On the Proposal to Erect a Monument in England to Lord Byron

The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved greenAbove the spent heart, the Olympian head,The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen,Unseeing, the locked lips whose song hath fled;Yet mystic-lived, like some rich, tropic flower,His fame puts forth fresh blossoms hour by hour;Wide spread the laden branches dropping dewOn the low, laureled brow misunderstood,That bent not, neither bowed, until subduedBy the last foe who crowned while he o'erthrew.

Fair was the Easter Sabbath morn when firstMen heard he had not wakened to its light:The end had come, and time had done its worst,For the black cloud had fallen of endless night.Then in the town, as Greek accosted Greek,'T was not the wonted festal words to speak,"Christ is arisen," but "Our chief is gone,"With such wan aspect and grief-smitten headAs when the awful cry of "Pan is dead!"Filled echoing hill and valley with its moan.

"I am more fit for death than the world deems,"So spake he as life's light was growing dim,And turned to sleep as unto soothing dreams.What terrors could its darkness hold for him,Familiar with all anguish, but with fearStill unacquainted? On his martial bierThey laid a sword, a helmet, and a crown--Meed of the warrior, but not these amongHis voiceless lyre, whose silent chords unstrungShall wait--how long?--for touches like his own.

An alien country mourned him as her son,And hailed him hero: his sole, fitting tombWere Theseus' temple or the Parthenon,Fondly she deemed. His brethren bare him home,Their exiled glory, past the guarded gateWhere England's Abbey shelters England's great.Afar he rests whose very name hath shedNew lustre on her with the song he sings.So Shakespeare rests who scorned to lie with kings,Sleeping at peace midst the unhonored dead.

And fifty years suffice to overgrowWith gentle memories the foul weeds of hateThat shamed his grave. The world begins to knowHer loss, and view with other eyes his fate.Even as the cunning workman brings to passThe sculptor's thought from out the unwieldy massOf shapeless marble, so Time lops awayThe stony crust of falsehood that concealedHis just proportions, and, at last revealed,The statue issues to the light of day,

Most beautiful, most human. Let them flingThe first stone who are tempted even as he,And have not swerved. When did that rare soul singThe victim's shame, the tyrant's eulogy,The great belittle, or exalt the small,Or grudge his gift, his blood, to disenthrallThe slaves of tyranny or ignorance?Stung by fierce tongues himself, whose rightful fameHath he reviled? Upon what noble nameDid the winged arrows of the barbed wit glance?

The years' thick, clinging curtains backward pull,And show him as he is, crowned with bright beams,"Beauteous, and yet not all as beautifulAs he hath been or might be; Sorrow seemsHalf of his immortality."* He needsNo monument whose name and song and deedsAre graven in all foreign hearts; but sheHis mother, England, slow and last to wake,Needs raise the votive shaft for her fame's sake:Hers is the shame if such forgotten be!May, 1875.