Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

Poetry.

From a late London Paper.

Tom Paine being now bona fide and really dead, we think our readers will be glad to see an Epitaph, published by Cobbett in 1796, on a report of his decease. The Epitaph is curious, because, in abusing Tom, Cobbett has contrived, by anticipation, to abuse himself.

EPITAPH ON TOM PAINE

WHEN the wight who here lies beneath the cold earth,
First quitted the land which had given him birth,
He commenc'd the apostle of bloodshed and Arise,
And practis'd the trade to the end of his life.
Sedition, and nonsense, and lies to dispense,
He took up the title of old Common Sense ;
Taught poor honest men how rich rogues to keep under,
Excited to pillage, and shared in the plunder
But when there no longer was plunder to share,
His common sense led him to seek it elsewhere;
To his countrymen now he return'd back again,
The wronger of rights & the righter of men
He told them they still were a nation of slaves,
That their King was a fool, and his Ministers knaves;
And the only sure way for the people to thrive,
Was to have neither one nor the other alive.
But Thomas, who never knew when he should stop,
Went a little too far, and was caught on the hop;
In short, 'twas determined that poor Tom should lose
His ears at a pillory, or his life in a noose.
Old Common Sense boggles, then sulks out of sight,
Packs up all his rags, then departs in the night
His arrival in Paris occasions a fete,
And he finds in the den of assassins a seat ;
Here he murders and thieves, and makes laws for a season,
Is crammed in a dungeon, and preaches up reason,
Blasphemes the Almighty, lives in filth like a hog,
Is abandoned in death, and interred like a dog
Tom Paine for the Devil is surely a match;
In leaving Old England he cheated Jack Catch !
In France, the first time such a thing had been seen,
He cheated the watchful & sharp Guillotine;
And at last, to the sorrow of all the beholders,
He has marched out of life with his head on his shoulders.