Suppose that laurel on your brow,
For cypress chang'd, funereal bough!
See all things take a diff'rent turn!
The very critics sweetly mourn,
And leave their satire's pois'nous sting
In plaintive elegies to sing:
With solemn threnody and dirge
Conduct you to Elysium's verge.
At Westminster the surplic'd dean
The sad but honorable scene
Prepares. The well-attended herse
Bears you amid the kings of verse.
Each rite observ'd, each duty paid,
Your fame on marble is display'd,
With symbols which your genius suit,
The mask, the buskin, and the flute:
The laurel crown aloft is hung:
And o'er the sculptur'd lyre unstrung
Sad allegoric figures leaning —
(How folks will gape to find their meaning!)
And a long epitaph is spread,
Which happy you will never read.
But hold — The change is so inviting
I own, I tremble while I'm writing.
Yet, WHITEHEAD, 'tis too soon to lose you:
Let critics flatter or abuse you,
O! teach us, e'er you change the scene
To Stygian banks from Hippocrene,
How free-born bards should strike the strings,
And how a Briton write to kings.