On the Death of Matzel, a Favourite Bullfinch

Try not, my Stanhope, 'tis in vain,
To stop your tears, to hide your pain.
Or check your honest rage;
Give sorrow and revenge their scope.
My present joy, your future hope,
Lies murder'd in his cage.

Matzel's no more! ye Graces, Loves,
Ye linnets, nightingales, and doves,
Attend th' untimely bier;
Let every sorrow be express'd,
Beat with your wings each mournful breast,
And drop the nat'ral tear.

For thee, my bird, the sacred Nine,
Who loved thy tuneful notes, shall join
In thy funereal verse;
My painful task shall be to write
Th' eternal dirge which they indite,
And hang it on thy hearse.

In height of song, in beauty's pride,
By fell Grimalkin's claws he died—
But vengeance shall have way.
On pains and tortures I'll refine;
Yet, Matzel, that one death of thine
His nine will ill repay.

In vain I loved, in vain I mourn
My bird, who never to return,
Is fled to happier shades
Where Lesbia shall for him prepare
The place most charming and most fair
Of all the Elysian glades.

There shall thy notes in cypress grove
Soothe wretched ghosts that died for love;
There shall thy plaintive strain
Lull impious Phædra's endless grief,
To Procris yield some short relief,
And soften Dido's pain.

Till Proserpine by chance shall hear
Thy notes, and make thee all her care,
And love thee with my love;
While each attendant's soul shall praise
The matchless Matzel's tuneful lays,
And all his songs approve.