| |
| WHILE deep you mourn beneath the cypress-shade | |
| The hand of Death, and your dear daughter laid | |
| In dust, whose absence gives your tears to flow, | |
| And racks your bosom with incessant woe, | |
| Let Recollection take a tender part, | 5 |
| Assuage the raging tortures of your heart, | |
| Still the wild tempest of tumultuous grief, | |
| And pour the heav’nly nectar of relief: | |
| Suspend the sigh, dear Sir, and check the groan, | |
| Divinely bright your daughter’s Virtues shone: | 10 |
| How free from scornful pride her gentle mind, | |
| Which ne’er its aid to indigence declin’d! | |
| Expanding free, it sought the means to prove | |
| Unfailing charity, unbounded love! | |
| |
| She unreluctant flies to see no more | 15 |
| Her dear-lov’d parents on earth’s dusky shore: | |
| Impatient heav’n’s resplendent goal to gain, | |
| She with swift progress cuts the azure plain, | |
| Where grief subsides, where changes are no more, | |
| And life’s tumultuous billows cease to roar; | 20 |
| She leaves her earthly mansion for the skies, | |
| Where new creations feast her wond’ring eyes. | |
| |
| To heav’n’s high mandate chearfully resign’d | |
| She mounts, and leaves the rolling globe behind; | |
| She, who late wish’d that Leonard might return, | 25 |
| Has ceas’d to languish, and forgot to mourn; | |
| To the same high empyreal mansions come, | |
| She joins her spouse, and smiles upon the tomb: | |
| And thus I hear her from the realms above: | |
| “Lo! this the kingdom of celestial love! | 30 |
| Could ye, fond parents, see our present bliss, | |
| How soon would you each sigh, each fear dismiss? | |
| Amidst unutter’d pleasures whilst I play | |
| In the fair sunshine of celestial day, | |
| As far as grief affects an happy soul | 35 |
| So far doth grief my better mind controul, | |
| To see on earth my aged parents mourn, | |
| And secret wish for T———l to return: | |
| Let brighter scenes your ev’ning-hours employ: | |
| Converse with heav’n, and taste the promis’d joy.” | 40 |
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