ABSTRACT
Date and publication. The poem’s first appearance in the public domain was as an untitled and anonymous inscription on the monument to John Rogers (d. 1683) in St Peter’s Church, Haresfield, Gloucestershire, where it still stands. It was first printed in Poetical Miscellanies: The Fifth Part (1704). Apart from the addition of the title and the acknowledgement of D.’s authorship, there is one verbal difference between the inscribed and printed versions. Although the existence of the inscription had been registered in 1791–2 by Ralph Bigland in his Historical, Monumental and Genealogical Collection Relative to the County of Gloucester (see the facsimile edition, edited by Brian Frith, 5 vols (1989–95) ii 671–7), it was not noted in any edition of D. before Works. Hence the poem’s appearance at this point in the present edition, rather than what would have been its proper place in Volume 2. The present text is based on that of the inscription.
