EPITAPH ON A GOLDFINCH

Here lieth,

aged three moons and four days,
the body of RICHARD ACANTHIS,
a young creature

of unblemished life and character.
He was taken, in his callow infancy,
from under the wing
of a tender parent,

by the rough and pitiless hands
of a two-legged animal
without feathers.

Though born with the most aspiring dispositions,
and unbounded love of freedom,
he was closely confined in a grated prison,
and scarcely permitted to view those fields,
to the possession of which

he had a natural and undoubted
charter.

Deeply sensible of this infringement
of his native and inalienable rights,

he was often heard to petition for redress;
not with rude and violent clamors,
but

in the most plaintive notes

of melodious sorrow.
At length,

wearied with fruitless efforts to escape,

his indignant spirit

burst the prison which his body could not, and left behind

a lifeless heap of beauteous feathers.
Reader,

if suffering innocence can hope for retribution, deny not to the gentle shade

of this unfortunate captive,
the natural though uncertain hope
of animating some happier form,
or trying his new-fledged pinions
in some humble Elysium,
beyond the reach of Man,
the tyrant

of this lower universe.