WRITTEN FOR RECITATION AT THE FAREWELL DINNER IN HONOUR OF JOHN KEMBLE, ESQ.
PRIDE of the British stage,
A long and last adieu!
Whose image brought the heroic age
Revived to Fancy's view;
Like fields refreshed with dewy light,
When the sun smiles his last,
Thy parting presence makes more bright
Our memory of the past;
And memory conjures feelings up,
That wine or music need not swell,
As high we lift the festal cup
To Kemble, fare-thee-well !
His was the spell o'er hearts
Which only acting lends,
The youngest of the sister arts,
Where all their beauty blends:
For ill can Poetry express
Full many a tone of thought sublime,
And Painting, mute and motionless,
Steals but one glance from Time;
But, by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion's wedded triumphs come,
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And Sculpture to be dumb.
Time may again revive,
But ne'er efface the charm,
When Cato spoke in him alive,
Or Hotspur kindled warm.
What soul was not resigned entire
To the deep sorrows of the Moor?
What English heart was not on fire
With him at Agincourt?
And yet a majesty possessed
His transport's most impetuous tone;
And to each passion of his breast
The Graces gave their zone.
High were the task, too high
Ye conscious bosoms here,
In words to paint your memory,
Of KEMBLE, and of Lear.
But who forgets that white discrowned head,
Those bursts of Reason's half extinguished glare,
Those tears upon Cordelia's bosom shed,
In doubt, more touching than despair; If 'twas reality he felt
Had SHAKSPEARE's self amidst you been,
Friends, he had seen you melt,
And triumphed to have seen!
And there was many an hour
Of blended kindred fame,
When SIDDONs's auxiliar power,
And sister magic came ;-
Together at the Muse's side,
Her tragic paragons had grown;-
They were the children of her pride,
The columns of her throne!
And undivided favour ran,
From heart to heart, in their applause Save for the gallantry of man,
In lovelier woman's cause.
Fair as some classic dome,
Robust and richly graced,
Your Kemble's spirit was the home
Of genius and of taste.
Taste, like the silent dial's power,
That when supernal light is given,
Can measure inspiration's hour,
And tell its height in heaven.
At once ennobled and correct,
His mind surveyed the tragic page,
And what the actor could effect,
The scholar could presage.
These were his traits of worth ;-
And must we lose them now!
And shall the scene no more shew forth
His sternly pleasing brow ?
Alas! the moral brings a tear,-
'Tis all a transient hour below;
And we that would detain thee here,
Ourselves as fleetly go.
Yet shall our latest age
This parting scene renew :ï
Pride of the British stage!
A long and last adieu !
Literary Gazette.
SHE had done weeping, but her eyelash yet
Lay silken heavy on her lilied cheek,
And on its fringe a tear, like a lone star
Shining upon the rich and hyacinth skirts
O' the western cloud that veils the April even.
The veil rose up, and with it rose the star,
Glittering above the gleam of tender blue,
That widened as the shower clears off from heaven.
Her beauty woke, a sudden beam of soul
Flashed from her eye, and lit the vestal's cheek
Into one crimson, and exhaled the tear.
TO THE ALABASTER SARCOPHAGUS, DEPOSITED IN THE
THOU Alabaster relic! while I hold
My hand upon thy sculptured margin thrown,
Let me recall the scenes thou couldst unfold,
Might'st thou relate the changes thou hast known;
For thou wert primitive in thy formation,
Launched from the Almighty's hand at the creation.
Yes thou wert present when the stars and skies
And worlds unnumbered rolled into their places;
When God from chaos bade the spheres arise,
And fixed the blazing sun upon its basis,
And with his finger on the bounds of space
Marked out each planet's everlasting race.
How many thousand ages from thy birth
Thou slept'st in darkness it were vain to ask,
Till Egypt's sons upheaved thee from the earth,
And year by year pursued their patient task,
Till thou wert carved and decorated thus,
Worthy to be a king's sarcophagus!
What time Elijah to the skies ascended,
Or David reigned in holy Palestine,
Some ancient Theban monarch was extended
Beneath the lid of this emblazoned shrine,
And to that subterraneous palace borne
Which toiling ages in the rock had worn.
Thebes, from her hundred portals, filled the plain,
To see the car on which thou wert upheld.
What funeral pomps extended in thy train,
What banners waved, what mighty music swelled,
As armies, priests, and crowds bewailed in chorus, Their King their God their Serapis their Orus!
Thus to thy second quarry did they trust
Thee, and the lord of all the nations round, Grim king of silence! Monarch of the dust! Embalmed, anointed, jewelled, sceptered, crowned, Here did he lie in state, cold, stiff, and stark, A leathern Pharaoh grinning in the dark.
Thus ages rolled; but their dissolving breath
Could only blacken that imprisoned thing,
Which wore a ghastly royalty in death,
As if it struggled still to be a king;
And each dissolving century, like the last,
Just dropped its dust upon thy lid, and passed.
The Persian conqueror o'er Egypt poured
His devastating hosta motley crew; The steel-clad horseman, the barbarian horde,Music and men of every sound and hue,Priests, archers, eunuchs, concubines, and brutes,Gongs, trumpets, cymbals, dulcimers, and lutes.
Then did the fierce Cambyses tear away
The ponderous rock that sealed the sacred tomb;
Then did the slowly penetrating ray
Redeem thee from long centuries of gloom,
And lowered torches flashed against thy side,
As Asia's king thy blazoned trophies eyed.
Plucked from his grave, with sacrilegious taunt,
The features of the royal corse they scanned;
Dashing the diadem from his temple gaunt,
They tore the sceptre from his graspless hand;
And on those fields, where once his will was law,
Left him for winds to waste and heasts to gnaw.
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