Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! 
    Come to the mother’s when she feels
  For the first time her first-born’s breath;
    Come when the blessed seals
  That close the pestilence are broke,
  And crowded cities wail its stroke;
  Come in consumption’s ghastly form,
  The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm;
  Come when the heart beats high and warm,
    With banquet-song, and dance, and wine: 
  And thou art terrible—­the tear,
  The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
  And all we know, or dream, or fear
    Of agony, are thine.

  But to the hero, when his sword
    Has won the battle for the free,
  Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word;
  And in its hollow tones are heard
    The thanks of millions yet to be. 
  Come, when his task of fame is wrought—­
  Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought—­
    Come in her crowning hour—­and then
  Thy sunken eye’s unearthly light
  To him is welcome as the sight
    Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
  Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
  Of brother in a foreign land;
  Thy summons welcome as the cry
  That told the Indian isles were nigh
    To the world-seeking Genoese,
  When the land-wind, from woods of palm,
  And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
    Blew o’er the Haytian seas.

  Bozzaris! with the storied brave
    Greece nurtured in her glory’s time,
  Rest thee—­there is no prouder grave,
    Even in her own proud clime. 
  She wore no funeral weeds for thee,
    Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume,
  Like torn branch from death’s leafless tree
  In sorrow’s pomp and pageantry,
  The heartless luxury of the tomb;
  But she remembers thee as one
  Long loved, and for a season gone;
  For thee her poet’s lyre is wreathed,
  Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
  For thee she rings the birthday bells;
  Of thee her babes’ first lisping tells;
  For thine her evening prayer is said,
  At palace couch and cottage bed;
  Her soldier, closing with the foe,
  Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
  His plighted maiden, when she fears
  For him, the joy of her young years,
  Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears. 
    And she, the mother of thy boys,
  Though in her eye and faded cheek
  Is read the grief she will not speak,
    The memory of her buried joys,
  And even she who gave thee birth,
  Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth
    Talk of thy doom without a sigh: 
  For thou art Freedom’s now and Fame’s,
  One of the few, the immortal names,
    That were not born to die.

  ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.

  Green be the turf above thee,
    Friend of my better days! 
  None knew thee but to love thee,
    Nor named thee but to praise.

  Tears fell, when thou wert dying,
    From eyes unused to weep,
  And long where thou art lying
    Will tears the cold turf steep.