Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PERUVIAN'S DIRGE OVER THE BODY OF HIS FATHER, by ROBERT SOUTHEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PERUVIAN'S DIRGE OVER THE BODY OF HIS FATHER, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Rest in peace, my father, rest
Last Line: Where the strangers never shall come!
Subject(s): Fathers & Sons; Funerals; Future Life; Lament; Peru; Prayer; Burials; Retribution; Eternity; After Life


REST in peace, my father, rest!
With danger and toil have I borne thy corpse
From the stranger's field of death.
I bless thee, O wife of the sun,
For veiling thy beams with a cloud,
While at the pious task
Thy votary toil'd in fear.
Thou badest the clouds of night
Enwrap thee, and hide thee from man;
But didst thou not see my toil,
And put on the darkness to aid,
O wife of the visible god?

Wretched, my father, thy life!
Wretched the life of the slave!
All day for another he toils;
Overwearied at night he lies down
And dreams of the freedom that once he enjoy'd.
Thou wert blest in the days of thy youth,
My father! for then thou wert free.
In the fields of the nation thy hand
Bore its part of the general task;
And when, with the song and the dance,
Ye brought the harvest home,
As all in the labour had shared,
So justly they shared in the fruits.

Thou visible lord of the earth,
Thou god of my fathers, thou god of my heart,
O giver of light and of life!
When the strangers came to our shores,
Why didst thou not put forth thy power?
Thy thunders should then have been hurl'd,
The fires should in lightnings have flash'd!—
Visible god of the earth,
The strangers mock at thy might!
To idols and beams of wood
They force us to bow the knee!

They plunge us in caverns and dens,
Where never thy blessed light
Shines on our poisonous toil!
But not in the caverns and dens,
O sun, are we mindless of thee!
We pine for the want of thy beams,
We adore thee with anguish and groans.

My father, rest in peace!
Rest with the dust of thy sires!
They placed their cross in thy dying grasp;—
They bore thee to their burial place,
And over thy breathless frame
Their bloody and merciless priest
Mumbled his mystery words.
Oh! could thy bones be at peace
In the fields where the strangers are laid?—
Alone, in danger and in pain,
My father, I bring thee here:
So may our god, in reward,
Allow me one faithful friend
To lay me beside thee when I am released!
So may he release me soon,
That my spirit may join thee there,
Where the strangers never shall come!





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