To-night invited to a small carouse, I’ve stayed much later than I meant to be, In vain I’ve sought admission to my house, My wife won’t rise, and I forgot the key. To-morrow morning when my spouse shall wake, To mark my absence, wondering what it means, Some rude strange hand shall rouse me with a shake In Covent Garden, slumbering on the greens. From _The Man in the Moon_, Volume 2 (About 1848.) ――――:o:―――― AN ELEGY, WRITTEN IN A LONDON CHURCHYARD. _By a Tradesman in the vicinity._ The sexton tolls the knell till parting day, The latest funeral train has paid its fee, The mourners homeward take their dreary way And leave the scene to Typhus and to me. Now fades the crowded graveyard on the sight, But all, its air who scent, their nostrils hold, Save where the beadle drones, contented quite, And drowsy mutes their arms in slumber fold. Save where, hard by yon soot-incrusted tower, A Reverend Man does o’er his port complain, Of such as would, by sanitary power, Invade his ancient customary gain. Beneath those arid mounds, that dead wall’s shade, Where grows no turf above the mouldering heap, All in their narrow cells together laid, The former people of the parish sleep. The queasy call of sewage-breathing morn, The ox, urg’d bellowing to the butcher’s shed, The crowd’s loud clamouring at his threatening horn, No more shall rouse them from their loathly bed. For them no more the chamber-light shall burn, The busy doctor ply his daily care, Nor children to their sire from school return, And climb his knees the dreaded pest to share. Good folks, impute not to their friends the fault, If memory o’er their bones no tombstone raise; Where there lie dozens huddled in one vault, No art can mark the spot where each decays. No doubt, in this revolting place are laid, Hearts lately pregnant with infectious fire; Hands, by whose grasp contagion was conveyed, As sure as electricity by wire. Full many a gas of direst power unclean, The dark o’erpeopled graves of London bear, Full many a poison, born to kill unseen, And spread its rankness in the neighbouring air. Some district Surgeon, that with dauntless breast The epidemic ’mongst the poor withstood, Some brave, humane Physician here may rest, Some Curate, martyrs to infected blood. To some doom’d breast the noxious vapour flies, Some luckless lung the deadly reek inspires, Ev’n from the tomb morbific fumes arise, Ev’n in men’s ashes live Disorder’s fires. For thee, who, shock’d to see th’ unhonoured dead, Dost in these lines their shameful plight relate If, chance, by sanitary musings led, Some graveyard-gleaner shall inquire thy fate.