No. X.
Reading edition
MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTION
IN STREGLETHORP CHURCH, NEAR NEWARK-UPON-TRENT, IN LINCOLNSHIRE.
[From Le Neve's Monumenta Anglicana[BT]. 8vo. Lond. 1718. vol. iii. p. 182.]
Stay, reader, and observe Death's partial doom, A spreading virtue in a narrow tombe; A generous mind, mingled with common dust, Like burnish'd steel, cover'd, and left to rust. Dark in the earth he lyes, in whom did shine All the divided merits of his line. The lustre of his name seems faded here, No fairer star in all that fruitful sphere. In piety and parts extreamly bright, Clear was his youth, and fill'd with growing light, A morn that promis'd much, yet saw no noon; None ever rose so fast, and set so soon. All lines of worth were centered here in one, Yet see, he lies in shades whose life had none.
But while the mother this sad structure rears,}
A double dissolution there appears—
He into dust dissolves, she into tears.
Richardus Earle [BU], Barntus. Obijt decimo tertio die Augti Anno Dom. 1697. Ætatis suæ 24.