VIRGINIA: 
 
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 DELIVERED BEFORE THE VIRGINIA ALIMIA (iF THE THI DETA KAI'PA SOCIETY, IN THE 
 CHAI'EL OF WILIJAM AND MARV COLLEGE, \V1 LLIAMSUURU, JL'LY 3, 185G. 
 
 BY .mo. R. THOMPSON. 
 
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 Published by Order of the Society. 
 
 RICHMOND : 
 
 MACFARLANE & FERGUSSON, 
 
 1856. 
 
76 3* 3 3 
 
TO 
 
 B. JOHNSON BARBOUR, ESQ 
 
 THESE HUMBLE VERSES 
 
 AKE INSCEIBED BY THE AUTHOR, 
 
 AS THE SLIGHT TOKEN OF 
 
 A VERY GREAT REGARD. 
 
fl'ILLIAM .WD MART COLLEGE. 
 
 POEM. 
 
 Hail ! blue-eyecl Sister of tlie Sacred ^Ye\l, 
 
 Whose smile illumines every bosky delP, 
 
 And on each storied lake or landscape streams, 
 
 Like moonlight thro' the ivory gate of dreams-, — 
 
 A fond admirer here invokes your aid, 
 
 Altho' a poet neither "born" nor " made," 
 
 He wants, what worthier bards have wanted too. 
 
 A fine exordium — and he turns to you I 
 
 If his unlicensed brow no Avreath of bays, 
 
 In token of the poet's rank, display's — 
 
 If his prosaic shoulders do not bear 
 
 The singing-robe your favorites always wear — 
 
 Yet let him in your radiant realm remain 
 
 A little season, and inspire his strain ; 
 
 Then should he, haply, prove unworthy still, 
 
 Some modest pogt, Euterpe, let him fill ; 
 
 He asks not fame — contented to revise 
 
 Apollo's proof-sheets, and forego the prize. 
 
 Meantime, most gracious and respected Muse, 
 What theme this morning shall your vot'ry choose ? 
 
Virginia — A Poem. 
 
 I catch a gush of melody, and clear 
 This tuneful answer breaks upon the ear — 
 " Set restless Fancy free, and where her wing 
 Conducts the eye, of that bright region sing!' 
 'Tis done; unloosed the jesses, Fancy sails 
 Buoyant aloft upon the friendly gales. 
 Awhile she moves in arrowy flight along 
 The sunny ether of the land of Song, 
 Ranges from coast to crag, nor leaves unseen 
 The purple meadows that repose between, 
 Then fondly bends, with poising wing, above 
 The dear Virginia of our hopes and love ; 
 As the swift eagle, circling proudly o'er 
 Our boundless continent from shore to shore, 
 Sees rock and river, prairie, waste and wood, 
 The shining city and the solitude, 
 The snowy sail by Huron's breezes fanned, 
 And the light ripple on the bayou's strand. 
 And stoops at last to fold his sombre pinion 
 On some blue mountain of the Old Dominion ! 
 
 Imperial land ! could ever song of mine 
 
 With fairer glories make thy borders shine — 
 
 Could my rude minstrelsy with charm invest 
 
 Each spot in beauty or in grandeur drest — . 
 
 And to thy Oread-haunted valleys give 
 
 A grace, united with their own to live — 
 
 How should thy rivers to the ocean glide, 
 
 Like Arno's stream or Teviot's "silver tide," 
 
 Reflecting each upon its mirror'd face 
 
 The light which genius lends its dwelling place ; 
 
 How should Boccaccio's mellow atmosphere 
 
 Hang round each hill and kiss each dimpled mere, 
 
 How should thy ramparts echo with the blast 
 
 Of lordly music flowing out the past ; 
 
 From the cool beach, where white with rage and frantic 
 
 Dash the wild billows of the chafed Atlantic, 
 
 Along the Ridge, whose azure peaks on high 
 
 Toss their soft summits 'gainst an amber sky. 
 
