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"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
"Mutt'ring his wayward fancies, he would rove;
"Now drooping, woeful wan! like one forlorn,
"Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.
"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
"Along the heath, and near his fav`rite tree;
"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 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;
Fair science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heav'n did a récompense as largely send:
He gave to mis'ry all he had, a tear;

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,
Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewel song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun.

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,
By hands unseen, are show'rs of vi'lets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.
----Paventosa speme. Petrarch, Son. 114.

EPITAPH

ON MRS. MARY CLARKE*.

LO! where this silent marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps;
A heart, within whose sacred cell
The peaceful Virtues lov'd to dwell:
Affection warm, and faith sincere,
And soft humanity were there.
In agony, in death resign'd,
She felt the wounds 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 mem'ry, and with love.

TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS.

THIRD in the labours of the disk came on,
With sturdy step and slow, Hippomedon;
Artful and strong he pois'd the well-known weight,
By Phlegyas warn'd, and fir'd by Mnestheus' fate,
That to avoid, and this to emulate.

His vig'rous arm he try'd before he flung,
Brac'd all his nerves and every sinew strung,
Then with a tempest's whirl and wary eye,
Pursu'd his cast, and hurl'd the orb on high;
The orb on high, tenacious of its course,
True to the mighty arm that gave it force,
Far overleaps all bound, and joys to see
Its ancient lord secure of victory:

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
Trembles ere it precipitates its fall;

The pond'rous mass sinks in the cleaving ground,
While vales and woods and echoing hills rebound.
As when from Etna's smoking summit broke,
The eyeless Cyclops heav'd the craggy rock,
Where Ocean frets beneath the dashing oar,
And parting surges round the vessel roar;
"Twas there he aim'd the meditated harm,
And scarce Ulysses 'scap'd his giant arm.
A tiger's pride the victor bore away,
With native spots and artful labour gay,
A shining border round the margin roll'd,
And calm'd the terrors of his claws in gold.

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.

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