June 18: 1643

Flags crape-smother'd and arms reversed,
With one sad volley lay him to rest:
Lay him to rest where he may not see
This England he loved like a lover accursed
By lawlessness masking as liberty,
By the despot in Freedom's panoply drest:--
Bury him, ere he be made duplicity's tool and slave,
Where he cannot see the land that he could not save!
Bury him, bury him, bury him
With his face downward!

Chalgrove! Name of patriot pain!
O'er thy fresh fields that summer pass'd
The brand of war's red furnace blast,
Till heaven's soft tears wash'd out the blackening stain;--
Wash'd out and wept;--But could not so restore
England's gallant son:
Ere the fray was done
The stately head bow'd down; shatter'd; his warfare o'er.

Bending to the saddle-bow
With leaden arm that idle hangs,
Faint with the lancing torture-pangs,
He drops the rein; he lets the battle go:--
There, where the wife of his first love he woo'd
Turning for retreat;--
Memories bitter-sweet
Through death's fast-rising mist in youth's own light renew'd.

Then, as those who drown, perchance,
And all their years, a waking dream,
Flash pictured by in lightning gleam,
His childhood home appears, the mother's glance,
The hearth-side smile; the fragrance of the fields:
--Now, war's iron knell
Wakes the hounds of hell,
Whilst o'er the realm her scourge the rushing Fury wields!

Doth he now the day lament
When those who stemm'd despotic might
O'erstrode the bounds of law and right,
And through the land the torch of ruin sent?
Or that great rival statesman as he stood
Lion-faced and grim,
Hath he sight of him,
Strafford--the meteor-axe--the fateful Hill of Blood?

--Heroes both! by passion led,
In days perplex'd 'tween new and old,
Each at his will the realm to mould;
This, basing sovereignty on the single head,
This, on the many voices of the Hall:--
Each for his own creed
Prompt to die at need:
His side of England's shield each saw, and took for all.

Heroes both! For Order one
And one for Freedom dying!--We
May judge more justly both, than ye
Could, each, his brother, ere the strife was done!
--O Goddess of that even scale and weight,
In whose awful eyes
Truest mercy lies,
This hero-dirge to thee I vow and dedicate!

--Slanting now,--the foe is by,--
Through Hazeley mead the warrior goes,
And hardly fords the brook that flows
Bearing to Thame its cool, sweet, summer-cry.
Here take thy rest; here bind the broken heart!
By death's mercy-doom
Hid from ills to come,
Great soul, and greatly vex'd, Hampden!--in peace depart!

In the heart of the fields he loved and the hills,
Look your last, and lay him to rest,
With the faded flower, the wither'd grass;
Where the blood-face of war and the myriad ills
Of England dear like phantoms pass
And touch not the soul that is with the Blest.
Bury him in the night and peace of the holy grave,
Where he cannot see the land that he could not save!
Bury him, bury him, bury him
With his face downward!