paternal dwelling,—but the streets—
The broad, still, noiseless, melancholy streets
Of the old unchanging town;—unchanging?—yes
In visible form, but changed and changing fast
In all that was to me the life, the soul,
The substance of its being:—scarce a face
Of all the old familiar ones—the friends
And playmates of my childhood—meets me now;
Even those which still remain are scarce the same;
Where are the well-remembered many?—where?
The grass grows rankly o'er their mouldering bones,
Their names are traced in many an epitaph
On churchyard grave-stone, on the chancel floor,
On mural tablet, on rich tinted pane
Of ornamental window;—or dispersed
Through the four quarters of the globe, they toil,
Prosper or perish, feed deceitful hope,
Or pine despondent on colonial soils,
'Midst savage tribes, in drear, unhealthy climes,
Whiten the desert with their bones, or feed
The swarming shoals of Ocean:—for myself
Sad is my mission hither:—in our house
Another light is quench'd,—another heart
Hath ceased to beat,—another voice is dumb;
The mystic harmony, of late impair'd
And waxing feebler in the dwindling choir
Of brothers and of sisters, hath been marr'd
More than in all the years already gone;
For those more early summon'd, since the days
Of infancy and childhood, were in age
Unequal, or by destiny diverse
From us who yet survive;—their lives were spent
In regions far remote,—amidst the din
Of oriental war,—in barbarous strife
With Afric's Southern tribes,—or 'midst the roar
Of billows in the vast, tempestuous deep.
And though we grieved for them, as friends must grieve
For friends untimely lost, our household joys,—
The family group,—the fireside circle,—felt
Small diminution;—home-sweet sympathies,—
Fraternal interchange of thought for thought,—
The brief, rare visit, sweeter because both,—
The keen solicitude of each for each
Amidst the daily pressure of the world,—
All these were undisturb'd, or scarce disturb'd,
By mournful news which told, from time to time,
That we had lost a brother:—but not such
The loss we now lament:—a nearer life
Hath been struck down;—a widow'd wife bemoans
The husband of her youth,—while round her knees
Her children, all unconscious of their loss
(Alas! how great!) observe with wondering eyes
The funeral preparations,—marvel much
To find themselves array'd in sable weeds,
And probe with questions keen and quaint remarks
Their mother's recent wound, who, while she mourns
The father, still must think, with anxious heart
And doubtful questionings of Providence,
Whence bread shall be supplied that these may eat,—
Where raiment shall be found which these may wear,—
That they with cold and hunger perish not.

Peace to my brother's spirit! peace and rest,
Such as the troubled and world-weary need!
Rest from heart-crushing care and anxious thought,—
From those solicitudes of daily life
Which torture with such fierce and fiery pangs
The man who wrings, by toil of head and heart,
From the dry wilderness of English law
The daily bread which wife and children eat,
Which, if he wring not, wife and children starve.
Such rest he needed long,—condemn'd through life
To drag the chain of uncongenial toil,
To fret and fritter his reluctant soul
(Which craved a nobler destiny) away
In the dull, dry, mechanical routine
Of vile forensic drudgery,—to grow grey,
Immured in murky courts, o'erwhelm'd with piles
Of musty parchment,—to repeat the slang
And jargon of the special pleader's craft,—
To thrid the long and complicated maze
Of legal net-work,—lie inwoven with lie,—
Trick within trick,—evasion infinite,—
Mystification trebly mystified,
For darkening counsel and perplexing sore
The eye which would distinguish right from wrong.
Such occupation,—through long years pursued,—
Was, to a spirit finely strung as his,
Perpetual death in life, compared to which
Welcome appear'd the stroke which set him free.
For his were apprehensions keen and strong,
And most intense susceptibility
Of all that to the sense and soul of man
Doth from without administer delight;
His nature was the nature of one born
To high aristocratic destinies,—
The duties of the noble and the rich,—
And free enjoyment of æsthetic art,
Albeit by fortune's wanton spite deprived
Of that which should supply its innate wants
And satisfy its instincts;—but withal
His heart awake to loftiest impulses,
And full of deep affections,—generous, frank,
And prompt to sympathize with worth oppress'd,
And glow with indignation at the wrongs
Dared by the strong oppressor,—sensitive
To insult and discourtesy, which oft
The noble must encounter from the base,—
The gifted from the dunce of large estates,—
Could therefore ill constrain itself to brook
The meanness it encounter'd in the path
Of daily duty:—grievously the yoke
Galls the fleet racer harness'd to a dray;
Heavy the fetter on the eagle's foot,
Whose nest is on the loftiest mountain-peak,
Whose flight above the clouds, a captive now,
And tether'd to his perch, to wear out life
In the dull court-yard of a Highland inn;
But heavier is the chain—more galling far
The yoke which binds the struggling soul of man
To tasks which it contemns.—Now all is o'er;
The long life-bondage ended:—Christian faith
And hope, from no uncertain source derived,
Shed parting gleams of comfort on that bed
Of mortal sickness:—to the dust his dust
Hath been given back;—his wife and children weep
The husband and the father, whom his place
On earth shall know no more;—nor they alone,—
Brothers and sisters, aged mother, friends
By many a close-knit sympathy fast bound
To him, the genial-hearted, by his grave
Linger lamenting:—other ties more dear,
Affections yet more closely intertwined,
Even with their heart of hearts than those which bind
Brother to brother, and absorb a part
Of that especial tenderness, which else
Had struck the mourning spirit down to earth
With anguish for his loss, disarm in part
Grief of its sharpest sting:—in earlier years,
Or ever we had known the holier name
Of husband, wife, and parent, he had been
More bitterly lamented even by us
Who yet with sorrow fervent, true, profound,
Exclaim above his grave—Farewell! Farewell!
Our brother! O! our brother!

