Long time I ploughed the ocean wide, A life of toil I spent; But now in harbour safe arrived From care and discontent.
My anchor's cast, my sails are furled, And now I am at rest. Of all the parts throughout the world, Sailors, this is the best.
Our next example is copied from a stone which is so fast decaying that already some parts of the inscription are obliterated:--
Sacred to the memory of WILLIAM WALKER, . . . . .r of the Sloop Janatt, . . . . . . . who was unfortunately drowned off Flamborough Head, 17th April, 1823. Aged 41 years.
This stone was Erected by his Countrymen in remembrance of his Death.
I have left the troubled ocean, And now laid down to sleep, In hopes I shall set sail Our Saviour Christ to meet.
A gravestone in Horncastle churchyard, Lincolnshire, has this epitaph:--
My helm was gone, My sails were rent, My mast went by the board, My hull it struck upon a rock, Receive my soul, O Lord!
On a sailor's gravestone in the burial-ground at Hamilton, we are told:--
The seas he ploughed for twenty years, Without the smallest dread or fears: And all that time was never known To strike upon a bank or stone.
Puns in epitaphs have been very common, and may be found in Greek and Latin, and still more plentifully in our English compositions. In the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and other languages, examples may also be found. Empedrocles wrote an epitaph containing the paronomasia, or pun, on a physician named Pausanias, and it has by Merivale been happily translated:--
Pausanias--not so nam'd without a cause, As one who oft has giv'n to pain a pause, Blest son of Æsculapius, good and wise, Here, in his native Gela, buried lies; Who many a wretch once rescu'd by his charms From dark Persephone's constraining arms.
In Holy Trinity Church, Hull, is an example of a punning epitaph. It is on a slab in the floor of the north aisle of the nave, to the memory of "The Worshipful Joseph Field, twice Mayor of this town, and Merchant Adventurer." He died in 1627, aged 63 years:--
Here is a Field sown, that at length must sprout, And 'gainst the ripening harvest's time break out, When to that Husband it a crop shall yield Who first did dress and till this new-sown Field; Yet ere this Field you see this crop can give, The seed first dies, that it again may live. _Sit Deus amicus, Sanctis, vel in Sepulchris spes est._