The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 19, Pages 522-523
THE MEMORIAL PILLAR.*[1]
"Hast thou through Eden's wild-wood vales pursued
Each mountain-scene magnificently rude,
Nor, with attention's lifted eye, revered
That modest stone which pious Pembroke rear'd,
Which still records, beyond the pencil's power,
The silent sorrows of a parting hour?"—Pleasures of Memory.
Mother and Child! whose blending tears
Have sanctified the place,
Where to the love of many years
Was given one last embrace;
Oh! ye have set a spell of power
Deep in your record of that hour!
A spell to waken solemn thought,
A still, small under-tone,
That calls back days of childhood, fraught
With many a treasure gone;
And smites, perchance, the hidden source,
Though long untroubled, of remorse.
For who that gazes on the stone
Which marks your parting spot,
Who but a mother's love hath known,
The one love changing not?
Alas! and haply learn'd its worth,
First with the sound of "Earth to earth?"
- ↑
* On the road-side between Penrith and Appleby, stands a small pillar with this inscription: "This pillar was erected in the year 1656, by Ann Countess Dowager of Pembroke, for a memorial of her last parting, in this place, with her good and pious mother, Margaret, Countess Dowager of Cumberland, on the 2d April, 1616: in memory whereof she hath left an annuity of 4l. to be distributed to the poor of the parish of Brougham, every 2d day of April for ever, upon the stone-table placed hard by. Laus Deo!"
