“Or deem’st thou not our later time Yields topic meet for classic rhyme? Hast thou no elegiac verse For Brunswick’s venerable hearse? What! not a line, a tear, a sigh, When valour bleeds for liberty? Oh, hero of that glorious time, When, with unrivalled light sublime— Though martial Austria, and though all The might of Russia, and the Gaul, Though banded Europe stood her foes— The star of Brandenburg arose! Thou couldst not live to see her beam For ever quenched in Jena’s stream. Lamented chief!—it was not given To thee to change the doom of Heaven, And crush that dragon in its birth, Predestined scourge of guilty earth. Lamented chief!—not thine the power To save in that presumptuous hour, When Prussia hurried to the field, And snatched the spear, but left the shield! Valour and skill ’twas thine to try, And, tried in vain, ’twas thine to die. Ill had it seemed thy silver hair The last, the bitterest pang to share, For princedom reft, and scutcheons riven, And birthrights to usurpers given; Thy land’s, thy children’s wrongs to feel, And witness woes thou couldst not heal! On thee relenting Heaven bestows For honoured life an honoured close; And when revolves, in time’s sure change, The hour of Germany’s revenge, When, breathing fury for her sake, Some new Arminius shall awake, Her champion, ere he strike, shall come To whet his sword on Brunswick’s tomb. “Or of the red-cross hero teach, Dauntless in dungeon as on breach: Alike to him the sea, the shore, The brand, the bridle, or the oar. Alike to him the war that calls Its votaries to the shattered walls, Which the grim Turk, besmeared with blood, Against the invincible made good; Or that, whose thundering voice could wake The silence of the polar lake, When stubborn Russ, and mettled Swede, On the warped wave their death-game played; Or that, where vengeance and affright Howled round the father of the fight, Who snatched, on Alexandria’s sand, The conqueror’s wreath with dying hand. “Or, if to touch such chord be thine, Restore the ancient tragic line, And emulate the notes that rung From the wild harp, which silent hung By silver Avon’s holy shore, Till twice a hundred years rolled o’er; When she, the bold enchantress, came, With fearless hand and heart on flame! From the pale willow snatched the treasure, And swept it with a kindred measure, Till Avon’s swans, while rung the grove With Montfort’s hate and Basil’s love, Awakening at the inspired strain, Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again.”