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Home  »  Complete Poetical Works by Alexander Pope  »  On Mrs. Corbet

Alexander Pope (1688–1744). Complete Poetical Works. 1903.

Epitaphs

On Mrs. Corbet

Who Died of a Cancer in Her Breast

HERE rests a Woman, good without pretence,

Bless’d with plain Reason and with sober Sense:

No Conquests she but o’er herself desired,

No Arts essay’d but not to be admired.

Passion and Pride were to her soul unknown,

Convinc’d that Virtue only is our own.

So unaffected, so composed, a mind,

So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refin’d,

Heav’n, as its purest gold, by Tortures tried:

The Saint sustain’d it, but the Woman died.