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.

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STANZAS,

SUGGESTED BY A VIEW OF THE SEAT AND RUINS AT KINGSGATE, IN KENT, 1766.

1 Old, and abandon'd by each venal friend, Here Holland took the pious resolution, To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend A broken character and constitution.

2 On this congenial spot he fix'd his choice; Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand; Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice, And mariners, though shipwreck'd, fear to land.

3 Here reign the blustering North, and blasting East, No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing; Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast, Art he invokes new terrors still to bring.

4 Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise, Turrets and arches nodding to their fall, Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes, And mimic desolation covers all.

5 'Ah!' said the sighing peer, 'had Bute been true, Nor C--'s, nor B--d's promises been vain, Far other scenes than this had graced our view, And realised the horrors which we feign.

6 'Purged by the sword, and purified by fire, Then had we seen proud London's hated walls: Owls should have hooted in St Peter's choir, And foxes stunk and litter'd in St Paul's.'

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TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS.

Third in the labours of the disc came on, With sturdy step and slow, Hippomedon; Artful and strong he poised the well-known weight, By Phlegyas warn'd, and fired by Mnestheus' fate, That to avoid and this to emulate. His vigorous arm he tried before he flung, Braced all his nerves, and every sinew strung, Then with a tempest's whirl and wary eye Pursued his cast, and hurl'd the orb on high; The orb on high, tenacious of its course, True to the mighty arm that gave it force, Far overleaps all bound, and joys to see Its ancient lord secure of victory: The theatre's green height and woody wall Tremble ere it precipitates its fall; The ponderous mass sinks in the cleaving ground, While vales and woods and echoing hills rebound. As when, from Aetna's smoking summit broke, The eyeless Cyclops heaved the craggy rock, Where Ocean frets beneath the dashing oar, And parting surges round the vessel roar; 'Twas there he aim'd the meditated harm, And scarce Ulysses 'scaped his giant arm. A tiger's pride the victor bore away, With native spots and artful labour gay, A shining border round the margin roll'd, And calm'd the terrors of his claws in gold.

CAMBRIDGE, May 8, 1736.

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GRAY ON HIMSELF.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune, He had not the method of making a fortune; Could love and could hate, so was thought something odd; No very great wit, he believed in a God; A post or a pension he did not desire, But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

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END OF GRAY'S POEMS.

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