:%‘UNERAL GRATMW,

EPHRMM SIMONDS,

O“1‘.«‘
TEMPETON, MASS.,
MEMBER OF THE SENIOR CLASS
IN

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE,

W110 DIED AT HANOVER, N. IL, JUNE 18m, 1801,  26..

 » 

By DANIEL WEBSTER,
A CLASSMATE 012* THE DECEASED.-

“ IS vim sustwhzuit clicere Ziazgua VALE 3 ”

HANOVER 2
PRINTED AT THE DARTMOUTI1 PRESS.
APRIL-~-1855.

ORA_TlON.

No one ever ascended the stage, to speak on a more
delicate subject, than the loss of a companion. It is a
subject, that admits not the flights of fancy, nor the
charms of eloquence. i A

Little, indeed, is he fitted to cull the flowers of rheto-
ric, whose bosom stillbleeds for the loss of its inmate ;
whose powers are overwhelmerl in a flood of sensibility.

To eulogize kings and heros, to swell the pomp of
courtly oratory, by buildirug up paragraphs of shining
and nnmeaning panegyric were an easy, and aninsignif—-
icant task ; but it is unnatural to aim at brilliant image-
ry, or elegant diction, “ when grief sits heavy at the
heart ; hard is it to be formal when we feel, to declaim
When we would weep.

We are at this time assembled for one of those solemn

purposes, imposed on us by the common lot of our na-,
ture. To hear the dull, funeral tell, to marl: the vesti- l

ges and recount the triumphs of death, ever have been,
and ever must be, the mournful business of mortals. [In
consequence of that eternal, universal destiny, from
which man in vain pleads exemption, we now deplore a
loss, too recent to need the powers of recollection, and
too deeply pencilled on the tablets in our bosoms, to have
it’s colorings heightened by the dashes of imagination.
SIMONDS, our brother, our fellow traveller to the temple
of science, our morning friend, and our evening compan-

ion, where is he ? He sits not within these walls; his l

3.;

counten:meo cheers not the spes.l«:er. ile wslhs not the
aisles of yonder building; he is lienrd no more in our
halls ! We a.pp1‘0ach his late abode on yonder eminence,
but no voice bids ns welcome ‘I clesolste, and hung with
his garments, it is at said renieinbrnnce of our loss. Where
then shall we seek for him I’ In the cool of evening,
when grey twilight shrouds the hamlet, shall we find
him erin in srni with it brother? Ales 3 his brothers
are no more to feel the \"€;t1‘111'tl;1 of his hand I Slisll we
see him hereafter around the board of philosophy, or
meet him at the n1te.r of the Muses ? He appe:irs there
no more forever I Shall we behold hill] in some seques-
tered glude, retired from the world, nml wrapped in re-

d ligious conteinplstion? He is not there, -—— he is gone,

and we see him not ngnin? The storm lies oVe1‘ta.he11
him, it lies beuten lmrcl on his temples, and he has fallen !

In the solemn hour of midnight, when the darkness is
terrible, and deep sleep falleth on rnen, the commissioned
angel descended from the throne of Jehovah and bore
him up to the presence of his Judge !

All of him that  morta,l nowlies in the chsrnels of
of yonder cemetery. By the grass that nods over the
mounds of SUMNER, MERRILL, siicl Coon, new rests a,
fourth son of Da7‘z‘m0u2fh, constituting another monument

’ of n1a.n’s mortality. The sun as it sinks to the ocean,

plays its departing beams on his tomb, but they renni-
mete him not. The cold sod presses on his bosom, his
hands liang down in weakness. The bird of the evening
shouts a. melancholy air on the poplar, but her Voice is
stillness to his ears. While his pencil was drawing
scenes of future felicity, while his soul fluttered on the
gay breezes of hope, an unseen hand drew the curtain,
and shut him from our View. The leurels of inanhood
were just ripening on his brow, the principles of future

5

g1'eatnesé‘s were fast collecting in his bosom, when death,
who, like the spouse of Nabis, embraces only to destroy,
folded him in its iron arms. With him 1ife’s visionary
scenes are over, its fancies are fled. The incidents, that

. chequer our human existence, produce no alteration in

his being.
- He seeks the land that no disturbance knows,

Where the faint slumber, and the tired repose ;
Where none at partial fortune can repine,

For slave and master on one couch recline ;
Where heroes’ van.ity and monarchs’ pride

Are humble as the beggar at their side ;

Where death impartial spreads a gloom profound,
And right, and peace and silence reign around !

