‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech ‘That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, ‘His listless length at noontide would he stretch, ‘And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, ‘Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he would rove, ‘Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, ‘Or craz’d with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.
‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill, ‘Along the heath and near his fav’rite tree; ‘Another came; nor yet beside the rill, ‘Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
‘The next with dirges due in sad array ‘Slow thro’ the church-way path we saw him borne. ‘Approach and read (for thou can’st read) the lay, ‘Grav’d on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’
_Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth_ _A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown._ _Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,_ _And Melancholy mark’d him for her own._
_Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,_ _Heav’n did a recompense as largely send:_ _He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear,_ _He gain’d from Heav’n (t’was all he wish’d) a friend._
_No farther seek his merits to disclose,_ _Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,_ _(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)_ _The bosom of his Father and his God._
BELSHAZZAR the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his princes and his wives might drink therein.
Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God, which was at Jerusalem; and the king, his princes and his wives, drank in them.
They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. And the king spake and said to the wise men of Babylon: “Whosoever shall read this writing, and show me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.”