Alas!  I little thought that the stern power
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus
Before the strain was ended.  It must cease—­
For he is in his grave who taught my youth
The art of verse, and in the bud of life
Offered me to the muses.  Oh, cut off
Untimely! when thy reason in its strength,
Ripened by years of toil and studious search,
And watch of Nature’s silent lessons, taught
Thy hand to practise best the lenient art
To which thou gavest thy laborious days,
And, last, thy life.  And, therefore, when the earth
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill
Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale
When thou wert gone.  This faltering verse, which thou
Shalt not, as wont, o’erlook, is all I have
To offer at thy grave—­this—­and the hope
To copy thy example, and to leave
A name of which the wretched shall not think
As of an enemy’s, whom they forgive
As all forgive the dead.  Rest, therefore, thou
Whose early guidance trained my infant steps—­
Rest, in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep
Of death is over, and a happier life
Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust.

Now thou art not—­and yet the men whose guilt
Has wearied Heaven for vengeance—­he who bears
False witness—­he who takes the orphan’s bread,
And robs the widow—­he who spreads abroad
Polluted hands of mockery of prayer,
Are left to cumber earth.  Shuddering I look
On what is written, yet I blot not out
The desultory numbers—­let them stand,
The record of an idle revery.

The massacre at Scio. deg.

Weep not for Scio’s children slain;
  Their blood, by Turkish falchions shed,
Sends not its cry to Heaven in vain
  For vengeance on the murderer’s head.

Though high the warm red torrent ran
  Between the flames that lit the sky,
Yet, for each drop, an armed man
  Shall rise, to free the land, or die.

And for each corpse, that in the sea
  Was thrown, to feast the scaly herds,
A hundred of the foe shall be
  A banquet for the mountain birds.

Stern rites and sad, shall Greece ordain
  To keep that day, along her shore,
Till the last link of slavery’s chain
  Is shivered, to be worn no more.

The Indian girl’s lament. deg.

An Indian girl was sitting where
  Her lover, slain in battle, slept;
Her maiden veil, her own black hair,
  Came down o’er eyes that wept;
And wildly, in her woodland tongue,
This sad and simple lay she sung: 

“I’ve pulled away the shrubs that grew
  Too close above thy sleeping head,
And broke the forest boughs that threw
  Their shadows o’er thy bed,
That, shining from the sweet south-west,
The sunbeams might rejoice thy rest.