Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE DEATH OF COMMODORE OLIVER H. PERRY, by JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE DEATH OF COMMODORE OLIVER H. PERRY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: How sad the note of that funeral drum
Last Line: Tricked off in foreign garb, can ever hope to know.
Subject(s): Perry, Oliver Hazard (1785-1819)


(By strangers honor'd, and by strangers mourn'd.)

How sad the note of that funereal drum,
That's muffled by indifference to the dead!
And how reluctantly the echoes come,
On air that sighs not o'er that stranger's bed,
Who sleeps with death alone. O'er his young head
His native breezes never more shall sigh;
On his lone grave the careless step shall tread,
And pestilential vapors soon shall dry
Each shrub that buds around -- each flow'r that blushes nigh.

Let Genius, poising on her full-fledg'd wing,
Fill the charm'd air with thy deserved praise!
Of war, and blood, and carnage let her sing,
Of victory and glory! -- let her gaze
On the dark smoke that shrouds the cannon's blaze,
On the red foam that crests the bloody billow;
Then mourn the sad close of thy shorten'd days --
Place on thy country's brow the weeping willow,
And plant the laurels thick around thy last cold pillow.

No sparks of Grecian fire to me belong:
Alike uncouth the poet and the lay;
Unskill'd to turn the mighty tide of song,
He floats along the current as he may,
The humble tribute of a tear to pay.
Another hand may choose another theme,
May sing of Nelson's last and brightest day,
Of Wolfe's unequall'd and unrivall'd fame,
The wave of Trafalgar -- the fields of Abraham:

But if the wild winds of thy western lake
Might teach a harp that fain would mourn the brave,
And sweep those strings the minstrel may not wake,
Or give an echo from some secret cave
That opens on romantic Erie's wave,
The feeble cord would not be swept in vain;
And though the sound might never reach thy grave,
Yet there are spirits here that to the strain
Would send a still small voice responsive back again.

And though the yellow plague infest the air,
Though noxious vapors blight the turf, where rest
The manly form, and the bold heart of war,
Yet should that deadly isle afar be blest!
For the fresh breezes of thy native west
Should seek and sigh around thy early tomb,
Moist with the tears of those who loved you best,
Scented with sighs of love - there grief should come,
And mem'ry guard thy grave, and mourn thy helpless doom.

It may not be. Too feeble is the hand,
Too weak and frail the harp, the lay too brief
To speak the sorrows of a mourning land,
Weeping in silence for her youthful chief.
Yet may an artless tear proclaim more grief
Than mock affection's arts can ever show;
A heart-felt sigh can give a sad relief,
Which ail the sobs of counterfeited woe,
Tricked off in foreign garb, can ever hope to know.




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