On that Devout, and Industrious GENTLEMAN, GEORGE MONTEITH, Merchant in Edinburgh, who departed this Life the 2. day of Juny, 1685.  
A Funeral ELEGY.  
DEvout and Precious Soul should I in verse,  
Attempt they glorious virtues to rehearse,  
It were a contradiction to express,  
And bring to numbers what is numberless:  
Verses must loss their feet, and Elegies  
Give up their running to our melting eyes;  
Yet reason says, that it can be no Crime  
What we may speak in Prose to writ in Rhyme.  
Witness the Sacred Scriptures, it's no wrong  
To vent a Lamentation in a Song.  
So rational a grief who utters it,  
At once both shows his sorrow, and his wit.  
I'll not employ my Muse to chide stern death,  
That with Bloodthirsty haste did cut thy breath,  
When thou thyself did chide the fate's delay,  
Gasping from those sad times to be away.  
Nor with Fantastic flight implore the spheres,  
To bathe thy memory with us in tears.  
While we believe that new Jerusalem  
Where now thou art, Surmounts both us and them.  
Thou now art enfranchised, and at large,  
And from our Wars death Seals thee a discharge.  
Where clad in Robes of Immortality  
thou'rt levied with the glorious Hierarchy.  
For here below thou were't in each Estate  
Humble, active, prudent, just, and temperate,  
And with both actions and thy thoughts expense  
Did keep thy Conscience still without offence.  
Who knew thy virtues well, thy understood  
Thou wert an Angel clothed with flesh and blood.  
Thy birth above the common level was,  
Thy Nuptial types in honour did surpass.  
Thou was not troubled with mad Midas itch,  
Yet GOD did bliss thy store, and made thee rich.  
Thou was a man of business, and yet,  
To serve thy Maker was they chief delight.  
Wherefore GOD takes thee home, where now thou sings  
Grave, where's they conquest? death where are thy stings?  
Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori.  
N. PATERSON.