William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
On the Death of Commodore Oliver H. PerryJohn Gardiner Calkins Brainard (17951828)
H
That’s muffled by indifference to the dead!
And how reluctantly the echoes come,
On air that sighs not o’er that stranger’s bed,
Who sleeps with death alone—O’er his young head
His native breezes never more shall sigh;
On his lone grave the careless step shall tread,
And pestilential vapours soon shall dry
Each shrub that buds around—Each flower that blushes nigh.
Fill the charm’d air with thy deserved praise:
Of war, and blood, and carnage let her sing,
Of victory and glory!—let her gaze
On the dark smoke that shrouds the cannon’s blaze;
On the red foam that crests the bloody billow;
Then mourn the sad close of thy shorten’d days;
Place on thy country’s brow the weeping willow,
And plant the laurels thick around thy last cold pillow.
Alike uncouth the poet and the lay:
Unskill’d to turn the mighty tide of song,
He floats along the current as he may,
The humble tribute of a tear to pay,
Another hand may choose another theme,
May sing of Nelson’s last and brightest day,
Of Wolfe’s unequall’d and unrivall’d fame,
The wave of Trafalgar—the field of Abraham.
Might teach a harp that fain would mourn the brave,
And sweep those strings a minstrel may not wake,
Or give an echo from some secret cave
That opens on romantic Erie’s wave,
The feeble chord would not be swept in vain;
And though the sound might never reach thy grave,
Yet there are spirits here, that to the strain
Would send a still small voice responsive back again.
Though noxious vapours blight the turf, where rest
The manly form, and the bold heart of war;
Yet should that deadly isle afar be blest;
For the fresh breezes of thy native west
Should seek and sigh around thy early tomb,
Moist with the tears of those who loved thee best,
Scented with sighs of love; there grief should come,
And memory guard thy grave, and mourn thy hapless doom.
Too weak and frail the harp, the lay too brief
To speak the sorrows of a mourning land,
Weeping in silence for her youthful chief.
Yet may an artless tear proclaim more grief
Than mock affection’s arts can ever show;
A heart-felt sigh can give a sad relief,
Which all the sobs of counterfeited woe,
Trick’d off in foreign garb could ever hope to know.