THE POST OF HONOR.

PRONOUNCED BEFORE THE BOSTON MERCANTILE LIBRARY

ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER 15, 1848.

THE POST OF HONOR.

WHEN yon old tower proclaims the impatient Nine,1 And Temple belles to homeward nooks incline, When airs are still, the organ pipes laid low, And music's stream requested not to flow, When from his lips, whose mandates all obey, The call rings out, admitting no delay,The bard, half conscious, rises to the floor, And

eyes the distance 'tween the desk and door; He hoped some hand might kindly interpose To veil the audience at the oration's close,

Some beam might start, some sudden false alarm
Might snatch a victim from the altar's harm ;-
But, chained a captive at your chariot wheel,
To fail just now were hardly mercantile ;
Promise to pay, you must endure the shock;
There is no quarter after two o'clock.

No bright Aurora, with her cheerful smiles, The evening minstrel on his way beguiles ;Child of the Dawn, she bids her coursers fly Through rosier blushes to the morning sky. While thus the fingers of relentless Time Hold hard and heavy at the reins of rhyme, Thy leaden wings, O sleep-compelling power, I hear descending from their shadowy bower; Spare, spare thy influence, cease thy drowsy calls A few brief moments, till the curtain falls.

In boyhood's hour you bade my fluttering sail2 Spread its light canvas to the morning gale;

THE POST OF HONOR.

First, at your summons, with averted eye,
I felt the breeze that swept my pennant by;
I heard your echoes gathering on the shore,
As then I launched one childish pebble more;
Still the old echoes linger in my brain,

And all those voices seem to live again,

As now I come, with more than boyhood's fears,
To mark the dial of our added years.

O, more than favored, could I meet to-day

The smiles that cheered my dim and faltering way;

O, more than blest, could I recall to-night

Those welcome forms that met my dazzled sight;

All the dear faces, all the buried past,

Too bright and brief, too beautiful to last.

Our vanished years! let Memory's muffled bell

Toll but one requiem, and but one farewell,

For him whose eyelids in a wintry grave

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Were closed in anguish by the icy wave.

Rest, early friend, bemoaned in life's young bloom,

Gone, like a shadow, to the voiceless tomb.

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