Oft pilfer’d airs and borrow’d strains to hide. To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, And feed the fondness of a Fidler’s pride With dull pretences to a Muse’s flame. Far from the merry wake, and rustic ball, No vain pursuits, their sober wishes led; Along the streets and round his worship’s hall They scrap’d the noisy tenor for their bread: Yet still the blind from insult to protect, Some faithful consort ever wandering nigh, With vary’d garb, and uncouth’d pinner deck’d, Implores the passing tribute with a sigh. Her ditties oft, though an unletter’d Muse The place of air and sonnet would supply; And songs of grace at Christmas would she chuse, Repaid with luncheons from the grey-goose pye. For who, so much to gloominess a prey, Whose spirits music knows not to advance? Or who could listen to her roundelay, Nor lift one longing, lingering leg to dance? On some smart air the active heel relies, Some sprightly jig the springing foot requires; E’en to a march the moving spirits rise, E’en in a minuet wake our youthful fires. For Thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead, Dost in these lines the _Guardian’s_ Tale relate, If chance, by love of Elegy misled, Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate; Haply some antiquated Maid may say; “Oft have we seen him at the hour of prayer “Brushing, with hasty hand, the dust away “From his rent cassock and his beaver bare. “Oft by the side of yonder nodding font “That lifts its old fantastic head so high, “To wait the frequent christening was he wont “And frown upon the Clerk that babbled by. “Oft in yon pulpit, smiling as in scorn, “Muttering his uncouth doctrines would he preach, “Now drooping, woeful, wan, like one forlorn, “In deep despair the Mitre’s grace to reach. “One morn I miss’d him at the hour of prayer, “In vain I took my spectacles to see; “His wonted surplice did another wear, “Nor in the vestry, nor the desk was he. “The next with dirges due, in sad array, “Slow through the church-way path we saw him brought, “Approach and read (if thou canst read!) the lay “Which his own Clerk, his Parish Clerk has wrote.” ――――:o:―――― EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of earth, A Curate poor, to stalls and tythes unknown; No Bishop smil’d upon his humble birth; No Minister e’er mark’d him for his own. Bread was his only food, his drink the brook; So small a salary did his Rector send; He left his laundress all he had――a book He found in Death, ’twas all he wish’d――a friend. No longer seek his wardrobe to disclose, Nor draw his breeches from their darksome cell; There, like their master, let them find repose, Nor dread the horrors of a Taylor’s hell. ――――:o:――――