Monody, to the memory of Col. Marston Watson

Muse of the melancholy power,Who lovest in wayward fits to rove,Hymning at midnight's sullen hourThe shivering throes of hopeless lore;Oh come! and while the funeral layWith heartfelt sadness swells along,In no unhallowed mood to payThe votive eulogy of song;Perchance to grace thy Watson's tombThe embalming flower may spring in nature's fairest bloom.

Ah! what avails the manly mind,The boasted energies of thought,The soul, by virtue's beams refined,Whence reason's subtler force is caught?Ah! what the judgment's regal sway,The generous sympathies of heart,Which glow in feeling's purer day,Beyond the aspiring reach of art?Since, swept by death's relentless power,They fade in ripening life, the pageants of an hour.

No, from the unerring shafts of fateGenius can boast no pierceless shield;The wise, the eloquent, the great,To time's resistless influence yield:But, tyrant, here thy triumph ends;Sublimely towering o'er the dust,Fame thro the world exulting sends."The sweet remembrance of the just;"And, graved in glory's marble page,Their brilliant virtue lives, the grace of every age.

But, thou, whose timeless doom demandsFrom every eye the aching tear,While widowed love a statue stands,To breathe its anguish o'er thy bier;How shall the humbler minstrel dareIn grief's sincere, tho feeble lays,Thy matchless powers, thy worth declare,Which claim the noblest meed of praise;Ah, in the heart alone portrayed,They bloom in speaking life, that scorns the pencil's aid.

How changed the scene, from what erewhileWith hope and rapture hailed the day;When friendship wore a welcome smile,And cheerly flew the hours away:Now silent sorrow weeping rovesThro walks the favorite spirit blest,And wan despair in horror lovesTo woo the nightdews to her breast;Yet hears in every passing galeThe knell of death resound, and tell its piteous tale.

No more a father's guardian handLeads the young mind to wisdom's court;No more his voice in accents blandSuspends the listening infant's sport;For, lost to nature's tenderest ties,Inurned in dust, the parent sleeps:In vain invoked with bursting sighs,He hears not, when the orphan weeps.Yet, incense pure! the tears of griefShall soothe the wounded heart, and flow in sweet relief.

Dark in the memory of my yearsShall float the morn, whose lowering eyeBeheld those cheeks suffused with tears,Whose lustre foils the dawning sky;Still, as returning seasons roll,When Sirius pours his poisoned blaze,The hymn of death shall charm my soul,The hymn, that chaunts in mournful praise,And oft to thee, departed shade,The hallowed requiem rise, in awful reverence paid.