Here, here, at least have they from wrong been free,
Their heritage of peace preserving best.
No sumptuous marbles burden names here writ,
A shepherd, farmer, peasant, as is fit,
Beneath these stones in tranquil slumber see;
Perchance a Turenne, a Corneille they hide,
Who lived obscure, e'en to himself unknown.
But if from men he'd risen separate,
Sublime in camps, the theatre, the state,
His name by idol-loving worlds outcried,
Would that have made his slumber here more sweet?
[Footnote 1: La Harpe said that these last twenty lines were the most
beautiful verses in the French tongue. They necessarily lose
considerably in the translation.]
REQUIEM AETERNAM.
T. D. MCGEE.
[This beautiful requiem, written March 6th, 1868 (St. Victor's Day), on
the death of an intimate friend, acquires a new pathos and a new
solemnity, from the fact that its gifted author met his death at the
hands of an assassin but one month later, on the 7th of April of the
same year. Like Mozart, he wrote his own requiem]
Saint Victor's Day, a day of woe,
The bier that bore our dead went slow
And silent gliding o'er the snow--
_Miserere Domine!_
With Villa Maria's faithful dead,
Among the just we make his bed,
The cross, he loved, to shield his head--
_Miserere Domine!_
The skies may lower, wild storms may rave
Above our comrade's mountain grave,
That cross is mighty still to save--
_Miserere Domine!_
Deaf to the calls of love and care,
He bears no more his mortal share,
Nought can avail him now but prayer--
_Miserere Domine!_
To such a heart who could refuse
Just payment of all burial dues,
Of Holy Church the rite and use?
_Miserere Domine!_
Right solemnly the Mass was said,
While burn'd the tapers round the dead,
And manly tears like rain were shed--
_Miserere Domine!_
No more St.
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