"Oh, stay thine eyes,--diffuse their animating ray,-- And with their smiling pleasures brighten all the day. But if relentless 'gainst me with the fates you join, Then go! though still my heart, my soul, is thine. And when from me so distant thou art gone, Oh, yield one sigh responsive to mine own!" The third piece was composed on occasion of the military funeral of Henry K. Bunting, an intimate friend of Forrest, a young man of most estimable character, whose early death was lamented by the whole community: "How slow they marched! each youthful face was pale, And downcast eyes disclosed the mournful tale; Grief was depicted on each manly brow, And gloomy tears abundantly did flow From each sad heart. For he whose breath had fled Was loved by all,--in honor's path was bred. I knew him well; his heart was pure and kind, A noble spirit, and a lofty mind. Virtue cast round his head her smiling wreath, Which did not leave him on his bed of death. His image lives, and from my grief-worn heart, While life remains, will never, never part. Weep, soldiers, weep! with tears of sadness lave Your friend and brother's drear, untimely grave!" In March the celebrated and ill-starred Conway filled an engagement in New Orleans. The witnessing of his performances formed one of the epochs in the development of Forrest's dramatic power. He played Malcolm to the Macbeth of the tall and over-impassioned tragedian, and caught some valuable suggestions from his idiomatic individuality and style. But it was the Othello of this powerful and unhappy actor which most impressed him. He played this part with a sweetness and a majestic and frenzied energy which no audience could resist. The whole truth of the course of the ambition, love, jealousy, madness, vengeance, desperation, remorse, and death of the noble but barbaric Moor was painted in volcanic and statuesque outlines. Nothing escaped the apt pupil, who with lynx-eyed observation fastened on every original point, every electric stroke, and at this adolescent period drank in the significance of the fully-developed passions of unbridled human nature. It was not long after these mimic presentments when the real passions in the darkly-tangled plot of his own existence wrought so convulsively on poor Conway, the friction sunk so profoundly into the sockets and vital seats of his being, that he went mad, threw himself overboard, and all his griefs and fears at once in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Early in May, Forrest's benefit was announced, and he was underlined for Lear, "the first time in New Orleans." On account of bad weather the benefit was postponed, and, when it did occur, instead of Lear he performed Octavian, in Coleman's Mountaineers. The season closed with the end of the month, when he played Carwin, the leading rôle in the drama of Therese, by John Howard Payne.