There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground. ] * * * * * EPITAPH ON MRS JANE CLARKE.[1] Lo! where this silent marble weeps, A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps; A heart, within whose sacred cell The peaceful Virtues loved to dwell: Affection warm, and faith sincere, And soft humanity were there. In agony, in death resign'd, She felt the wound she left behind. Her infant image here below Sits smiling on a father's woe: Whom what awaits while yet he strays Along the lonely vale of days? A pang, to secret sorrow dear, A sigh, an unavailing tear, Till time shall every grief remove With life, with memory, and with love. [Footnote 1: 'Mrs Jane Clarke' this lady, the wife of Dr Clarke, physician at Epsom, died April 27, 1757, and is buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent.] * * * * * STANZAS, SUGGESTED BY A VIEW OF THE SEAT AND RUINS AT KINGSGATE, IN KENT, 1766. 1 Old, and abandon'd by each venal friend, Here Holland took the pious resolution, To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend A broken character and constitution. 2 On this congenial spot he fix'd his choice; Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand; Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice, And mariners, though shipwreck'd, fear to land. 3 Here reign the blustering North, and blasting East, No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing; Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast, Art he invokes new terrors still to bring. 4 Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise, Turrets and arches nodding to their fall, Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes, And mimic desolation covers all. 5 'Ah!' said the sighing peer, 'had Bute been true, Nor C--'s, nor B--d's promises been vain, Far other scenes than this had graced our view, And realised the horrors which we feign. 6 'Purged by the sword, and purified by fire, Then had we seen proud London's hated walls: Owls should have hooted in St Peter's choir, And foxes stunk and litter'd in St Paul's.' * * * * * TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS.