[33] Printed in the Daily Advertiser, May 1, 1790. It was republished both in the Freeman's Journal and in the National Gazette. Text from the 1809 edition.
STANZAS
Occasioned by Lord Bellamont's, Lady Hay's, and Other Skeletons,
being dug up in Fort George (N. Y.), 1790.[34]
To sleep in peace when life is fled,
Where shall our mouldering bones be laid—
What care can shun—(I ask with tears)
The shovels of succeeding years!
Some have maintained, when life is gone,
This frame no longer is our own:
Hence doctors to our tombs repair,
And seize death's slumbering victims there.
Alas! what griefs must Man endure!
Not even in forts he rests secure:—
Time dims the splendours of a crown,
And brings the loftiest rampart down.
The breath, once gone, no art recalls!
Away we haste to vaulted walls:
Some future whim inverts the plain,
And stars behold our bones again.
Those teeth, dear girls—so much your care—
(With which no ivory can compare)
Like these (that once were lady Hay's)
May serve the belles of future days.