One life, one death, one tombe, one grave.
Impartial hand that durst to slay
The root and branch both in a day.
Our comfort in there death is this,
That both are gonne to joy and bliss;
The wine that in these earthen vessels lay
The hand of death hath lately drawn away,
And, as a present, served it up on high,
Whilst heere the vessels with the lees doe lye.”
Another records the end of a labourer accidentally shot on his returning home from work, and yet another is to an exciseman, “who fell from the cliff between Beer and Seaton, as he was extinguishing a fire which was a signal to a smuggling boat.” The verse on Joseph Braddick, a farmer, who died suddenly at sheep-shearing, hesitates between flippancy and exhortation: