He is gone! the bright star of a nation is hurled From its proud elevation; its lustre is dim. He is cold as the sod where he sleeps, and this world With its scorn, or its laurels, is nothing to him.
And both have been his, in the dawn of his life He has grasped, he hath gained the green garland of fame, While slander hath struggled with pitiful strife To point out his errors, and sully his name.
He hath tasted the cup of calamity too, And its bitterness poisoned his earliest years; In the withering gloom of his numbers we view, The grief of a spirit too noble for tears.
He was rash, and his feelings too proudly disdained One moment's subjection to reason's control; As well might a wave of the ocean be chained In its stormy career, as so daring a soul.
He hath felt, and the world loved to tear off the veil From his agonized feelings, and laugh them to scorn It spoke of his follies, and what was the tale? He had erred, — was an exile, — unhappy, — forlorn.
And oh! if indeed it be true, that a mind So ennobled by genius, rejected belief In that God, through whose infinite mercy mankind Can alone find a solace in sickness or grief,
May that mind ere its last fatal moment have felt All its error; and spurning mortality's chain, May the sinner's first prayer have been heard while he knelt At that throne, where a penitent pleads not in vain
Had he lived, he might yet have shone gloriously forth, And those talents which oft have been lavishly given To gild all the fleeting enjoyments of earth, Might at length have devoted their brightness to Heaven.