 To where Ohio sends, through darkling woods, 
 
 Its tribute to the mighty Sire of Floods ; 
 
 Till the whole space thy distant lines surround, 
 
 Our goodly heritage, were classic ground, 
 
Virginia — A Poem. 
 
 And all thy pleasant places, noble State, 
 Thenceforth forever should be consecrate 
 
 Virginia ! thou hast had in plenteous store 
 
 The gifts men chiefly honour and adore ; 
 
 Thy story burns with Valour's dazzling blaze 
 
 Or calmly glows with Wisdom's milder rays, 
 
 While Eloquence, that melts the coldest hearts, 
 
 To the bright record all its fire imparts : 
 
 The Warrior, resting on his stainless sword, 
 
 The Orator, whose lips persuasion poured, 
 
 The Statesman, he who wrought from chaos warm 
 
 The elements of empire into form, 
 
 The jurist, who has "shaped the State's decrees," 
 
 All, like the figures on a marble frieze. 
 
 Stand grandly forth, thy greatness to proclaim, 
 
 Upon the tablets of thy ancient fame. 
 
 One stately image yet is wanting there. 
 
 The Bard, with fillets twined around his hair, 
 
 No favored son, created for all time. 
 
 For thee has ever " built the lofty rhyme," 
 
 And joined the radiant, rose-encircled throng. 
 
 Within the Temple dedicate to Song : 
 
 One gifted child thou hadst, who reached, in vain, 
 
 The vast propylon of the gleaming fane, 
 
 'Twas his to see the columns, pure and white. 
 
 Of marble and of ranged chrysolite — 
 
 The lines of jasper through the golden gates — 
 
 Alas ! no more was suffered by the Fates. 
 
 Like Baldur, fairest of the sons of morning, 
 
 The halls of Odin lustrously adorning. 
 
 He early caught the pale, blue, fearful glance 
 
 Of shadowy Hela's awful countenance. 
 
 Lamented Cooke ! if all that love could lend 
 
 To the chaste scholar and the faithful friend, 
 
 If all the spoiler forced us to resign 
 
 In the calm virtues of a life like thine, 
 
 Could bid him turn his fatal dart aside 
 
 From our young Lycidas, thou had'st not died : 
 
 Peace to the Poet's shade ! His ashes rest 
 
 Near the sweet spot he loved on earth the best. 
 
 The modest daisies from the surface peeping. 
 
 As from the sod where Florence Vane lies sleeping 
 
 Cf5 
 
Virginia — A Poem. 
 
 While his own river murmurs, as it flows, 
 Perpetual requiem o'er his soft repose. 
 
 And still another child Virginia nursed, 
 
 Who had her glories loftily rehearsed, 
 
 But that his genius sought "a wild, weird clime," 
 
 Beyond the bounds of either space or time. 
 
 From whose dim circuit, with unearthly swell, 
 
 A burst of lyric rapture often fell, 
 
 Which swept at last into a strain as dreary 
 
 As a lost spirit's plaintive Miserere ; 
 
 Unhappy PoE, what destiny adverse 
 
 Still hung around thee both to bless and curse ; 
 
 The Fairies' gifts, who on thy birth attended. 
 
 Seemed all with bitter maledictions blended ; 
 
 The golden crown that on thy brow was seen. 
 
 Like that Medea sent to Jason's queen, 
 
 In cruel splendor shone but to consume. 
 
 And decked its victim proudly for 'th<} temk 
 
 Yet shall the Poet make in coming time, 
 His bright avatar in our sunny clime ; 
 And where shall inspiration urge the soul 
 Thro' grand poetic harmonies to roll, 
 JS'Iore fittingly than in this calm retreat 
 Of studious Science — Learning's earliest seat? 
 Where does Romance more lavishly diffuse 
 Upon our soil its ever brilliant hues 
 Than here, where Patriotism's sacred glow 
 Xindled the wrath that laid the tyrant low ? 
 I walk these ancient haunts with reverent tread, 
 And seem to gaze npon the mighty dead : 
 Imarrination calls a noble train 
 From gloom and darkness back to life a-galn, 
 Whose air majestic lends. a statelier grace, 
 A soft enchantment to the honored place. 
 So have I strolled at twilight's rosy hour 
 Along the quiet street, where Morton's tower 
 Lifts its rich tracery thro' the nodding trees, 
 That rise o'er Oxford's halls of lettered ease, 
 And felt the presence of the tranquil scene, 
 Till forms long-buried flitted o'er the green ; 
 There graceful Raleigh moved, immortal name ! 
 And Addison from cloistered musings came, 
 
Virginia — A Poeyn. 
 
