26 ’There, at the foot of yonder
nodding beech,
That wreathes
its old fantastic root so high,
His listless length
at noontide would he stretch,
And pore
upon the brook that babbles by.
27 ’Hard by yon wood, now smiling
as in scorn,
Muttering
his wayward fancies, he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful,
wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed
with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.
28 ’One morn I miss’d him
on the accustom’d hill,
Along the
heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came, nor yet
beside the rill,
Nor up the
lawn, nor at the wood, was he:
29 ’The next, with dirges due, in
sad array,
Slow through
the churchway-path we saw him borne:
Approach, and read (for
thou canst read) the lay
Graved on
the stone beneath yon aged thorn:’[2]
THE EPITAPH.
30 Here rests his head upon the lap of
Earth,
A youth
to Fortune and to Fame unknown:
Fair Science frown’d
not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy
mark’d him for her own.
31 Large was his bounty, and his soul
sincere;
Heaven did
a recompense as largely send:
He gave to misery all
he had—a tear;
He gain’d
from Heaven—’twas all he wish’d—a
friend.
32 No further seek his merits
to disclose,
Or draw
his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in
trembling hope repose)
The bosom
of his Father and his God.
[Footnote 1: This part of the elegy differs from the first copy. The following stanza was excluded with the other alterations:—
Hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes
around,
Bids every fierce tumultuous
passion cease,
In still small accents whispering from
the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal
peace. ]
[Footnote 2: In early editions, the following stanza occurred:—
There scatter’d oft, the earliest
of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers
of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble
there,
And little footsteps lightly
print the ground. ]
* * * * *
EPITAPH ON MRS JANE CLARKE.[1]
Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps;
A heart, within whose sacred cell
The peaceful Virtues loved to dwell:
Affection warm, and faith sincere,
And soft humanity were there.
In agony, in death resign’d,
She felt the wound she left behind.
Her infant image here below
Sits smiling on a father’s woe:
Whom what awaits while yet he strays
Along the lonely vale of days?
A pang, to secret sorrow dear,
A sigh, an unavailing tear,
Till time shall every grief remove
With life, with memory, and with love.