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Home  »  The Book of Sorrow  »  Thomas Gray (1716–1771)

Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.

Epitaph on Mrs. Clarke

Thomas Gray (1716–1771)

LO! where the silent marble weeps,

A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps:

A heart within whose sacred cell

The peaceful virtues loved to dwell.

Affection warm, and faith sincere,

And soft humanity were there.

In agony, in death resign’d,

She felt the wound she left behind.

Her infant image here below

Sits smiling on a father’s woe:

Whom what awaits, while yet he strays

Along the lonely vale of days?

A pang, to secret sorrow dear;

A sigh; an unavailing tear;

Till time shall every grief remove,

With life, with memory, and with love.