  1798=1859. Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, was born in Louisville, Georgia. In 1835 he emigrated to Texas and took part in the struggle for independence against Mexico, being major-general in the army. He was successively Attorney-General in the cabinet of President Houston, Secretary of War, Vice-president, and in 1838 President of the Republic, the second of the four presidents that Texas had before it became a State in the Union. In 1857-8 he was United States minister to Central America. WORKS.Verse Memorials. Lamar was rather a man of action than of letters; but the following verses speak for him as having true poetic appreciation of beauty and power to express it. THE DAUGHTER OF MENDOZA.O lend to me, sweet nightingale, Your music by the fountain, And lend to me your cadences, O rivers of the mountain! That I may sing my gay brunette, A diamond spark in coral set, Gem for a prince’s coronet— The daughter of Mendoza. The evening light how tender,— The light of both is in her eyes, Their softness and their splendor. But for the lash that shades their light They were too dazzling for the sight, And when she shuts them, all is night,— The daughter of Mendoza. O ever bright and beauteous one, Bewildering and beguiling, The lute is in thy silvery tones, The rainbow in thy smiling; And thine is, too, o’er hill and dell, The bounding of the young gazelle, The arrow’s flight and ocean’s swell— Sweet daughter of Mendoza! What though, perchance, we no more meet,— What though too soon we sever? Thy form will float like emerald light Before my vision ever. For who can see and then forget The glories of my gay brunette— Thou art too bright a star to set, Sweet daughter of Mendoza! |
|
