The Rhode Island Republican

POETRY.

From the Albany Argus.

[A young friend of mine, while taking a short voyage for his health a few weeks since, rose one morning in a state of mental derangement and threw himself from the deck of the vessel. He was never seen afterwards.]

There was no bell to peal thy funeral dirge,
No nodding plumage to wave above thy bier,
No shroud to wrap thee but the foaming surge,
No kindly voices thy dark way to cheer?
No eye to give the tribute of a tear.
Alone, unknelled, uncoffined thou hast died,
Without one gentle mourner lingering near;
Down the deep waters thou unseen didst glide,
With Ocean's countless dead to slumber side by side.

Thou sleep'st not with thy fathers. O'er thy bed,
The flowers that deck their tombs may never wave,
To plead remembrance for thee, o'er thy head
No sculptured marble shall arise. Thy grave
Is the dark boundless deep, whose waters lave
The shores of empires. When thou sought'st thy rest
Amid their silent depths, they only gave
A circling ripple, then with foaming crest
The billowy waves rolled on, o'er their unconscious guest.

'Tis said that far beneath the wild waves rushing,
Where sea flowers bloom and fabled Peris dwell,
That there restless waters cease their gushing,
And leave their dead within some sparkling cell,
Where gems are gleaming, and the lone sea shell
Is breathing its sweet music. And 'tis said
That old Time, whose scythe waveth over all a spell
Of blight and ruin o'er the Ocean's dead
He passeth lightly on, with trackless silent tread,

Then, though no marble e'er shall rise for thee,
No monument to mark thy last long home,
Thine ocean grave unhonored shall be
The coral insect there shall weave a tomb
That age shall ne'er destroy; and there shall bloom
The fadeless ocean flowers. And though the glare
Of the bright sunbeams ne'er shall light its gloom,
Yet glancing eyes and forms unearthly fair
Shall throng around thy couch, and hymn a requiem there.

Now fare thee well! I will not weep that thou
Didst pass so soon away; or though thou wert
Still in thy boyhood's prime, and thy fair brow
Undimmed by age; yet sad was thy young heart,
For thou hadst seen friend after friend depart,
And Love had thrown his wild and burning spell
Around thee, and with sly insidious art
Had maddened thee. Then sounded loud the knell
Of all thy bright young dreams. My earliest friend, farewell!

L.