Come, brethren. consecrate the shrine,
The fluted shaft or marble urn,
O'er which morn's earliest beam may shine,
And twilight's latest incense burn;
A fair memorial on whose face
Thy name, dear Herbert, we may trace.
Place not the shaft in cloister'd aisle,
Where never blessed light may smile,
Not in Cathedral grim and gray,
Where brightening daylight ne'er may stray,
'Mid charnel stones and ancient mold,
And tatter'd fringe of canker'd gold;
But rather place it on some height,
When free the breezes sweep their flight,
Where blaze of sun or moonbeam blest,
Or gleam of star may on it rest;
So that the pilgrim wandering there,
May gaze entranced on landscape fair,
On purpled hills, on tufted grove,
Where Herbert's footstep lov'd to rove,
On grassy plain and flowing stream,
On Greenwood lake, with all its gleam,
O'er upland pasture, bowery grot,
That once had echoed to his shot.
Gaze down, see crystal streamlets shine,
Where he had cast the angler's line;
The lake engirdled with its wood,
Where he the fisher's art pursued:
Where far away, and fair to view
To the horizon's hazy blue.
The Warwick woodlands gloriously
Roll their brown billows like a sea.
Lover of nature! his delight
To watch the constellations bright,
To see the glory of the day,
Shine over mount or prairies gay,
To see the woods majestic spread
Their glooms, their wildernesses dread,
And follow to their inmost heart,
The joys so dear to sportsman's heart.
Here will the fluttering songbirds sing,
Their tuneful madrigals of spring.
The purple dove her plaint will pour,
The meadow-lark will upward soar.
The whippoorwill when eve is dim,
Will chant her sorrowful, sweet hymn,
While from the thicket of the vale,
Pipeth the shrill responsive quail,
And all the sights and sounds of love,
Will consecrate the dusky grove.
This monument shows the head of the writer, outdoors-lover and hunter, Frank Forester (also known as Henry William Herbert). He hunted often in the woods around Warwick, New York, and wrote a book called Warwick Woodlands (1839).