And idle pennants dangled from the mast;--
There, in that trying moment, thou wert found
To teach the hardest lesson man can learn--
Passive endurance--and the breeze has sprung,
As if obedient to the voice of Song:--
And yet unhonour'd here thy ashes lie!

A nobler lesson learn'd the gallant Tar
From his Orphean lyre--to temper right
The lion's courage with the attributes
That to the gentle and the meek belong;
O'er fallen foes to check the eye of fire--
O'er fallen foes to soften heart of oak.

He turn'd the Fatalist's rash eye to Him
In whom the issues are of life and death;
He taught to whom the battle is--to whom
The victory belongs. His cherub, that aloft
Kept sleepless watch, was Providence--not Chance.

And yet no honours are decreed for him--
Friend of the Brave, thy memory cannot die!
Th'inquiring voice, that eagerly demands
Where rest thy ashes?--shall preserve thy fame.
Thine immortality thyself hast wrought;--
Familiar as the terms of art, thy verse,
Thine own peculiar words are still the mode
In which the Seaman aptly would express
His honest passions and his manly thoughts;
His feelings kindle at thy burning words,