Then mix this dust with thine-O spotless ghost!
O more than fortune, friends, or country lost!
Is there on earth one care, one wish beside?
Yes-Save my country, Heav'n,'
ON EDMUND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM,'
WHO DIED IN THE NINETEENTH YEAR OF HIS AGE, 1735.
IF modest youth, with cool reflection crown'd,
And ev'ry op'ning virtue blooming round,
Could save a parent's justest pride from fate,
Or add one patriot to a sinking state;
This weeping marble had not ask'd thy tear,
Or sadly told, how many hopes lie here!
The living virtue now had shone approv'd,
The Senate heard him, and his country lov'd.
Yet softer honours, and less noisy fame
Attend the shade of gentle Buckingham:
In whom a race, for courage fam'd and art,
Ends in the milder merit of the heart,
And chiefs or sages long to Britain giv'n,
Pays the last tribute of a saint to Heav'n.
1 Compare Moral Essay i. 265.
2 He died November, 1735, at Rome. This epitaph first appeared in Dodsley's edition of Pope's Works,
1738. The son of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, and Pope's friend and enemy Katharine, the proud Duchess. See Moral Essay ii. 148.
FOR ONE WHO WOULD NOT BE BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.'
HEROES and kings! your distance keep:
In peace let one poor poet sleep,
Who never flatter'd folks like you:
Let Horace blush, and Virgil too.
ANOTHER, ON THE SAME.2
UNDER this marble, or under this sill,
Or under this turf, or e'en what they will;
Whatever an heir, or a friend in his stead,
Or any good creature shall lay o'er my head,
Lies one who ne'er car'd, and still cares not a pin
What they said, or may say, of the mortal within :
But who, living and dying, serene still and free,
Trusts in God, that as well as he was, he shall be.
ON JOHN HUGHES AND SARAH DREW.
WHEN Eastern lovers feed the fun'ral fire,
On the same pile the faithful fair expire:
Here pitying Heav'n that virtue mutual found,
And blasted both, that it might neither wound.
Hearts so sincere th' Almighty saw well pleas'd,
Sent his own lightning, and the victims seiz'd.
1 First published in Dodsley's edition of Pope's Works, 1738.
2 First published in Warburton's edition, 1751.
3 Sent to Lady M. W. Montagu in
a letter dated 1st September, 1718. See that letter for an account of the incident commemorated in the epitaphs.
THINK not, by rig'rous judgment seiz'd,
A pair so faithful could expire;
Victims so pure Heav'n saw well pleas'd,
And snatch'd them in celestial fire.
Live well, and fear no sudden fate:
When God calls virtue to the grave,
Alike 'tis justice, soon or late,
Mercy alike to kill or save.
Virtue unmov'd can hear the call,
And face the flash that melts the ball.
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