How shall a mourner lift his voice to sing,
Record thy praise, and tune the hallowed string?
When in his bosom sighs and sorrows swell,
How celebrate the worth he loved so well?—
Thy manners plain, thy sense profound and clear,
Words without guile, and friendship all sincere!
The frail memorial feeble verse can give,
The tear of fond remembrance while I live,
Accept, dear shade! nor deem those strains of woe,
Though long delayed, had lost their claim to flow.
When from this world of vanity and strife,
The rising hopes, or sinking fears of life,
My destined voyage verges to that shore
Whence Nature calls us—to return no more,
May thy example nerve me at the last,
To meet the storm, nor shrink before the blast;
May thy endurance teach me to sustain
The weight of languor, and the throbs of pain;
To turn, with eye unclouded and serene,
From the vain pageants of this earthly scene,
And calmly view, as human prospects fail,
That phantom sea, which all are doomed to sail.
The blasts of adverse fortune and disease,
Attempered rarely by a genial breeze,
Ne'er shook thy steadfast constancy of mind,
Nor touched thy temper, open, generous, kind;
Ne'er swayed thy purpose firm beyond compare,
Nor quenched the midnight lamp of public care.
But Death, exulting o'er his prostrate prey,
Stood with his shaft envenomed by delay;
Then ruthless struck the barb to Friendship's core,
Whose warm and genuine votary died in Orr.