 There stalked portentous Johnson's burly shade, 
 And pensive Collins down the vista strayed ; 
 And as they vanished into common air, 
 Their clustering memories, ever fresh and fair, 
 Like ivy round each turret seemed to twine 
 And every chapter-house became a shrine ! 
 
 'Tis thus that Art is long, tho' Time is fleeting — 
 
 The wise old maxim that we keep repeating — 
 
 And Wisdom, with endurance not of earth, 
 
 Outlives for aye the age that gave it birth ; 
 
 So shall our Academus planted here 
 
 Survive, in its results, from year to year, 
 
 Tho' ruin settles on its antique Avails 
 
 And from its lonely courts the bittern calls ; 
 
 So shall the writer, w^ho with skill portra,ys 
 
 Virginia's history in coming days, 
 
 Mark how it enters in the general plati 
 
 And with delighted eye its progress scan, 
 
 A thread of gold still running brightly thro' 
 
 The wondrous tapestry from Old to New. 
 
 Thus tracing here the honors interwove 
 
 Of State and College, Capitol and Grove, 
 
 I leave unsung those grand, heroic men 
 
 Who walked the heights, so dizzy to our ken, 
 
 Where first our starry banner was unfurled, 
 
 And seem yet visible to half the world — 
 
 And follow Memory, as she fondly turns 
 
 To yet more precious, if less stately urns. 
 
 But twice the roses of the Spring have blown, 
 
 Since rambling far in other lands, alone, 
 
 I sought the hillock where the cypress bends 
 
 O'er Dew, lamented still by " troops of friends," 
 
 The sage, whose active and well ordered mind 
 
 Books had enriched and social life refined, 
 
 And pondering there on wisdom, learning, worth. 
 
 Buried with him beneath that foreign earth, 
 
 I thought of Tucker's high and varied powers, 
 
 His fame, of all indeed that made him ours ; 
 
 The sweet benignity, the careless grace. 
 
 With earnest thought commingled in his face : — 
 
 You watched his genius — saw its steady shine. 
 
 Its full meridian, its undimmed dechne ; 
 
10 Virginia — A Poeyn. 
 
 How bright the noonday, how serene and clear 
 
 The solemn evening of that calm career, 
 
 And mark how pure a lustre lingers yet 
 
 Where from our loving gaze that full-orbed genius set ! 
 
 Where shall the poet find, tho' wandering long, 
 
 A spot so fragrant of unuttered song 
 
 As this old city, whose colonial glory 
 
 Fades into Jamestown's legendary story ? 
 
 One mouldering tower, o'ergrown with ivy, shows 
 
 Where first Virginia's capital arose. 
 
 And to the tourist's vision far withdrawn 
 
 Stands like a sentry at the gates of dawn. 
 
 The church has perished — faint the lines and dim 
 
 Of those whose voices raised the choral hymn. 
 
 Go read the record on the mossy stone, 
 
 'Tis brief and sad — oblivion claims its own : 
 
 Yet Fancy musing, by the placid wave, 
 
 With gentle Wirt above some nameless grave. 
 
 May animate the sleeping dust once more, 
 
 And all the past in vivid tints restore. 
 
 Nor should the picture lack for livelier strokes, 
 (As this my poem sadly wants its jokes,) 
 t When came the epic muse to later times : 
 
 (I trust the change will brighten up my rhymes.) 
 
 Oh ! those were jolly, good old days, in sooth, 
 
 Consule Planco — in the Raleigh's youth. 
 
 When to the town at Xmas would repair 
 
 The gallant lords and ladies debonair ; 
 
 When balls and races, dinners, routs, the play, 
 
 In quick succession, made the season gay ; 
 
 When Ennui was unknown — delightful age ! 
 
