Here lies, within this tomb so calm,
Old Giles, pray sound his knell,
Who thought no song was like a psalm,
No music like a bell.
Here lies John Adams, who received a thump
Right in the forehead from the parish pump,
Which gave him his quietus in the end,
Tho’ many doctors did his case attend.
On Mr. Cumming.
“Give me the best of men,” said Death
To Nature—“quick, no humming,”
She sought the man who lies beneath,
And answered, “Death, he’s Cumming.”
On Sir Philip Sidney.
England hath his body, for she it fed,
Netherland his blood, in her defence shed;
The Heavens hath his soul,
The Arts have his fame,
The Soldier his grief,
The World his good name.
There is a touching sorrow conveyed in the following most ungrammatical verses; evidently composed by one of the unlettered parents themselves:—
Beneath this stone his own dear child,
Whose gone from we
For ever more unto eternity;
Where we do hope that we shall go to he,
But him can never more come back to we.
On a Chemist.
Here lyeth, to digest, macerate, and amalgamate
With Clay,
In Balneo Arenæ
Stratum super Stratum,
The Residuum, Terra damnata, and Caput
Mortuum
Of Boyle Godfry, Chemist
And M.D.
A man, who in his earthly Laboratory
Pursued various Processes to obtain
Areanum Vitæ
Or the secret to live;
Also Aurum Vitæ,
Or, the art of getting, rather than making Gold.
Alchemist like,
All his Labour and Profection,
As Mercury in the Fire evaporated in Fuomo
When he dissolv’d to his first Principles,
He departed as poor
As the last Drops of an Alembic;
For riches are not poured
On the Adepts of this world.
Though fond of News, he carefully avoided
The Fermentation, Effervescence,
And Decrepitation of this Life.
Full Seventy years his exalted Essence
Was Hermetically sealed in its Terene Mattras,
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 that light, brighter than Bolognian
Phosphorus, Preserve him from the
Athanor, Empyremna, &
Of the other
World.
Depurate him from the Taces and Scoria of
this;
Highly Rectify’d & Volatize
His Ætheral Spirit,
Bring it over the Helm of the Retort of this
Globe, place it in a proper Recipient,
Or Chrystalline Orb,
Among the elect of the Flowers of Benjamin,
Never to be Saturated,
Till the General Resuscitation,
Deflagration, Calcination,
And Sublimation of all Things.