But while thus
His loss is mourn'd on earth,—beyond the veil
Which curtains world from world, methinks arise
Fraternal forms to welcome him:—one bears
On his projecting forehead the clear stamp
Of Nature's true nobility, though dimm'd
And tarnish'd by the deep unmaster'd flush
Of mortal passions;—seldom hath a soul
Braver or nobler to the soldier's trade
Brought more of those high qualities which shed
A glory o'er the ugliness of war;
And had it been but tamed and self-subdued
Through firmer discipline—had he but learnt
To bring into subjection to the rule
Of Christian duty that unbridled will,—
A nobler human being had not trod
The earth which bore him;—but his nature, rash,
Impatient of controul, untaught to yield
Submission to a higher purer law
Than that of its own promptings, broke all bonds
Of social and conventional restraint,
And ran mad riot amidst headstrong deeds
And too gigantic darings:—English life,
With all its dull formalities and rules
Of civilized decorum, was to him
Intolerable bondage:—he desired
The freedom of the savage, and forsook
Home, country, kindred—even the glowing hopes
And high excitements of a soldier's life,
To dwell with hunters in the bush,—to war
With beasts but little wilder than himself,—
To strip the lion of his hide,—to dare
The rage of the rhinoceros:—his life
Was one long act of venturous enterprise
And rash, Titanic effort, and his death—
Such as became his life;—the southern gales
Of Afric breathe o'er his untimely grave
A fitting requiem;—there let his dust
Repose, while in our hearts remembrance holds
His graces still in honour nor retains
The blots which dimm'd their brightness.

But a voice,
Borne on the breezes from the burning East,
Murmurs low welcome to the brother soul
Rejoining the departed:—lo! a grave,
Surmounted by a stone, which bears inscribed
A soldier's epitaph beneath the name
Of one to whom his comrades raised such pledge
Of kindness still surviving in their hearts,
And recognition of the worth which dwelt
In him who fought beside them, and now sleeps
Where no réveillée shall awake him more;
No night-surprise, no murderous ambuscade
Of lurking foemen mingle with the dreams
Of that last bivouac;—no worse assault
Of passions which invade the peace of man
And vex the soul still clothed in flesh and blood,
Can shake poor nature's frailty, nor disturb
The rest which now enfolds it.

From the depths
Of Ocean, where it parts West-Indian isles,
Rises the pale and spectral form of one
Even on the verge of manhood doom'd to sink
Into a sailor's grave; who else perchance,
Had long ere now fulfill'd, in all its parts,
A sailor's gallant destiny;—and he
Greets smilingly his brother come to share
His long repose.

But here, within the walls
Enclosing his own grave, is company
Such as his soul desires—one elder-born,
And call'd in early boyhood to his rest,—
Richest in promise (for the good die first)
Of all our blood—another, while a babe,
Emancipated—spirits such as claim
By right the heavenly kingdom as their own,
And now await its coming.

Last appears
The Father of our house, as of his flock
The pastor,—he who in a ripe old age
Ended his five-and-forty years of toil
In one rude fold, and went to his reward,
A good and faithful servant. Not to us
Belongs it to define in outline clear
His mental lineaments, or to proclaim
His nature's strength or weakness;—not to us
To tell how well he lived, how calmly died,
How peacefully now rests with those for whom
His spirit toil'd till death,—how many mourn,
How bitterly, his loss;—that tale was told
Even at his funeral, when the silent streets
Deserted though at noon-day, and the shops,
Their shutters closed, albeit the annual fair
Was at its height, proclaimed the pastor dead
And gathered to his children:—we had come
The previous evening (for he died far off)
A long day's journey, by his sable hearse
Preceded, who had left, few days before,
His home in health and hope;—the moonlight shone,
How strangely! on the well-remember'd rows
Of houses in the broad and echoing street;
And when we halted at the door, where he
Had welcomed us of old, 'twas sad to think
That in a lone and lock'd apartment lay
That which was lately he:—kind voices spake,
Strangely, as seem'd, to unresponsive hearts,
And meals had been prepared, whereat to meet
Seem'd now unnatural:—the morrow dawn'd,
And none could say ‘good morrow;’—before noon
The vault which, thirty years before, had closed
O'er the last comer, and which still retains
One vacant place for her who slept so long,
And yet shall sleep once more by him she loved,—
Received him in its bosom; and when we
Return'd, that ancient house had lost its lord,
And we had look'd our last upon the graves
Of him and of our brothers.

Strange it seems,
And not less strange than graciously ordain'd,
That while the scatter'd graves of sons and sire
Spot the four quarters of the globe,—while four
Within the precincts of one churchyard lie—
As yet that household hath not yielded up
One female life:—mother and sisters still
Survive unstricken;—they to whom pertains
The ministry of comfort,—the blest work
Of smoothing the sick pillow—who best know
How to console and cheer the slow decay
Of natural strength, and nerve the fainting soul
With never-failing tendances of love,—
Are left—perchance till two more graves shall close
O'er two more sons and brothers, and their task
On earth with these be ended.

Peace and rest
Dwell in that Churchyard!—in the daily walk
Of life, amidst the fever and the fret
Of this world's tumult,—it will rise sometimes
A soothing vision on our weary souls,—
A mute remembrancer of rest to come
On earth,—of hope which maketh not ashamed,
For those whose conversation is in Heaven!