POETRY.
BYRON'S GRAVE AT H1JCKNALL TORKARD.
BENEATH the smoke-bedarkened air, "
Amid a squalid village bare, In this mean church does Byron sleep The everlasting slumber deep ; To this lone undistinguished tomb They brought the famous dead, for whom The storied minster found no room.
Voices august have given since then Their music to the sons of men, But none has reached his giant fame, None blanched the splendour of his name. The valley with its beauty meek Yearns upward to the soaring peak, The river in the drowsy plain Sighs for the tumult of the main, The minds that honied numbers cloy May hunger for more strenuous joy, And with a swift impatience turn To Byron's grandeur, sad and stern.
Insist on the false notes, the flaws, The careless scorn of rhythmic laws, The halting phrase, the gaudy word, The discords and redundance beard, The callous Ilippancies that brood In some fine fancy's neighbourhood; Remember, still, the lines that flow As clear as light, as pure as snow, The vivid thought who runs may read, The teeming power, the stately speed, The sea-like swell, the strength and fire That brace when tones more polished tire, The vigour that uplifted flew Like a bold eagle toward the blue, The clarion that through Europe rang When Freedom's haughtiest minstrel sang, The hero's dream, the soldier's death, The unfinished words of failing breath, The suffering, the self-tortured pride That left the world when Byron died.
JOSEPH TRUMAN.
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