GRGR: Andrew's questions

[Todd Melnick]

>12) `Death is a debt to nature due, which I have paid and so must you'
>    (p 26) Is this taken from someone's writing or just traditional,
>    anonymous stuff. What about the Star-spangled banner meter verse.
>    The Diskinson can be found in the Collected Works only watch out
>    for `Ruin is formal devil's work' (p 28) which is a 2nd verse to a
>    far more mundane opener.
>
>	Scholars have quibbled about whether a Calvinist would have 
>owed
>	her debt to "nature" or to God, but maybe she was one of those
>	*heretics*!  A-and if it's not a real epitaph on a real 
>tombstone
>	in New England, it *ought* to be!


The following appears on a tombstone in a cemetery in South Lancaster,
Massachusetts:


"IN Memory of A
*Father* of 4 *Children* 
M. *Andrew Wilder* died D
ye 28H AD 1764 in ye 5[0 or 6, obscured]
Year of his Age

Death is a *Debt* to Nature *due*;
Whic [sic] *I* have *paid* & so *must* You."


I have a rubbing.