When ardent manhood smiled on infancy,
Save that blest change which deepened love doth bring
To grave experience. Sweet it was to see
Communion so entire.
The elder laid,
Just ere the snows of fourscore winters fell,
His patriot head beneath yon hallowed mound,
And slept as good men do.
But where is he,
Whose filial virtues taught that heart of age
A second spring? whose tuneful numbers charmed
His listening country's ear?
From his fair home,
From these loved trees, whence poured the nesting birds
Their mellow descant, suddenly he went
A lonely journey, to return no more.
Yet there were deeper melodies, than those
Of warblers mid the summer boughs, that well
He knew to wake:—songs of the heart, and thrills
Of fond affection, with the dulcet tones
Of husband and of sire.
They died with him.
Words may not tell the silence and the void,
Beside his hearth-stone, nor the bitter grief
That long around his cherished image wept.
Yet well it is to be remembered thus,
Poet and friend.
Without it, fame were poor,
