Every sight and sound this morning seemed calculated to summon up
touching recollections of poor Byron. The chime was from the village
spire of Hucknall Torkard, beneath which his remains lie buried!
----I have since visited his tomb. It is in an old gray country church,
venerable with the lapse of centuries. He lies buried beneath the
pavement, at one end of the principal aisle. A light falls on the spot
through the stained glass of a Gothic window, and a tablet on the
adjacent wall announces the family vault of the Byrons. It had been the
wayward intention of the poet to be entombed, with his faithful dog, in
the monument erected by him in the garden of Newstead Abbey. His
executors showed better judgment and feeling, in consigning his ashes
to the family sepulchre, to mingle with those of his mother and his
kindred. Here,
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further!"
How nearly did his dying hour realize the wish made by him, but a few
years previously, in one of his fitful moods of melancholy and
misanthropy:
"When time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!
"No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep or wish the coining blow:
No maiden with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or fein decorous woe.
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