 | Poems |  |
On a Gentleman buried in one grave with his daughter, before deceased.
Reader, those sleep beneath this stone,Whom life made two first out of one;
But having now resign'd their breath,
They will grow one againe by death.
For, should we on his grave intrude,
To view how much vicissitude
Attends on Nature, and how she
Masks her selfe in varietie
Of numerous shapes, and after date
To paddle in his sepulcher,
Amongst his dust, we might inferre,
He was shuffled into her.
For, time determines, that both must
Resolve into one heap of dust:
But when the world it selfe expires,
Panting with heat, and God requires
Each gloomy vault, and hollow tombe,
To open its corrupted wombe,
And give their ashes, which were pent,
And cas'd up there, enfranchisement,
That being re-edified, they may
No more be obvious to decay,
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Will disunite their mingled Earth:
And, as their first life did divide them, so
This second life again will make them two.
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