Odd Epitath

[alexxkay]

While we were in Salem, I took kestrell to see the Old Burying Ground. I'm fond of reading verses off old gravestones. Most of them are fairly formulaic doggerel, but there was one that was rather different (from 1822), so I took it down:

Lean not on Earth, twill pierce thee to the heart,
A broken reed, at best; but oft a spear;
On which peace bleeds, and hope expires.

This is the only one I've seen that didn't rhyme. Curious about this, I did a quick google on "Lean not on Earth", with intriguing results. This verse, or some clear variant of it, shows up on lots of 19th century gravestones. The earliest I found was from a Cape Cod cemetary:

In memory of Mrs Lucy Payne
consort of Mr William Payne
and daughter of Capt William Taylor
she died May 28th 1776
in the 22d year of her age

Her death was attended with circumstances pecularly affecting
Lean not on earth 'twill pierce thee to the heart
A broken reed at best but oft a spear
On its sharp point peace bleeds and hope expires.

Another variant shows up in a Project Gutenberg EBook, _Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland_, by Abigail Stanley Hanna, 1857. This appears to be an extremely morbid book of meditations and poetry about death. The poem "On the Frailty of Earthly Things" contains the stanza:

Lean not on earth, 'twill pierce the heart,
At best a broken reed,
And oft a spear where hope expires,
And peace as often bleeds.

Further googling turns up "Arminianism: The Golden Idol of Freewill", by Augustus Toplady (1740-1778):

I will say of it, as Dr. Young says of the world, "Lean not upon it": lean not on thy own righteousness: if leaned upon, "it will pierce thee to the heart: at best, a broken reed; but oft a spear. On its sharpest point, peace bleeds and hope expires."

Who is this Dr. Young?

What appears to be an earlier cite turns up in another Project Gutenberg book, _An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients_ (1762/1970), by John Ogilvie (No, I don't know what they mean by "1762/1970"):

Footnote A: Thus the reader, who would pay little regard to the person who should forbid him to trust the world too much, will yet be struck with this simple admonition, when it appears in the work of a genius.

Lean not on earth, 'twill pierce thee to the heart;
A broken reed at best, but oft' a spear,
On its sharp point Peace bleeds, and Hope expires. NIGHT THOUGHTS.

OK, so what's "Night Thoughts"? Who's the genius? Google has way too many hits on "Night Thoughts" to be helpful.

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I can't help with this one, but there is a rather old cemetary here and if the weather is good next time you visit, we could go there.

The Internet Detective is on the case...

[new-man.livejournal.com]

Dr. Edward Young's 'Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality,' printed by William Pine, Bristol, in 1770.

An excerpt of one of the poems can be found at http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2414.html

1683-1765, English poet and dramatist. After a disappointing political life he took holy orders about 1724, serving for a time as the royal chaplain before becoming rector of Welwyn in 1730. He achieved great renown in his own time, both in England and on the Continent, for his long poem The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-45), a Christian apologetic inspired by the deaths of his wife, stepdaughter, and the latter's husband. Besides writing a series of satires, The Universal Passion (1725-28), he was the author of three bombastic tragedies, Busiris (1719), The Revenge (1721), and The Brothers (1753). His last important work was his prose Conjectures on Original Composition (1759).

Bibliography: See his correspondence, ed. by H. Pettit (1972); biography by I. S. Bliss (1969); H. Forster, Edward Young: Poet of the Night Thoughts (1986).

Re: The Internet Detective is on the case...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Thanks! A bit more digging around in Google Print found the actual quote, in context (http://print.google.com/print?id=ymtZYbCShm0C&pg=RA1-PA13&lpg=RA1-PA13&dq=%22but+oft+a+spear%22&prev=http://print.google.com/print%3Flr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26q%3D%2522but%2Boft%2Ba%2Bspear%2522%26btnG%3DSearch&sig=OwBhl-C5rdrgniJZZwvj4CBTIBM). Now we can all go back to what we were supposed to be doing with our time :-)

[jamey1138.livejournal.com]

This is an awesome example of how LiveJournal can bring together nifty knowledge. Alexx, it looks like your Google searches could have cracked the mystery by themselves, with a bit more collating of data: Google "Young night thoughts" and you'll get starting points on the bio that NewMan offered.

For my own small contribution, the (1762/1970) citation probably means that the source that Project Gutenburg used for the Ogilve book was a facsimile (produced in 1970), whereas the original (presumably unavailable for PG's use) was originally published in 1762.

Such citations can, however, be sketchy, as the 1970 facsimile may not have been directly taken from the original, either.

Note that I'm no expert on this: I just know what I've come across in my historical combat research (there are lots of victorian and modern reprints of 16th and 17th century fencing, wrestling, and other sportive combat books, and it took me a while to sort out my bibliographic searches, to tell what I was finding...)