For Brunswick’s venerable hearse?What! not a line, a tear, a sigh,
When valour bleeds for liberty?-
Oh, hero of that glorious time,
When, with unrivall’d light sublime,- 50
Though martial Austria, and though all
The might of Russia, and the Gaul,
Though banded Europe stood her foes-
The star of Brandenburgh arose!
Thou couldst not live to see her beam 55
For ever quench’d in Jena’s stream.
Lamented Chief!-it was not given
To thee to change the doom of Heaven,
And crush that dragon in its birth,
Predestined scourge of guilty earth. 60
Lamented Chief!-not thine the power,
To save in that presumptuous hour,
When Prussia hurried to the field,
And snatch’d the spear, but left the shield!
Valour and skill ’twas thine to try, 65
And, tried in vain, ’twas thine to die.
Ill had it seem’d thy silver hair
The last, the bitterest pang to share,
For princedoms reft, and scutcheons riven,
And birthrights to usurpers given; 70
Thy land’s, thy children’s wrongs to feel,
And witness woes thou could’st not heal!
On thee relenting Heaven bestows
For honour’d life an honour’d close;
And when revolves, in time’s sure change, 75
The hour of Germany’s revenge,
When, breathing fury for her sake,
Some new Arminius shall awake,
Her champion, ere he strike, shall come
To whet his sword on BRUNSWICK’S tomb, 80
‘Or of the Red-Cross hero teach
Dauntless in dungeon as on breach:
Alike to him the sea, the shore,
The brand, the bridle, or the oar:
Alike to him the war that calls 85
Its votaries to the shatter’d walls,
Which the grim Turk, besmear’d with blood,
Against the Invincible made good;
Or that, whose thundering voice could wake
The silence of the polar lake, 90
When stubborn Russ, and metal’d Swede,
On the warp’d wave their death-game play’d;
Or that, where Vengeance and Affright
Howl’d round the father of the fight,
Who snatch’d, on Alexandria’s sand, 95
The conqueror’s wreath with dying hand.
‘Or, if to touch such chord be thine,
Restore the ancient tragic line,
And emulate the notes that rung
From the wild harp, which silent hung 100
By silver Avon’s holy shore,
Till twice an hundred years roll’d o’er;
When she, the bold Enchantress, came,
With fearless hand and heart on flame!
From the pale willow snatch’d the treasure, 105
And swept it with a kindred measure,
Till Avon’s swans, while rung the grove
With Montfort’s hate and Basil’s love,
Awakening at the inspired strain,
Deem’d their own Shakspeare lived again.’ 110
Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging,
With praises not to me belonging,
In task more meet for mightiest powers,
Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours.
But say, my Erskine, hast thou weigh’d 115
That secret power by all obey’d,
Which warps not less the passive mind,
Its source conceal’d or undefined;
Whether an impulse, that has birth
Soon as the infant wakes on earth, 120
One with our feelings and our powers,
And rather part of us than ours;
Or whether fitlier term’d the sway
Of habit, form’d in early day?
Howe’er derived, its force confest 125
Rules with despotic sway the breast,
And drags us on by viewless chain,
While taste and reason plead in vain.
Look east, and ask the Belgian why,
Beneath Batavia’s sultry sky, 130
He seeks not eager to inhale
The freshness of the mountain gale,
Content to rear his whiten’d wall
Beside the dank and dull canal?
He’ll say, from youth he loved to see 135
The white sail gliding by the tree.
Or see yon weatherbeaten hind,
Whose sluggish herds before him wind,
Whose tatter’d plaid and rugged cheek
His northern
