dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Book of Sorrow  »  Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

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

An Epitaph

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

ENOUGH: and leave the rest to Fame.

’Tis to commend her, but to name.

Courtship which, living, she declin’d,

When dead, to offer were unkind,

Where never any could speak ill,

Who would officious praises spill?

Nor can the truest wit, or friend,

Without detracting, her commend.

To say, she lived a virgin chaste

In this age loose and all unlaced;

Nor was, when vice is so allow’d,

Of virtue or asham’d or proud;

That her soul was on Heaven so bent,

No minute but it came and went;

That, ready her last debt to pay,

She summ’d her life up every day;

Modest as morn, as mid-day bright,

Gentle as evening, cool as night:

’Tis true: but all too weakly said;

’Twere more significant, she ’s dead.