ON THE DEATH OF A BELOVED WIFE.
ACCEPT, thou shrine of my dead saint
Instead of dirges this complaint;
And, for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse,
Receive a strew of weeping verse
From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see
Quite melted into tears for thee.
Dear loss! Since thy untimely fate,
My task hath been to meditate
On thee, on thee: thou art the book,
The library whereon I look,
Though almost blind; for thee, loved clay,
I languish out, not live the day,
Using no other exercise
But what I practise with mine eyes:
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily Time creeps about
To one that mourns: this, only this
My exercise and business is:
So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolved into showers.
Thou hast benighted me; thy set
This eve of blackness did beget,
Who wast my day, (though overcast
Before thou hast thy noon-tide past,)
And I remember must in tears,
Thou scarce hadst seen so many years
As day tells hours. By thy clear sun
My love and fortune first did run;
But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphere,
Since both thy light and motion
Like a fled star is fall'n and gone.
I could allow thee for a time
To darken me and my sad clime;
Were it a month, a year, or ten,
I would thy exile live till then;
And all that space my mirth adjourn,
So thou wouldst promise to return,
And putting off thy ashy shroud
At length disperse this sorrow's cloud.
But, woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes: never shall I
Be so much blest as to descry
A glimpse of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,
And a fierce fever must calcine
The body of this world like thine,
(My little world!) That fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire
To our soul's bliss; then we shall rise,
And view ourselves with clearer eyes
In that calm region, where no night
Can hide us from each other's sight.
Meantime thou hast her, Earth: much good
May my harm do thee, since it stood
With Heaven's will I might not call
Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her, whom living I loved best.
Be kind to her; and, prithee, look
Thou write into thy doomsday-book
Each parcel of this rarity
Which in thy casket shrin'd doth lie:
See that thou make thy reckoning straight,
And yield her back again by weight;
For thou must audit on thy trust
Each grain and atom of this dust,
As thou wilt answer him that lent-
Not gave thee-my dear monument.
Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed
Never to be disquieted!
My last good night! thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake :
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves; and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there; I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay,
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every hour a step towards thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,
Than when sleep breath'd his drowsy gale.
Thus from the sun my bottom steers
And my day's compass downward bears:
Nor labour I to stem the tide
Through which to thee I swiftly glide.
"Tis true, with shame and grief I yield, Thou like the van first took'st the field, And gotten hast the victory
In thus adventuring to die
Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe'er my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolution
With hope and comfort: Dear, (forgive
The crime,) I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.
LIKE to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood-
Even such is man, whose borrow'd light
Is straight call'd in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out; the bubble dies; The spring entomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew dries up; the star is shot;
The flight is past-and man forgot.
LIFE is a crooked labyrinth, and we
Are daily lost in that obliquity.
'Tis a perplexed circle, in whose round
Nothing but sorrows and new sins abound.
How is the faint impression of each good
Drown'd in the vicious channel of our blood,
Whose ebbs and tides, by their vicissitude,
Both our great Maker and ourselves delude!
O wherefore is the most discerning eye
Unapt to make its own discovery?
Why is the clearest and best-judging mind
In its own ill's prevention dark and blind?
Dull to advise, to act precipitate,
We scarce think what to do but when too late;
Or if we think, that fluid thought, like seed,
Roots there to propagate some fouler deed.
Still we repent and sin-sin and repent;
We thaw and freeze, we harden and relent.
Those fires which cool'd to-day, the morrow's heat
Rekindles thus frail nature does repeat
What she unlearnt, and still by learning on
Perfects her lesson of confusion.
Sick soul! what cure shall I for thee devise,
Whose lep'rous state corrupts all remedies ?
What medicine or what cordial can be got
For thee, who poison'st thy best antidote ?
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