William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
Joel BarlowHelen Maria Williams (17621827)
W
Relentless Winter rules with savage sway;
Where the shrill polar storms, as wild they blow,
Seem to repeat some plaint of mortal wo;
Far o’er the cheerless space the traveller’s eye
Shall this recording pillar long descry;
And give the sod a tear, where Barlow lies—
He, who was simply great and nobly wise.
Here, led by patriot zeal, he met his doom,
And found, amid the frozen wastes, a tomb:
Far from his native soil the poet fell—
Far from that western world he sung so well.
Nor she, so long beloved, nor she was nigh,
To catch the dying look, the parting sigh;
She, who, the hopeless anguish to beguile,
In fond memorial rears the funeral pile—
Whose widow’d bosom, on Columbia’s shore,
Shall mourn the moments that return no more:
While, bending o’er the broad Atlantic wave,
Sad fancy hovers on the distant grave.