If that man’s life be likened to a day,
One here interr’d in youth did lose a day,
By death, and yet no loss to him at all,
For he a threefold day gain’d by his fall;
One day of rest is bliss celestial,
Two days on earth by gifts terrestryall—
Three pounds at Christmas, three at Easter Day,
Given to the poure until the world’s last day,
This was no cause to heaven; but, consequent,
Who thither will, must tread the steps he went.
For why? Faith, Hope, and Christian Charity,
Perfect the house framed for eternity.
On the east wall of the Chancel of Kettlethorpe Church, co. Lincoln, is a tablet to the memory of “Johannes Becke, quondam Rector istius ecclesiæ,” who died 1597, with the following lines in old English characters:—
I am a Becke, or river as you know,
And wat’red here ye church, ye schole, ye pore,
While God did make my springes here for to flow:
But now my fountain stopt, it runs no more;
From Church and schole mi life ys now bereft,
But no ye pore four poundes I yearly left.
We may add that the stream of his charity still flows, and is yearly distributed amongst the poor of Kettlethorpe.
Bishop Sanderson, in his “Survey of Lincoln Cathedral,” gives the following epitaph of Dr. William Cole, Dean of Lincoln, who died in 1600. The upper part of the stone, with Dr. Cole’s arms, is, or was lately, in the Cathedral, but the epitaph has been lost:—
Reader, behold the pious pattern here
Of true devotion and of holy fear.
He sought God’s glory and the churches good.
Idle idol worship he withstood.
Yet dyed in peace, whose body here doth lie
In expectation of eternity.
And when the latter trump of heaven shall blow
Cole, now rak’d up in ashes, then shall glow.
Here is another from Lincoln Cathedral, on Dr. Otwell Hill:—
’Tis Otwell Hill, a holy Hill,
And truly, sooth to say,
Upon this Hill be praised still
The Lord both night and day.
Upon this Hill, this Hill did cry
Aloud the scripture letter,
And strove your wicked villains by
Good conduct to make better.
And now this Hill, tho’ under stones,
Has the Lord’s Hill to lie on;
For Lincoln Hill has got his bones,
His soul the Hill of Sion.
The Guardian, for 3rd Dec., 1873, gives the following epitaph as being in Lillington Church, Dorset, on the grave of a man named Cole, who died in 1669:—
Reader, you have within this grave
A Cole rak’d up in dust.
His courteous Fate saw it was Late,
And that to Bed he must.
Soe all was swept up to be Kept
Alive until the day
The Trump shall blow it up and shew
The Cole but sleeping lay.
Then do not doubt the Coles not out
Though it in ashes lyes,
That little sparke now in the Darke
Will like the Phœnyx rise.