"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn.
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
"One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
"The next, with dirges due in sad array,
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."
THE EPITAPH.
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown; Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send; He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('t was all he wished) a friend.
No farther 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.
THOMAS GRAY.
* Removed by the author from the original poem.