University of Virginia Library


186

ON DAVID GARRICK, Esq.

While on this marble bends thy pensive eye,
Here, Stranger, breathe the tributary sigh!
Beneath these groves their Garrick nurs'd the art,
That reign'd resistless o'er each feeling heart;
And here those virtues dawn'd, whose power benign
Bids Faith, for him, celestial palms entwine.
Oft had his bounty, with pervading ray,
Chas'd the dark clouds from want's tempestuous day,
And oft his silence, generous as his aid,
Hid from the world the noblest part he play'd.
 

This epitaph on Mr Garrick was requested and written in the year 1792, for his monument in Lichfield Cathedral, but not used, the sculptor not having left a space large enough for its insertion.