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Home  »  The Book of Restoration Verse  »  Anonymous

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.

Epitaph: ‘He whom Heaven did call away’

Anonymous

HE whom Heaven did call away

Out of this hermitage of clay,

Has left some reliques in this urn

As a pledge of his return.

Meanwhile the Muses do deplore

The loss of this their paramour;

With whom he sported ere the day

Budded forth its tender ray.

And now Apollo leaves his lays,

An put on cypress for his bays;

The sacred Sisters tune their quills

Only to the blubbering rills,

And while his doom they think upon,

Make their own tears their Helicon;

Leaving the two-topt mount divine

To turn votaries to his shrine.

Think not, reader, me less blest,

Sleeping in this narrow chest,

Than if my ashes did lie hid

Under some stately pyramid.

If a rich tomb makes happy, then

That bee was happier far than men,

Who, busy in the thymy wood,

Was fettered by the golden flood,

Which from the amber-weeping tree

Distilleth down so plenteously;

For so this little wanton elf

Most gloriously enshrined itself;

A tomb whose beauty might compare

With Cleopatra’s sepulchre.

In this little bed my dust

Incurtained round I here intrust;

While my more pure and nobler part

Lies entomb’d in every heart.

Then pass on gently, ye that mourn,

Touch not this mine hallowed urn;

These ashes which do here remain

A vital tincture still retain;

A seminal form within the deeps

Of this little chaos sleeps

The thread of life untwisted is

Into its first consistencies;

Infant nature cradled here

In its principles appear;

This plant thus calcined into dust

In its ashes rest it must,

Until sweet Psyche shall inspire

A softening and prolific fire,

And in her fostering arms enfold

This heavy and this earthly mould.

Then as I am I’ll be no more,

But bloom and blossom as before,

When this cold numbness shall retreat

By a more than chymick heat.