He perished, or by wilder men of blood. 
The shuddering fancy only guess’d his doom,
And doubt to sorrow gave but deeper gloom. 
An age elapsed:  when men were dead or gray,
Whose hearts had mourned him in their youthful day,
Fame traced on Vanikoro’s shore at last,
The boiling surge had mounted o’er his mast. 
The islesmen told of some surviving men,
But Christian eyes beheld them ne’er again. 
Sad bourne of all his toils—­with all his band
To sleep, wrecked, shroudless, on a savage strand! 
Yet what is all that fires a hero’s scorn
Of death?—­the hope to live in hearts unborn. 
Life to the brave is not its fleeting breath,
But worth—­foretasting fame that follows death. 
That worth had Laperouse, that meed he won. 
He sleeps—­his life’s long stormy watch is done. 
In the great deep, whose boundaries and space
He measured, fate ordained his resting place;
But bade his fame, like th’ ocean rolling o’er
His relics, visit every earthly shore. 
Fair Science on that ocean’s azure robe
Still writes his name in picturing the globe,
And paints (what fairer wreath could glory twine?)
His watery course—­a world-encircling line.