THE SOLDIER’S FUNERAL. Air--“Holden’s dead-March.” _____ NOW, let the procession move solemn and slow, While the soft mournful music
accords with our woe, While Friendship’s warm tears
round his ashes are shed, And soul-melting Memory weeps
for the dead. Kind good-hearted fellow as
ever was known! So kind and so good, ev’ry heart
was his own; Now, alas! low
in Death are his virtues all o'er; How painful the thought, we
will see him no more! In camp or in quarters he still
was the same, Each countenance brighten’d
wherever he came; When the wars of his country
impell’d him to roam, He cheerful would say all the
world was his home; And when the fierce conflict of
armies began, He fought like a lion, yet felt
as a man; * For when British brav’ry had
vanquish’d the foe, He’d weep o'er the dead by his
valour laid low. Ye time-fretted mansions! ye mouldering piles! Loud echo his praise, through
your long vaulted aisles: If haply his shade, nightly
glide through your gloom, O tell
him, our hearts lie with him in his tomb! And say, tho’ he’s gone, long
his worth shall remain, Remember’d, belov’d by the
whole of the men: Who e’er acts like him, with a
warm feeling heart, Friendship’s
tears drop applause at the close of his part. “They bore as heroes, but
they felt as man.” Pope’s Homer,
Book
xxiv, line
646. He thought as a sage,
while he felt as a man. Beattie’s
Hermit. |