On The Proposal To Erect A Monument In England To Lord Byron.

The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved green         Above the spent heart, the Olympian head,     The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen,         Unseeing, the locked lips whose song hath fled;     Yet mystic-lived, like some rich, tropic flower,     His fame puts forth fresh blossoms hour by hour;     Wide spread the laden branches dropping dew         On the low, laureled brow misunderstood,         That bent not, neither bowed, until subdued     By the last foe who crowned while he o'erthrew.     Fair was the Easter Sabbath morn when first         Men heard he had not wakened to its light:     The end had come, and time had done its worst,         For the black cloud had fallen of endless night.     Then in the town, as Greek accosted Greek,     'T was not the wonted festal words to speak,     "Christ is arisen," but "Our chief is gone,"         With such wan aspect and grief-smitten head         As when the awful cry of "Pan is dead!"     Filled echoing hill and valley with its moan.     "I am more fit for death than the world deems,"         So spake he as life's light was growing dim,     And turned to sleep as unto soothing dreams.         What terrors could its darkness hold for him,     Familiar with all anguish, but with fear     Still unacquainted?    On his martial bier     They laid a sword, a helmet, and a crown -         Meed of the warrior, but not these among         His voiceless lyre, whose silent chords unstrung     Shall wait - how long? - for touches like his own.     An alien country mourned him as her son,         And hailed him hero: his sole, fitting tomb     Were Theseus' temple or the Parthenon,         Fondly she deemed.    His brethren bare him home,     Their exiled glory, past the guarded gate     Where England's Abbey shelters England's great.     Afar he rests whose very name hath shed         New lustre on her with the song he sings.         So Shakespeare rests who scorned to lie with kings,     Sleeping at peace midst the unhonored dead.     And fifty years suffice to overgrow         With gentle memories the foul weeds of hate     That shamed his grave.    The world begins to know         Her loss, and view with other eyes his fate.     Even as the cunning workman brings to pass     The sculptor's thought from out the unwieldy mass     Of shapeless marble, so Time lops away         The stony crust of falsehood that concealed         His just proportions, and, at last revealed,     The statue issues to the light of day,     Most beautiful, most human.    Let them fling         The first stone who are tempted even as he,     And have not swerved.    When did that rare soul sing         The victim's shame, the tyrant's eulogy,     The great belittle, or exalt the small,     Or grudge his gift, his blood, to disenthrall     The slaves of tyranny or ignorance?         Stung by fierce tongues himself, whose rightful fame         Hath he reviled?    Upon what noble name     Did the winged arrows of the barbed wit glance?     The years' thick, clinging curtains backward pull,         And show him as he is, crowned with bright beams,     "Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful         As he hath been or might be; Sorrow seems     Half of his immortality."*    He needs     No monument whose name and song and deeds     Are graven in all foreign hearts; but she         His mother, England, slow and last to wake,         Needs raise the votive shaft for her fame's sake:     Hers is the shame if such forgotten be!         May, 1875.         *"Cain," Act I. Scene 1.