 French modes and phrases were not then the rage ; 
 
 When courtly lovers and their chosen flames 
 
 In sweet simplicity took pastoral names ; 
 
 Thus Damon fair Celinda's graces set 
 
 To smoothest verses in the old Gazette, 
 
 And Strephon, both to please and to adorn her, 
 
 Courted his Chloe in the "Poet's Corner," 
 
 While all — Celinda, Damon, Strephon, Chloe — 
 
 Oh manly forms ! oh bosoms soft and snowy ! 
 
 Danced stiff old minuets throughout the night, 
 
 Visions of satin, spare my aching sight ! 
 
Virginia — A Poem. 11 
 
 With grandest music floating round the Avliole — 
 Ye powdered bigwigs, crowd not on my soul ! 
 
 Fiction at last has turned its gaze, we knoAV, 
 
 Upon those golden days of long ago ; 
 
 And as, obedient to the prompter's call, 
 
 Time's misty curtain rises over all. 
 
 Before us now the quaint Comedians pass — 
 
 And see ! the modern footlights blaze with gas. 
 
 In robes resplendent, freshened every hue, 
 
 The faded scarlet and the watery blue. 
 
 The beaux and belles of long forgotten years 
 
 Have "sly flirtations" 'neath the chandeliers; 
 
 Yet in the brilliant crowd the form I see 
 
 With greatest pleasure is the F. F. V. — 
 
 Aristocratic type of lofty sires, 
 
 Of whom 'tis said " Virginia never tires," 
 
 When this great actor comes upon the stage. 
 
 His graceful movements all my thoughts engage, 
 
 As in the Bowery pit, Mose strains his eye, 
 
 W^hen Billy Kirby rushes on to die ! 
 
 Time changes all. When in the morning gray 
 
 The smoke from Y'orktown slowly rolled away. 
 
 And there revealed our flag flung proudly out 
 
 Oer slippery mound and perilous redoubt. 
 
 Another age Virginia ushered in — 
 
 End pompous Court and Commonwealth begin ! 
 
 Colonial grandeur soon aside was laid 
 
 With sword and periwig and gold brocade. 
 
 And of the prim old courtiers soon the last 
 
 Walked grandly down into the dusky past. 
 
 And now behold Virginia's active life 
 
 Of varied labour and industrial strife — 
 
 Where Spotswood followed on the Indian trail, 
 
 They 're busy putting down the heavy rail ; 
 
 And iron coursers thunder over the land 
 
 Where pressed the "golden horse-shoe" in the sand; 
 
 The constant roar of ponderous machines 
 
 Drowns the blithe music of remote ravines ; 
 
 In our Parnassus there's a recent hole 
 
 In which the workmen dig for cannel coal ; 
 
 And Cato, Liberty's devout admirer. 
 
 Who wrote those essays in the old inquirer, 
 
12 Virginia — A Poem. 
 
 For such pursuits has no more time to spare, 
 But fattens Durhams for the Annual Fair. 
 
 What tho' they say Virginia lags behind 
 
 Her rival sisters in the march of mind ? 
 
 What tho' so frequently 'tis ours to hear 
 
 The pointless jest, the miserable sneer, 
 
 From men, whose freedom 'twas her joy to save, 
 
 Or States, whose every inch of soil she gave ? 
 
 If some sweet lethargy has sealed her lips 
 
 And quenched her vision in a brief eclipse ; 
 
 And on the pedestal of former fame — 
 
 Whose proud inscription is her simple name — 
 
 She long has stood in statuesque repose, 
 
 Pure as if hewn from everlasting snows, 
 
 'Tis as Hermione, the peerless Queen, 
 
 The glorious image, stood in Shakspeare's scene ; 
 
 Soon shall the form descend, no more be stone, 
 
 With flowing drapery and flashing zone. 
 
 Walk forth in majesty, Minerva-like, 
 
 And all who look on her with marvel strike ! 
 
**(,■ ^W".-- ^