I lay me down to rest me, And pray to God to bless me, And if I sleep and never wake, I pray to God my soul to take This night for Evermore—Amen.
Vast Strong was I, but yet did dye, And in my Grave asleep I Lye, My Grave is Stoned all round about, But I hope the Lord will find me out.
Oh reader! if that thou can’st read Look down upon this stone; Do all we can, Death is a man, What never spareth none.
Here lies the body of Edward Hide, We laid him here because he died, We had rather It been his father, If it had been his sister We should not have missed her, But since ’tis honest Ned, No more shall be said.
Here lies my poor wife, without bed or blanket, But dead as a door nail, God be thanked.
My Sledge and hammer lie reclined, My Bellows, too, have lost their wind; My fire’s extinct, my forge decayed, And in the dust my vice is laid; My coal is spent, my iron gone, My nails are drove, my work is done.
I was as grass that did grow up, And wither’d before it grew, As Snails do waste within their Shells, So the number of my days were few.
If love and virtue doth conduce to grace the fair, These was once possessed by her who lieth here; But alas! by fate the object of her love was drowned. By death surprized in trying to save a hound. Which such effect had on her tender mind It brought her into a deep decline. With him her transitory bliss is fled, And she a cold companion of the dead. Since this catastrophe cannot fail to show How uncertain all earthly joys are here below.
His fate was hard, but God’s decree Was, drown’d he should lie—in the sea.
Oh! cruel death, how could you be so unkind, To take _him_ before, and leave me behind. You should have taken both of us—if either, Which would have been more pleasant to the _survivor_.
My time is out, my glass is run, I never more shan’t see the sun; To live for ever, no man don’t, The Lord does not think fitting on’t.
She was What was, But words are Wanting to say what a One. What a Wife should be, She was that.
On Shakspeare’s Monument are engraved the following distich and lines:—
“Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus mœret, Olympus habet.”
“Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast? Read, if thou canst, what envious death hath placed Within this monument; Shakspeare, with whom Quick nature died; whose name doth deck the tomb Far more than cost, since all that he hath writ Leaves living art but page unto his wit.”
