ELEGY ON CAPTAIN MATTHEW HENDERSON.
And gently judged for evil and for good.
But whilst he mixed not for his own behoof
In public strife, his spirit glowed with zeal,
Not shorn of action, for the public weal –
For truth and justice as its warp and woof,
For freedom as its signature and seal.
His life thus sacred from the world, discharged
From vain ambition and inordinate care,
In virtue exercised, by reverence rare
Lifted, and by humility enlarged,
Became a temple and a place of prayer.
In latter years he walked not singly there;
For one was with him, ready at all hours
His griefs, his joys, his inmost thoughts to share,
Who buoyantly his burthens helped to bear,
And decked his altars daily with fresh flowers.
But farther may we pass not; for the ground
Is holier than the muse herself may tread;
Nor would I it should echo to a sound
Less solemn than the service for the dead.
Mine is inferior matter- my own loss
The loss of dear delights for ever fled,
Of reason's converse by affection fed,
Of wisdom, counsel, solace, that across
Life's dreariest tracts a tender radiance shed.
Friend of my youth! though younger, yet my guide,
How much by thy unerring insight clear
I shaped my way of life for many a year,
What thoughtful friendship on thy death-bed died!
Friend of my youth! whilst thou wast by my side,
Autumnal days still breathed a vernal breath;
How like a charm thy life to me supplied
All waste and injury of time and tide,
How like a disenchantment was thy death!
Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson.
O DEATH! thou tyrant fell and bloody!
The muckle devil wi' a woodie
Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie,
O'er hurcheon hides,
And like stockfish come o'er his studdie Wi' thy auld sides!
He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us torn,
The ae best fellow e'er was born!
Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn
By wood and wild,
Where, haply, pity strays forlorn,
Frae man exiled.
Ye hills, near neebors o' the starns,
That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,
Where echo slumbers!
Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns,
My wailing numbers!
Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens!
Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens!
Ye burnies, wimplin down your glens,
Wi' todlin' din,
Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens,
Frae linn to linn.
Mourn, little harebells owre the lea;
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see;
Ye woodbines hanging bonnilie,
In scented bowers;
Ye roses on your thorny tree,
The first o' flowers.
At dawn, when every grassy blade
Droops with a diamond at his head,
At even, when beans their fragrance shed
I' th' rustling gale,
Ye maukins, whiddin' through the glade,
Come, join my wail!
Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood;
Ye grouse that crap the heather-bud;
Ye curlews calling through a clud;
Ye whistling plover;
And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood;
He's gane for ever!
Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals;
Ye fisher herons, watching eels;
Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels
Circling the lake;
Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,
Rair for his sake!
Mourn, clam'ring craiks, at close o' day, 'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay!
ACCEPT, thou shrine of my dead saint,
Instead of dirges, this complaint;
And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse
Receive a strew of weeping verse
From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st
Quite melted into tears for thee.
Dear loss! since thy untimely fate,
My task hath been to meditate
On thee, on thee; thou art the book,
The library whereon I look,
Though almost blind; for thee (loved clay)
I languish out, not live, the day,
Using no other exercise
But what I practice with mine eyes;
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily Time creeps about
To one that mourns: this, only this,
My exercise and business is:
So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolved into showers.
Nor wonder if my time go thus Backward and most preposterous; Thou hast benighted me; thy set This eve of blackness did beget, Who wast my day (though overcast Before thou hadst thy noontide passed), And I remember must in tears
Thou scarce hadst seen so many years As day tells hours: by thy clear sun *My love and fortune first did run:
But thou wilt nevermore appear
Folded within my hemisphere,
Since both thy light and motion
Like a fled star is fallen and gone,
And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish
The earth now interposed is,
Which such a strange eclipse doth make
As ne'er was read in almanac.
I could allow thee for a time To darken me, and my sad clime: Were it a month, or year, or ten, I would thy exile live till then. And all that space my mirth adjourn, So thou wouldst promise to return, And, putting off thy ashy shroud, At length disperse this sable cloud.
But woe is me! the longest date Too narrow is to calculate These empty hopes: never shall I Be so much blest as to descry A glimpse of thee, till that day come Which shall the earth to cinders doom, And a fierce fever must calcine The body of this world like thine, (My little world!): that fit of fire Once off, our bodies shall aspire To our souls' bliss: then we shall rise, And view ourselves with clearer eyes In that calm region where no night Can hide us from each other's sight.
Meantime thou hast her, Earth: much good
May my harm do thee! Since it stood
With Heaven's will I might not call
Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her whom living I loved best.
With a most free and bounteous grief
I give thee what I could not keep.
Be kind to her, and, prithee, look
Thou write into thy doomsday book
Each parcel of this rarity
Which in thy casket shrined doth lie.
See that thou make thy reckoning straight,
And yield her back again by weight:
For thou must audit on thy trust
Each grain and atom of this dust,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,
Not gave thee, my dear monument.
So close the ground, and 'bout her shade
Black curtains draw: my bride is laid.
Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed Never to be disquieted!
My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake:
Till age or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves, and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there: I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every hour a step towards thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,
Than when Sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
Thus from the sun my bottom steers,
And my day's compass downward bears:
Nor labor I to stem the tide
Through which to thee I swiftly glide.
"Tis true, with shame and grief I yield;
Thou, like the van, first took'st the field,
And gotten hast the victory,
In thus adventuring to die
Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And, slow howe'er my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolution
With hope and comfort. Dear (forgive
The crime), I am content to live,
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.
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