The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 3/Elegiac Stanzas on the Death of Sir Peter Parker, Bart.
ELEGIAC STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF SIR PETER PARKER, BART.[1]
1.
There is a tear for all that die,[2]
A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And Triumph weeps above the brave.
2.
For them is Sorrow's purest sigh
O'er Ocean's heaving bosom sent:
In vain their bones unburied lie,
All earth becomes their monument!
3.
A tomb is theirs on every page,
An epitaph on every tongue:
The present hours, the future age,
For them bewail, to them belong.
4.
For them the voice of festal mirth
Grows hushed, their name the only sound;
While deep Remembrance pours to Worth
The goblet's tributary round.
5.
A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,
Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?
6.
And, gallant Parker! thus enshrined
Thy life, thy fall, thy fame shall be;
And early valour, glowing, find
A model in thy memory.
7.
But there are breasts that bleed with thee
In woe, that glory cannot quell;
And shuddering hear of victory,
Where one so dear, so dauntless, fell.
8.
Where shall they turn to mourn thee less?
When cease to hear thy cherished name?
Time cannot teach forgetfulness,
While Griefs full heart is fed by Fame.
9.
Alas! for them, though not for thee,
They cannot choose but weep the more;
Deep for the dead the grief must be,
Who ne'er gave cause to mourn before.
[First published, Morning Chronicle, October 7, 1814.]
- ↑ [Sir P. Parker fell in August, 1814, in his twenty-ninth year, whilst leading a party from his ship, the Menelaus, at the storming of the American camp near Baltimore. He was Byron's first cousin (his father, Christopher Parker (1761-1804), married Charlotte Augusta, daughter of Admiral the Hon. John Byron); but they had never met since boyhood. (See letter to Moore, Letters, 1899, iii. 150; see too Letters, i. 6, note 1.) The stanzas were included in Hebrew Melodies, 1815, and in the Ninth Edition of Childe Harold, 1818.]
- ↑ [Compare Tasso's sonnet—
"Questa Tomba non è, che non è morto," etc.
Rime Eroiche, Parte Seconda, No. 38, Opere di
Torquato Tasso, Venice, 1736, vi. 169.]