EPITAPHIUM CHEMICUM.

Here lieth to digest, macerate, and amalgamate with clay

In balneo arenæ,

stratum super stratum,

The residuum, terra damnata, and caput mortuum

OF A CHEMIST.

A man who in his earthly Laboratory

Pursued various processes to obtain

The Arcanum Vitæ,

Or the secret to Live;

Also the Aurum Vitæ, or

The Art of getting, not making, Gold.

Alchemist-like, he saw all his labor and projection,

As mercury in the fire, evaporated in fume.

When he dissolved to his first principles,

He departed as poor

As the last drops of an alembic.

Though fond of novelty, he carefully avoided

The fermentation, effervescence, and

Decrepitation of this life.

Full seventy years

His exalted essence

Was hermetically sealed in its terrene matrass;

But the radical moisture being exhausted,

The Elixir Vitæ spent,

And exsiccated to a cuticle,

He could not suspend longer in his vehicle:

But precipitated gradatim,

Per campanam,

To his original dust.

May the light above,

More resplendent than Bolognian phosphorus,

Preserve him

From the athanor, empyreuma, and

Reverberatory furnace of the other world;

Depurate him from the fæces and scoria of this;

Highly rectify and volatilize

His ethereal spirit;

Bring it safely out of the crucible of earthly trial,

Place it in a proper recipient

Among the elect of the Flowers of Benjamin;

Never to be saturated till the general resuscitation,

Deflagration, calcination,

And sublimation of all things.