Nor mourn ye less his perished worth, Who bade the conqueror go forth, And launched that thunderbolt of war On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar; Who, born to guide such high emprize, For Britain’s weal was early wise; Alas! to whom the Almighty gave, For Britain’s sins, an early grave! His worth, who, in his mightiest hour, A bauble held the pride of power, Spurned at the sordid lust of pelf, And served his Albion for herself; Who, when the frantic crowd amain Strained at subjection’s bursting rein, O’er their wild mood full conquest gained, The pride he would not crush restrained, Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause, And brought the freeman’s arm to aid the freeman’s laws. Hadst thou but lived, though stripped of power, A watchman on the lonely tower, Thy thrilling trump had roused the land, When fraud or danger were at hand; By thee, as by the beacon-light, Our pilots had kept course aright; As some proud column, though alone, Thy strength had propped the tottering throne: Now is the stately column broke, The beacon-light is quenched in smoke, The trumpet’s silver sound is still, The warder silent on the hill! Oh think, how to his latest day, When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey, With Palinure’s unaltered mood, Firm at his dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repelled, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall, with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain’s thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne’er sent around The bloody tocsin’s maddening sound, But still, upon the hallowed day, Convoke the swains to praise and pray; While faith and civil peace are dear, Grace this cold marble with a tear— He who preserved them, Pitt, lies here!