| |
| AS doctors give physic by way of prevention, | |
| Mat, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care; | |
| For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention | |
| May haply be never fulfill’d by his heir. | |
| |
| Then take Mat’s word for it, the sculptor is paid; | 5 |
| That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye; | |
| Yet credit but lightly what more may be said, | |
| For we flatter ourselves, and teach marble to lie. | |
| |
| Yet, counting as far as to fifty his years, | |
| His virtues and vices were as other men’s are; | 10 |
| High hopes he conceived, and he smother’d great fears, | |
| In a life parti-colour’d, half pleasure, half care. | |
| |
| Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave, | |
| He strove to make interest and freedom agree; | |
| In public employments industrious and grave, | 15 |
| And alone with his friends, Lord! how merry was he! | |
| |
| Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot, | |
| Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust; | |
| And whirl’d in the round as the wheel turn’d about, | |
| He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust. | 20 |
| |
| This verse, little polish’d, tho’ mighty sincere, | |
| Sets neither his titles nor merit to view; | |
| It says that his relics collected lie here, | |
| And no mortal yet knows too if this may be true. | |
| |
| Fierce robbers there are that infest the highway, | 25 |
| So Mat may be kill’d, and his bones never found; | |
| False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea, | |
| So Mat may yet chance to be hang’d or be drown’d. | |
| |
| If his bones lie in earth, roll in sea, fly in air, | |
| To Fate we must yield, and the thing is the same; | 30 |
| And if passing thou giv’st him a smile or a tear, | |
| He cares not—yet, prithee, be kind to his fame. | |
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