We saw disease stretch him in tortures. With sight

half prophetic from the agitation of our feelings, we half

perceived the issue. We saw, that the black wing of
death must ere long extend over him, that he soon must
leave us --—
“ And scarce our tongues could say, FAMWELL ! ”

In vain. our attention, in vain our solicitude ! --—~——Though
aniety hovered round his bed, and watched the motion
of his lips ; though brotherly love strewed the couch and
softened the pillow, it availed not ; on the page of the
Eternal Will was it written, and SIMONDS dies !

Thus is man, and thus are his days, weak and help-
less -—-———g few and transient. He rises in the morn of life,
health flushes his cheek, and dances in his veins ; nature
salutes him, her lord, and offers him the sceptre, he builds
his airy castle, and weaves a web for future years 3 but,
ere he is aware, the mandate comes and he has but just
time to gather his garments, and depart where the great
and the good have gone before him.

Our friend, therefore, has only trodden the path that

' all must pursue. He has entered the innermost of the

temple of eternity, and left us treading in the vestibule.



With the reflection, then, that we soon must follow him,
let us resign him into the hands of his Maker. But let
us not bury his example with his body. May his virtues
ever live in our practice, as his memory ever must in our
minds.

SIMONDs shall never be forgotten. The future child of V

Dartmouth, as he treads o’er the mansions of the dead,
with his hand on his bosom shall point,  ~  “ THERE
LIES SIMONDS !” and however careless of his eternal be-
ing, however immersed in dissipation or frozen in apa-
thy, he shall check, for a moment, the tide of his mirth,
and while an involuntary tear startles in his eye, shall
read,

 

“ Hie jacet, gaem religrio at sctentia co7zdccoraverant.”

The annalist of our institution shall not deem it be»
neath the dignity of his story, to turn aside from the de-
tails of scientific improvement, and to record, that on the
18th of Jane, 1801, died EPHRAIM SIMONDS ; whom all
loved, against whom theforhed tongue of envy was silent,
and the arrows of malignity harmless.

It is not our business elaborately to eulogize, nor our
Wish to emblazon the memory of the dead with the glare
of applause. To those who knew our departed friend
panegyric were insipid ; to those who knew him not, it
might appear vain. Suffice it to say, that his acquain-
tances recognized, in his person, the gentleman, the
scholar and the Christian ; in the commerce of life, free
and affable; in the Walks of literature, inquisitive and
sagacious ; in the truths of religion, firm and inflexible
—-——-looking forward to the high and exalted merit of ser-
ving his country and his God. As his religioninculca-
ted the exercise of a noble A and ingenuous frankness, the

vile sons of craft and duplicity inherited neither part nor

lot in his affections. t A y i

7

To surviving friends, gladdening in the reflection, that
he died, as he had lived,a firm believer in the sublime
doctrines of Christianity. He died not like Voltaire, the
champion of infidelity, in the anguish of his soul, and
with a hell in his bosom ; he died not uttering impreca--
tions and blasphemies ; he died not in the agonizing tor-
tures of a criminating conscience ; but when the lamp of
life quivered in its socket, when he perceived the days
of his years were completed, the last rational moment of
his life was occupied in prayer to Him, Whose blood
streamed on Calvary, the Immanuel, the Prince of Peace.
Whoever knew him in life, and saw him in death, will
cordially address this honorable testimony to his mem-
ory.

" He taught us how to live, and, 0 too high
“ The price of knowledge E taught us how to die.”

The dignity that invested his character in his late
hour, was the endowment of that religion, which ever
proves a faithful director in life and a powerful friend in
death. When the pride of science, the pageantry of phi-—
losophy, the wily arts of cunning and subterfuge, and
the parade of hypocrisy all vanish away, religion then,
like 'a protecting seraph, shields her votary from harm,
drives from his presence the pale, terrifying spectres of
death and despair, and serenely lays him to repose in the
bosom of Providence. Religion dissevers the chain that
binds man to the dust, and bids him be immortal. « It
enables the soul to recline on the arm of the Almighty,
and the tempest beats harmless around her. “ In the

smooth seasons and the calms of life,” the worth of re—- A
ligion is not estimated. Like every thing else, Which»

has in it the genuine marks of greatness, it is not captie
vated by the allurements of Wordly, grandeur, nor the
soft, silken scenes of luxury. Amidst the gaiety and

8

frivolity of a Parisian Court, the philosopher of Fernay
could curse religion without a blush; —-- Hume, proud of
that reputation which his talents acquired him, could
play it off in a metaphysical jargon ; and Paine disposes
of it, with a sneer and a lie. But let religion be estima-
ted by him, who is just walking to the stake of the mar-
tyr ; by him who is soon to suffer the terrors of the in-
quisition; by him who is proscribed and banished from
his family, from his friends and from his country.»-—-~These
will tell you that religion is invaluable ; and that it gives
them comfort here 3 that it is the earnest of life eternal,
the warrant that gives possession of endless felicity.

