The picturesque pocket companion, and visitor's guide, through Mount Auburn

The following lines, occasioned by the decease of Buckingham, and the authorship of which is ascribed to Mr. Sprague, appeared, not long after that event, in the New England Magazine, of which highly respectable publication he was a proprietor, as well as the editor of it, in connection with his father, for several years:--

Spare him one little week, Almighty Power!
Yield to his Father's house his dying hour;
Once more, once more let them, who held him dear,
But see his face, his faltering voice but hear;
We know, alas! that he is marked for death,
But let his Mother watch his parting breath:
Oh! let him die at home!

It could not be:
At midnight, on a dark and stormy sea,
Far from his kindred and his native land,
His pangs unsoothed by tender Woman's hand,
The patient victim in his cabin lay,
And meekly breathed his blameless life away.
...

Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear,
His body to the deck they slowly bear:
How eloquent, how awful in its power,
The silent lecture of Death's sabbath hour!
One voice that silence breaks — the prayer is said,
And the last rite man pays to man is paid:
The plashing waters mark his resting place,
And fold him round in one long, cold embrace;
Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er,
Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more;