Epitaph

When the wight, who here lies beneath the cold earth, First quitted the land that had given him birth, He commenc'd the apostle of bloodshed and strife, And practis'd the trade to the end of his life. Sedition and nonsense and lies to dispense. He took up the title of "Old Common Sense;" Taught poor honest men how rich rogues to keep under, Excited to pillage, and shar'd in the plunder; But when there no longer was plunder to share, His "common sense" led him to seek it elsewhere. To his countrymen now he return'd back again, The Wronger of Rights and the Righter of Men; He told them they still were a nation of slaves; That their king was a fool and his ministers knaves, And the only sure way for the people to thrive Was, to leave neither one nor the other alive. But Thomas, who never knew when he should stop, Went a little too far, and was catch'd on the hop, In short, it was determin'd that poor Tom should lose His ears at a post, or his life in a noose. "Old Common Sense" boggles, then skulks out of fight, Then packs up his rags and decamps in the night. His arrival at Paris occasions a fete, And he finds, in the den of assassins, a seat. Here he murders and thieves and makes laws for a season; Is cramm'd in a dungeon: and preaches up "Reason;" Blasphemes the Almighty, lives in filth like a hog, Is abandon'd in death, and interr'd like a dog.

Tom Paine for the Devil is surely a match; In hanging O'd England he cheated Jack-Catch, In France (the first time such a thing had been seen) He cheated the watchful and sharp Guillotine, And at last, to the sorrow of all the beholders, He march'd out of life with his head on his shoulders.