[Page [253]]

LINES WRITTEN ON THE PILLAR ERECTING TO THE MEMORY OF MR. BARLOW,

Minister of the United States at Paris, WHO DIED AT NAROWITCH IN POLAND, ON HIS RETURN FROM WILNA, DEC. 26, 1812.

1 WHERE o'er the Polish desert's trackless way
2 Relentless Winter rules with savage sway,
3 Where the shrill Polar winds, as wild they blow,
4 Seem to repeat some plaint of mortal woe,
5 Far o'er the cheerless waste, the traveller's eye
6 Shall this recording pillar long descry,
7 And give the sod a tear where BARLOW lies
8 He who was simply great and nobly wise.
9 Here, led by patriot zeal, he met his doom,
10 And found, amid the frozen wastes, a tomb;
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11 Far from his native soil the patriot fell,
12 Far from that Western World he sung so well!
13 Nor she, so long belov'd! nor she was nigh,
14 To catch the dying look, the parting sigh!
15 She who, the hopeless anguish to beguile,
16 In fond memorial rears the fun'ral pile!
17 Whose widow'd bosom on Columbia's shore
18 Shall mourn the moments that return no more;
19 While, bending o'er the broad Atlantic wave,
20 Sad fancy hovers on the distant grave.

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Title (in Source Edition): LINES WRITTEN ON THE PILLAR ERECTING TO THE MEMORY OF MR. BARLOW, Minister of the United States at Paris, WHO DIED AT NAROWITCH IN POLAND, ON HIS RETURN FROM WILNA, DEC. 26, 1812.
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Genres: heroic couplet; occasional poem

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Williams, Helen Maria, 1759-1827. Poems on various subjects: with introductory remarks on the present state of science and literature in France. London: G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823, pp. [253]-254.  (Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [8º W 229 BS].)

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Typography, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been cautiously modernized. The source of the text is given and all significant editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. This ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

Other works by Helen Maria Williams