Their lot forbade:  nor circumscribed alone 65
    Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
  Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
    And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

  The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
    To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70
  Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
    With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

  Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
    Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
  Along the cool sequestered vale of life 75
    They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

  Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect,
    Some frail memorial still[13] erected nigh,
  With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
    Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 80

  Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unlettered Muse,[14]
    The place of fame and elegy supply: 
  And many a holy text around she strews,
    That teach the rustic moralist to die.

  For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, 85
    This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned,
  Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
    Nor cast one longing, ling’ring look behind?

  On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
    Some pious drops the closing eye requires; 90
  Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
    Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

  For thee, who mindful of th’ unhonored Dead[15]
    Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
  If chance,[16] by lonely Contemplation led, 95
    Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

  Haply some hoary-headed swain[17] may say,
    “Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
  Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
    To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.[18] 100

  “There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
    That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
  His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
    And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

  “Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 105
    Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he would rove;
  Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
    Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

  “One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
    Along the heath and near his fav’rite tree; 110
  Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
    Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

  “The next, with dirges due in sad array
    Slow thro’ the church-way path we saw him borne. 
  Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 115
    Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.”

  THE EPITAPH

  Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth,
    A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. 
  Fair Science[19] frowned not on his humble birth,
    And Melancholy marked him for her own. 120