Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE DEATH OF MRS. [ELIZABETH] ROWE, by ELIZABETH CARTER


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ON THE DEATH OF MRS. [ELIZABETH] ROWE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Accept, much honoured shade! The artless lays
Last Line: And spend their blest eternity in praise.
Subject(s): Death; Rowe, Elizabeth Singer (1674-1737); Dead, The


ACCEPT, much honoured shade! the artless lays
The Muse a tribute to thy memory pays.
The sad relation of thy loss to hear,
What friend to virtue can refrain a tear?
A loss to no one private breast confined,
But claims the general sorrow of mankind.

Since here, alas, thy longer life's denied,
Farewell, our sex's ornament and pride!
Born with a genius fitted to excel,
And blessed with sense t' apply that genius well.
Long did romance o'er female wits prevail,
Th' intriguing novel and the wanton tale.
What different subjects in thy pages shine!
How chaste the style, how generous the design!
Thy better purpose was, with lenient art,
To charm the fancy, and amend the heart;
From trifling follies to withdraw the mind,
To relish pleasures of a nobler kind.
No lawless freedoms e'er profaned thy lays,
To virtue sacred and thy maker's praise.
This still shall last, when every meaner theme
In death must quit the memory like a dream.
In the bright regions of unfading joy,
This forms the happy spirit's blest employ:
To God each raptured seraph tunes his tongue,
The inexhausted subject of their song;
Where human minds the same glad concert raise,
And spend their blest eternity in praise.





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