32 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.
[Footnote 1: This part of the elegy differs from the first copy. The following stanza was excluded with the other alterations:—
Hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes around,
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease,
In still small accents whispering from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. ]
[Footnote 2: In early editions, the following stanza occurred:—
There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground. ]
* * * * *
EPITAPH ON MRS JANE CLARKE.[1]
Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps;
A heart, within whose sacred cell
The peaceful Virtues loved to dwell:
Affection warm, and faith sincere,
And soft humanity were there.
In agony, in death resign'd,
She felt the wound 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 memory, and with love.
[Footnote 1: 'Mrs Jane Clarke' this lady, the wife of Dr Clarke, physician at Epsom, died April 27, 1757, and is buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent.]
* * * * *