HER GRAVE.
69
All share the hospitable fane.
And Adrienne's dust in Westminster would lie
With statesmen, poets, kings, and chivalry,
For England's gifted rank her great among;
Freedom and plenty in their island-home,
Have roused up from its sleep of ages long
The spirit that ennobled Greece and Rome.
Are then Apollo's laurels dead beneath
Neglect and drought in our unkindly sand?
Why is my native land no more the land
Of genius and its honouring wreath?"
And Adrienne's dust in Westminster would lie
With statesmen, poets, kings, and chivalry,
For England's gifted rank her great among;
Freedom and plenty in their island-home,
Have roused up from its sleep of ages long
The spirit that ennobled Greece and Rome.
Are then Apollo's laurels dead beneath
Neglect and drought in our unkindly sand?
Why is my native land no more the land
Of genius and its honouring wreath?"
The young Count D'Argental, Voltaire's friend, was an ardent admirer of this lady, from whom he received in return for his devotion nothing but friendship and good advice. He lived to be very old; and, fifty years after her death, being then past eighty, he heard that the owner of some ground near the river had discovered, while preparing to build there, some vestiges of her grave. The old man hastened to the spot, recognised the resting-place as hers, and obtained leave to erect a monument over it, on which he inscribed some verses expressive of the passion that half a century had not sufficed to extinguish.
