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Literary Gazette, 29th September, 1832, Pages 619-620
Of Sir Walter Scott's legal and official career, or of his pecuniary circumstances, it is not for us to speak; and we congratulate ourselves that the touching strain which we now annex from the pen of L. E. L. enables us to leave these matters of worldly record to others:—
Our sky has lost another star,
The earth has claimed its own,
And into dread eternity
A glorious one is gone.
He who could give departed things
So much of light and breath,
He is himself now with the past—
Gone forth from life to death.
It is a most unblessed grave
That has no mourner near;
The meanest turf the wild flowers hide
Has some familiar tear:
But kindred sorrow is forgot
Amid the general gloom;
Grief is religion felt for him
Whose temple is his tomb.
Thou of the future and the past,
How shall we honour thee?
Shall we build up a pyramid
Amid the pathless sea?
Shall we bring red gold from the east,
And marble from the west,
And carved porphyry, that the fane
Be worthy of its guest?
Or shall we seek thy native land,
And choose some ancient hill,
To be thy statue, finely wrought
With all the sculptor's skill?
Methinks, as there are common signs
To every common wo,
That we should do some mighty thing
To mark who lies below.
But this is folly: thou needst not
The sculpture or the shrine;
The heart is the sole monument
For memories like thine.
The pyramids in Egypt rose
To mark some monarch's fame:
Imperishable is the tomb,
But what the founder's name?
