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A Tear to Hume

“ORIGINAL POETRY,” Medley; or Monthly Miscellany, vol. 1 (1803), p. 249.

“THE PHILANTHROPIST”

The Medley; or Monthly Miscellany was published in Lexington, Kentucky, and edited by D. Bradford. It is thought to have been the first miscellaneous monthly magazine to be issued west of Pittsburgh. On the Medley see API, p. 136; BAP, p. 99; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 32, 206.

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A TEAR TO HUME.

  IMMORTAL Hume! thy name shall shine sublime,

And triumph, greatly o’er the car of Time;

Thy fame will spread; while genius has a friend,

Thy talents be admired, till time shall have an end.

Let vain pretenders blight thy fairest fame,

And musty schoolmen deprecate thy name;

Let stupid priests thy mighty powers deride,

And fools presumptious burst with turgid pride;

The feeling soul, the sympathetic mind

Will weep a tear, half-o’er thy tomb reclin’d;

  And say, while listening to the winter’s blast

  That howls relentless o’er thy sacred manes,

“Ah cruel death! why snatch this reverend prize,

“And close it in unceasing darkness from our eyes?

“Insatiate victor! spare the great, the good,

“Bear in their place, the useless down the flood.”

This is, immortal Hume! the sage’s dirge,

Which ne’er will cease till worlds from worlds emerge.

THE PHILANTHROPIST.