So soon grown old! hast thou been six years dead? Poor earth, once by my Love inhabited! And must I live to calculate the time To which thy blooming youth could never climb, But fell in the ascent! yet have not I Studied enough thy loss's history.
How happy were mankind, if Death's strict laws Consum'd our lamentations like the cause! Or that our grief, turning to dust, might end With the dissolved body of a friend! 10
But sacred Heaven! O, how just thou art In stamping death's impression on that heart, Which through thy favours would grow insolent, Were it not physic'd by sharp discontent. If, then, it stand resolv'd in thy decree, That still I must doom'd to a desert be, Sprung out of my lone thoughts, which know no path But what my own misfortune beaten hath;-- If thou wilt bind me living to a corse, And I must slowly waste; I then of force 20 Stoop to thy great appointment, and obey That will which nought avails me to gainsay.
For whilst in sorrow's maze I wander on, I do but follow life's vocation. Sure we were made to grieve: at our first birth, With cries we took possession of the earth; And though the lucky man reputed be Fortune's adopted son, yet only he Is Nature's true-born child, who sums his years (Like me) with no arithmetic but tears. 30
[_The Anniverse._] Not quite so good as _The Exequy_, but not bad. The Hannah-Pickering MS. had a few variants, not worth entering here in most cases.]
[Line: 19 corse] This word had odd luck in a well-printed book, and a generally well-written MS., for it shows in the one as 'coarse', in the other as 'course'--both errors not infrequent at the time.]
[Line: 22 avails] This is the MS. reading: the book has 'avail'.]
_On Two Children, dying of one disease, and buried in one grave._
Brought forth in sorrow, and bred up in care, Two tender children here entombed are: One place, one sire, one womb their being gave, They had one mortal sickness, and one grave. And though they cannot number many years In their account, yet with their parent's tears This comfort mingles; Though their days were few, They scarcely sin, but never sorrow knew; So that they well might boast, they carried hence What riper ages lose, their innocence. 10