Can you help with identifying this poem?

[Longcol]

Yeah I was thinking that it sounded somewhat religious (hence why I looked through 150 psalms!). So it could possibly be a hymn perhaps. Now, where might I find an 18th century hymn book?!

 

I think the church he is buried in is an Anglican church.

 

I'm not going to stop until I've exhausted all avenues of investigation and then I'll conclude that perhaps he wrote it himself before his death or his family wrote it for him.

 

From this it would appear an explosion in the use of hymns and a number of hymnbooks in use around the time you're looking at.

 

http://christianmusic.suite101.com/article.cfm/history_of_the_christian_hymn

 

Might have been from a hymn book which has long since disappeared. I'd start by asking the vicar at the church where your 8 x great grandfather is buried if they've some really old hymn books you could have a look through.

[DUFFEMS]

This is written on the gravestone of my 8 times great Grandfather who was born in 1714 and died in 1766.

 

I'm not even 100% sure it's a poem by a real poet or whether it was something his immediate family wrote when he died. However, from what I vaguely remember from school, is it written in iambic pentameter?!

 

Does anyone recognize this:

 

"While nature's wants the well earn'd bread supplies

The Oppressor's Grandeur and his Power dispise

For what avails, when laid with Mother Earth

Tove boafred once of Title, Wealth or Birth

Worldly Distinction vanishes with breath

But good Men's glory, only dawns with Death"

 

I've tried googling it to no avail. I've tried looking at works of 18th century poets and not found anything yet. I've even looked through 150 psalms at the end of a copy of the New Testament and Psalms that I have (incidentally I'm not religious, I was given it in school!).

 

Any help would be gratefully received as I can't seem to give up trying to work this out!

 

Have you posted it here where there are several people who are quite knowledgeable about MI:

http://www.sheffieldindexers.com

[Waltheof]

It may be from a hymn book, though I doubt it. It is certainly 18th-century, from its vocabulary and general tone. It probably isn't traceable to any recorded poet, but is a fair imitation of the serious verse of the period. As with any trade, undertakers and memorial masons employed hacks to write epitaphs, so such verses are mostly anonymous. I would point out that there is a mistranscription in the fourth line, where (as someone points out) the long s of the period is confusible with f, so it should read

 

For what avails, when laid with Mother Earth

To 've boasted once of Title, Wealth or Birth...

 

and the sentiment expressed may have been influenced by the popularity of Thomas Grey's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard (1751), which contains lines such as

 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave...

 

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

 

Whoever wrote it, it remains an interesting example of imitative poetry following the rules and conventions of polite Augustan verse.

[Lou]

Thank you for your replies you clever lot you!