Death in the midst of life! the vapours dank Of churchyards mingling with our every breath; Dead men subduing with their poisons rank Men yet alive! Death propagating Death! Full many an exhalation cursed, unclean, The damp unhallow’d graves of London bear; Full many a poison, virulent and keen, To spread disease upon the wings of air. Then who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, Can cease this crying wrong to bear in mind, And suffer those already pass’d away To slay by thousands those still left behind? For thee, unmindful of this horror dread, Nor caring the foul nuisance to abate, If chance by lonely contemplation led, Some fellow-shopkeeper shall ask thy fate. Haply some ancient citizen may say, “Oft have I seen him at the peep of dawn, Putting his shop in order for the day, Dusting the muslins, doing up the lawn. “There, in the heat of yonder stifling shop, Breathing yon crowded graveyard’s fatal airs; Still trying not the hideous wrong to stop, Intent on nothing but to sell his wares. “One morn I miss’d him from th’ accustomed till,―― Another victim had that churchyard slain; And yet another, and another still; ‘’Twill slay as long as suffer’d to remain.’” But there are vested rights! these graveyards pay! Although the nation be by them disgraced; And so more men are murder’d every day; And this the epitaph above them placed: EPITAPH. Here rest in heaps, scarce cover’d by the earth, A lot of bones unhonour’d and unknown,―― Men doom’d to slaughter at their hour of birth, And graveyard jobbers mark’d them as their own. _Diogenes._ February 5, 1853. ――――:o:―――― There was another short parody in _Diogenes_ entitled―― ELEGY ON A BETTING OFFICE. Remove the lists, take down the green baize board, Shut up the shop (the landlord takes the key); Fate lays such heavy odds, that I am floor’d; The Act has made the pace too strong for me. No more behind my office-rail shall I Watch greenhorns, on a chance of gain intent, Into the changes of the market pry, Or commune with a friendly sporting gent: No more for me the pleasing sight remains Of those who thought a fortune here to make,―― The waiter hastening with his daily gains, And shop-boys raising from the till their stake. The cabman oft would loiter at my door, To glean the tout’s last information there; Invest what he had earned the hour before, And trust to Fortune for another fare, And if some wight a heavy stake should claim, More than I could conveniently drop, I donn’d a wig and whiskers, changed my name, And open’d, two streets off, another shop, Another shop awaits me now no more―― The Finish of my Race arrived, I see; On a Walk-over though I won before, This time I’m done, and Luck walks over me. _Diogenes._ 1853.