Inscriptions.

K

I.

For a Monument at OXFORD.

Here Latimer and Ridley in the flames

Bore witness to the truth. If thou hast walk'd
Uprightly thro' the world, proud thoughts of joy
Will fill thy breast in contemplating here
Congenial virtue. But if thou hast swerved
From the right path, if thou hast sold thy soul,
And served, a hireling, with apostate zeal,
The cause thy heart disowns,.. oh! cherish well
The honourable shame that sure this place
Will wake within thee, timely penitent,
And let the future expiate the past.

IL

For a Monument in the VALE of EWIAS

Here was it Stranger, that the patron Saint
Of Cambria past his age of penitence,

A solitary man; and here he made

His hermitage, the roots his food, his drink
Of Hodney's mountain stream. Perchance thy youthz
Has read with eager wonder how the Knight
Of Wales in Ormandine's enchanted bower,
Slept the long sleep and if that in thy veins

:

Flow the pure blood of Britain, sure that blood
Hath flow'd with quicker impulse at the tale

Of David's deeds, when thro' the press

of war

His gallant comrades followed his green crest
To conquest. Stranger! Hatterill's mountain heights
And this fair vale of Ewias, and the stream
Of Hodney, to thine after-thoughts will rise
More grateful, thus associate with the name

Of David and the deeds of other days.

III.

EPITAPH on ALGERNON SIDNEY.

Here Sidney lies, he whom perverted law
The pliant jury and the bloody judge

Doom'd to the traitor's death. A tyrant King
Required, an abject country saw and shar'd
The crime. The noble cause of Liberty
He loved in life, and to that noble cause
In death bore witness. But his country rose
Like Sampson from her sleep and broke her chains,
And proudly with her worthies she enrolled
Her murdered Sidney's name. The voice of man
Gives honour or destroys; but earthly power
Gives not, nor takes away, the self applause
Which on the scaffold suffering virtue feels,
Nor that which God appointed its reward.