STANZAS

To sleep in peace when life is fled, Where shall our mouldering bones be laid — What care can shun — ( I ask with tears ) The shovels of succeeding years!

Some have maintained, when life is gone, This frame no longer is our own: Hence doctors to our tombs repair, And seize death's slumbering victims there.

Alas! what griefs must Man endure! Not even in forts he rests secure:— Time dims the splendours of a crown, And brings the loftiest rampart down.

The breath, once gone, no art recalls! Away we haste to vaulted walls: Some future whim inverts the plain, And stars behold our bones again.

Those teeth, dear girls — so much your care — ( With which no ivory can compare ) Like these ( that once were lady Hay's ) May serve the belles of future days.

Then take advice from yonder scull; And, when the flames of life grow dull, Leave not a tooth in either jaw, Since dentists steal — and fear no law.

He, that would court a sound repose, To barren hills and deserts goes: Where busy hands admit no sun, Where he may doze,‘ till all is done.

Yet there, even there tho’ slyly laid, ‘ Tis folly to defy the spade: Posterity invades the hill, And plants our relics where she will.

But O! forbear the rising sigh! All care is past with them that die: Jove gave, when they to fate resigned, An opiate of the strongest kind:

Death is a sleep, that has no dreams: In which all time a moment seems — And skeletons perceive no pain Till Nature bids them wake again.