1829 FMN


Epitaph on a Gnat,
found crushed on the leaf of a Lady’s Album, and written (with a different reading in the last line) in lead pencil beneath it

By James Montgomery, Esq.

Lie there, embalm’d from age to age!
This is the album’s noblest page,
Though every glowing leaf be fraught
With painting, poesy, and thought;
Where tracks of mortal hands are seen,
A hand invisible hath been,
And left this autograph behind,
This image from th’ eternal mind;
A work of skill surpassing sense,
A labour of Omnipotence!
 
Though frail as dust it meet the eye,
He form’d this gnat who built the sky;
Stop – lest it vanish at they breath –
This speck had life, and suffer’d death.
 
Sheffield, July 18, 1827.