Behold, those monarch oaks, that rise
With lofty branches to the skies,
Have large proportion’d roots that grow
With equal longitude below: 
Two bards that now in fashion reign,
Most aptly this device explain: 
If this to clouds and stars will venture,
That creeps as far to reach the centre;
Or, more to show the thing I mean,
Have you not o’er a saw-pit seen
A skill’d mechanic, that has stood
High on a length of prostrate wood,
Who hired a subterraneous friend
To take his iron by the end;
But which excell’d was never found,
The man above or under ground. 
  The moral is so plain to hit,
That, had I been the god of wit,
Then, in a saw-pit and wet weather,
Should Young and Philips drudge together.

EPITAPH ON GENERAL GORGES,[1] AND LADY MEATH[2]

Under this stone lies Dick and Dolly. 
Doll dying first, Dick grew melancholy;
For Dick without Doll thought living a folly.

Dick lost in Doll a wife tender and dear: 
But Dick lost by Doll twelve hundred a-year;
A loss that Dick thought no mortal could bear.

Dick sigh’d for his Doll, and his mournful arms cross’d;
Thought much of his Doll, and the jointure he lost;
The first vex’d him much, the other vex’d most.

Thus loaded with grief, Dick sigh’d and he cried: 
To live without both full three days he tried;
But liked neither loss, and so quietly died.

Dick left a pattern few will copy after: 
Then, reader, pray shed some tears of salt water;
For so sad a tale is no subject of laughter. 
Meath smiles for the jointure, though gotten so late;
The son laughs, that got the hard-gotten estate;
And Cuffe[3] grins, for getting the Alicant plate.

Here quiet they lie, in hopes to rise one day,
Both solemnly put in this hole on a Sunday,
And here rest——­sic transit gloria mundi!

[Footnote 1:  Of Kilbrue, in the county of Meath.—­F.]

[Footnote 2:  Dorothy, dowager of Edward, Earl of Meath.  She was married to the general in 1716, and died 10th April, 1728.  Her husband survived her but two days.—­F. 
  The Dolly of this epitaph is the same lady whom Swift satirized in
his “Conference between Sir Harry Pierce’s Chariot and Mrs. Dorothy Stopford’s Chair.”  See ante, p.85.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 3:  John Cuffe, of Desart, Esq., married the general’s eldest daughter.—­F.]

VERSES ON I KNOW NOT WHAT

My latest tribute here I send,
With this let your collection end. 
Thus I consign you down to fame
A character to praise or blame: 
And if the whole may pass for true,
Contented rest, you have your due. 
Give future time the satisfaction,
To leave one handle for detraction.