"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, "Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he! "The next, with dirges due, in sad array, "Slow thro' the churchway-path we saw him borne: Approach, and read (for thou canst read) the lay "Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thornf.” THE EPITAPH. HERE rests his head upon the lap of earth, A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown; Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. 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. Mr. Gray forgot, when he displac'd, by the preceding stanza, his beautiful description of the evening haunt, the reference to it which he had here left: Him have we seen the greenwood side along, While o'er the heath we hy'd, our labour done, In the early editions the following lines were added, but the parenthesis was thought too long: There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, EPITAPH ON MRS. MARY CLARKE*. LO! where this silent marble weeps, Sits smiling on a father's woe, Whom what awaits while yet he strays A pang to secret sorrow dear, Till time shall every grief remove," With life, with mem'ry, and with love. TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS. THIRD in the labours of the disk came on, His vig'rous arm he try'd before he flung, This lady, the wife of Dr. Clarke, physician at Epsom, died April 27th, 1757, and is buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent. The theatre's green height and woody wall The pond'rous mass sinks in the cleaving ground, GRAY OF HIMSELF. Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune, He had not the method of making a fortune; Could love and could hate, so 'twas thought some. thing odd; No very great wit, he believ'd in a God: A post or a pension he did not desire, But left church and state to Charles Townsend and Squire. THE END. W. Wilson, Printer, St. John's Square. |