THE WISH.
From all Decanal cares at last set free,
(O could that freedom still more perfect be)
My sun’s meridian hour, long past and gone;
Dim night, unfit for work, comes hast’ning on;
In life’s late ev’ning, thro’ a length of day,
I find me gently tending to decay:
How shall I then my fated exit make?
How best secure my great eternal stake?
This my prime wish, to see thy glorious face,
O gracious God, in some more happy place;
Till then to spend my short remains of time
In thoughts, which raise the soul to truths sublime;
To live with innocence, with peace and love,
As do those saints who dwell in bliss above:
By prayers, the wings which faith to reason lends,
O now my soul to Heav’n’s high throne ascends:
While here on earth, thus on my bended knee,
O Power divine, I supplicate to thee;
May I meet Death, when his approach is made,
Not fend of life, nor of his dart afraid;
Feel that my gain, which I esteem’d a loss:
Heav’n is the gold refin’d, earth but the dross.
Bishop Pearce lived and laboured till June 29, 1774, when he died in the eighty-fourth year of his age.
There is a neat monument by Nollekens over the north gallery of the church, with a remarkable inscription:—“Sacred to the memory of Thomas Chase, Esq. formerly of this parish, born in the city of Lisbon the 1st of November, 1729; and buried under the ruins of the same house where he first saw the light in the ever-memorable and terrible earthquake which befell that city the 1st of November, 1755: when after a most wonderful escape, he by degrees recovered from a very deplorable condition, and lived till the 20th of Nov 1788, aged 59 years.”
On the outside of the church a monumental stone, fixed in the wall, records a memorable and affecting instance of gratitude in noble terms:—
Near this Place lies the Body of
ELIZABETH MONK,
Who departed this Life
On the 27th Day of August, 1753,
Aged 101:
She was the Widow of John Monk, late of this
Parish, Blacksmith,
Her second Husband,
To whom she had been a wife near fifty Years,
By whom she had no Children;
And of the Issue of the first Marriage none lived
to the second;
But VIRTUE
Would not suffer her to be Childless:
An Infant, to whom, and to whose Father and
Mother she had been Nurse
(Such is the Uncertainty of temporal Prosperity)
Became dependent upon Strangers
for the Necessaries of Life:
To him she afforded the Protection of a Mother.
This parental Charity
Was returned with filial Affection;
And she was supported, in the Feebleness of Age,
by him whom she had cherished in
the Helplessness of Infancy.
LET IT BE REMEMBERED,
That there is no Station in which Industry will
not obtain Power to be liberal,
Nor any Character on which Liberality will not
confer Honor
[II-105,
II-106] She had been long prepared, by a simple and
unaffected Piety,
For that awful moment, which, however delayed,
Is universally sure.
How few are allowed an equal Time of Probation!
How many, by their Lives,
appear to presume upon more!
To preserve the memory of this person; and yet more, to perpetuate the lesson of her life, this stone was erected by voluntary contribution.