Thou shouldst not to the grave descend
Unmourned, unhonoured, or unsung;--
Could harp of mine record thy end,
For thee that rude harp should be strung;
And plaintive sounds as ever rung
Should all its simple notes employ,
Lamenting unto old and young
The Bard who sang THE FARMER’S BOY.
Could Eastern Anglia boast a lyre
Like that which gave thee modest fame,
How justly might its every wire
Thy minstrel honours loud proclaim:
And many a stream of humble name,
And village-green, and common wild,
Should witness tears that knew not shame,
By Nature won for Nature’s child.
It is not quaint and local terms
Besprinkled o’er thy rustic lay,
Though well such dialect confirms
Its power unlettered minds to sway,
It is not these that most display
Thy sweetest charms, thy gentlest thrall,--
Words, phrases, fashions pass away,
But TRUTH and NATURE live through all.
These, these have given thy rustic lyre
Its truest and its tenderest spell;
These amid Britain’s tuneful choir
Shall give thy honoured name to dwell:
And when Death’s shadowy curtain fell
Upon thy toilsome earthly lot,
With grateful joy thy heart might swell
To feel that these reproached thee not.
How wise, how noble was thy choice
To be the Bard of simple swains,--
In all their pleasures to rejoice,
And sooth with sympathy their pains;
To paint with feelings in thy strains
The themes their thoughts and tongues discuss,
And be, though free from classic chains,
Our own more chaste Theocritus.
For this should Suffolk proudly own
Her grateful and her lasting debt;--
How much more proudly--had she known
That pining care, and keen regret,--
Thoughts which the fevered spirits fret,
And slow disease,--’twas thine to bear;--
And, ere thy sun of life was set,
Had won her Poet’s grateful prayer.--
_Bernard Barton._
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