William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
Ode: ‘Hark! how the passing bell’H
Heaves to the gale its sullen swell!
And, lo! in sorrow’s pomp array’d,
To the dull beat of death,
The slowly-moving cavalcade!
The half-suspended breath
Scarce frees the struggling sigh,
And hallow’d tears bedew mute beauty’s eye.
Now, o’er the mansions of the dead
With slowly-solemn, measured tread,
Around their slumbering hero drawn,
The silent soldiers print the lawn.
Now the long blaze
Arrests the gaze!
The hollow vaults resound!
The blazing sky,
The thundering ground,
The piercing eye,
More eloquent than pity’s flow,
Proclaim the soldier’s manly woe.
High o’er the scene the curling cloud aspires:
Fraught with a nation’s fervid sighs,
The mighty incense seeks the skies
And tells astonish’d worlds a Hamilton expires.