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Where ragged nettles mark the rising ground,
And pois’nous night-shade breathes infection round,
Bill Brazen rots. In the good patriarch’s
phrase,
“Evil and few were his unhallow’d days:”
Yet in these few and evil the rank knave
Choused of a head-stone his poor father’s grave;
Abused his mother; grudged his children bread,
And coffin’d them in wig boxes when dead;
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| ORIGINAL—W. GIFFORD. | 115 |
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Bullied his sister; kicked his wife to th’ door;
Belied the parish books, and starved the poor.
Till grown too bad for this bad town, kind Heaven
Suffer’d the miscreant westward to be driven;
Where three long years in solitary state
He dragg’d the drunken hours through scorn and hate;
Till as he lay one night devoid of rest,
And conscience woke the worm within his breast,
A wint’ry blast, with hoarse, tremendous roar,
Rush’d through the gallery, burst the faithless door,
Approach’d him, touch’d—“Christ Jesus! save,” he
cried,
“A wretch! a hateful wretch!"—shook, groan’d, and died.
Now buried here, the scorn that dogg’d his way
Through life, still scents, and opens on his clay.
* * * * * *
Stranger! this scene demands an awful pause:
A vicious world takes arms in virtue’s cause:
Vice cowers beneath the shame she boasts to brave,
And finds chastisement on this side the grave.
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