Thomas Kibble Hervey (1799 – 1859)
British poet and critic.
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A Hebrew knelt in the dying light,
His eye was dim and cold,
The hairs on his brow were silver-white,
And his blood was thin and old.
A love that took an early root,
And had an early doom.
Wake, soldier, wake, thy war-horse waits
To bear thee to the battle back;
Thou slumberest at a foeman’s gates,—
Thy dog would break thy bivouac;
Thy plume is trailing in the dust
And thy red falchion gathering rust.
Gayly we glide in the gaze of the world
With streamers afloat and with canvas unfurled,
All gladness and glory to wandering eyes,
Yet chartered by sorrow and freighted with sighs.
He stood beside a cottage lone
And listened to a lute,
One summer’s eve, when the breeze was gone,
And the nightingale was mute.
The tomb of him who would have made
The world too glad and free.
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