Whoever therefore, possesses and practises the pure
principles of Christianity, leaves, at his decease, a tur-
bulent, vicious world, for the society of sanctified and
glorified beings. How salutary then is the balm of Gil--fl
ead -—-- how fair the roses that bud on Zion!

While we mourn, let us not mourn for ourselves alone...
In sympathy there is nothing selfish nor contracted ; an-
imated and benevolent, its rays are diffused as widely as
the strokes of affliction are felt. There are scenes still
more affecting than we have witnessed, there are bosoms,
whose sorrow is greater than our own. Is any one here
whose tears have flown for a son, or for a brother ? Any
one, who has felt the heart-rending pangs of a separa-—
tion of those ties, which nature forms and love corrobo--A

, rates '? Go to the shades of Templeton, to the bosom of

a family surprised by the tidings of death ! Your feel-

ings shall there be arrested by eloquence that nothing

can resist, the eloquence of nature, the eloquence of grief.
A brother’s tears, a sister’s sighs shall there awaken the
sympathetic emotions in every heart that is not steeled

in insensibility. Robed in the sable attire of affliction,

you shall there behold a mother, whose bosom ithrobs-+——

9

 

You shall see a father but you have seen. Lowly"
bending over yonder balustrade you have seen the tear‘

of age trickle down the cheek of a venerable parent.

T has commenced his Eternity !

With eyes turned towards Heaven, you have seen the
struggle between fortitude and affection shake his frame.
You saw, and did you not pity? Did not the manliness
of silent grief heave a sigh» from your breasts, that ascen-
ded with your morning aspirations, and mingled with
the hallowed incense of a parent’s prayers at the throne
of Grace C’ -

But sighs, and tears, and grief are unavailing; they
enter not the chambers of death, they resuscitate not
from the grave ! --—— To that God, then, in whose hands
are life and death, whose throne is established in justice,
and the beams of whosemercy illuminate universal be-—
ing, let us commit our much loved friend, and bid him a
cordial and final Farewell !

Peace to his shades ! and when the general doom
Shall raise him renovated from the tomb,

Be Gr‘race’s white mantle o’er his shoulders spread,-
And the Saiut’s triumph blaze around his head *

BROTHERS or THEOLASS.

This day completes the course of our Collegiate
studies, and gives us to the world. The hour of separa-
tion, ever mournful among friends, whose hearts are uni-
ted, to us is doublylmournful from the loss of a highly
respected Class-mate. Before to-morrow’s sun shall go‘
down, we are dispersed. We part, however, with the
ardent and consoling hope of meeting once more, and of
taking a more solemnadieu on the day of our Anniver-
sary. But with SIMONDS we meet not again I The part-
ing moment is over ! He has already pronounced his
Valedictory ; he flitted on the wings of A a seraph ; he
Impressed with this

 

10

"reflection, let us retire from this mournful business of the

present occasion, and as the last, best tribute we can pay
to his ashes, let us subscribe our names, as he did his, to
the catalogueof virtue’s friends. Let his Inernory be

embalrned on our bosons, and through every period of

our future life, let his image be constantly with us, a

monitor to our actions.

May those guardian Spirits, that Watch around the
just, guide and protect us, together and apart ; may Al-
mighty Grace secure us from evil, and energize all our
talents in the exercise of Christian rnorality; and when
it shall be said of us, that earth embosoms her sons, may
We then be united with our SIMONDS in that far better
country, where the solemn dirge shall be exchanged for
the symphonies of Gabriel’s harp, and the voice of fune-
ral Eulogy be heard no more !

fifli QUE;

COMPOSED ANI) SET TO l\H.7§’:‘«l7C FOR 'l.'I-IE FTJNISII‘-3AL OF
E131-$E..A.I]&/I $~I:I.\/I(3'.'DO'1D$,

What mournfiil voice thus sounds afar ?

’Tis Smonns’ Ghost on evening air a! ,

He beckons me to yonder glade,

He beckons Where his bones are laid,

Deep, deep in earth beneath the cypress shade.

His days are o’er, his sands are run;

The night of death obscures his sun ;

Silent his "voice, and dim his eyes,

Back from his cheek the color flies,

The eternal will decrees, and Snuonns dies. 1

p Enfranchisecl Spirit, 0 Adieu! w

Thy pains were great, thy joys were few.

Death freed thee from this world of care,

Hope spread her wings, abashed despair,

Pointed to Heaven, and shoW'cl thy portion there!

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