Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EPITAPH ON A FREE BUT TAME REDBREAST, by WILLIAM COWPER


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EPITAPH ON A FREE BUT TAME REDBREAST, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: These are not dew-drops, these are tears
Last Line: But always in a flame.
Subject(s): Robins


(A FAVOURITE OF MISS SALLY HURDIS)

THESE are not dew-drops, these are tears,
And tears by Sally shed
For absent Robin, who she fears,
With too much cause, is dead.

One morn he came not to her hand
As he was wont to come,
And, on her finger perched, to stand
Picking his breakfast-crumb.

Alarmed she called him, and perplext
She sought him, but in vain;
That day he came not, nor the next,
Nor ever came again.

She therefore raised him here a tomb,
Though where he fell, or how,
None knows, so secret was his doom,
Nor where he moulders now.

Had half a score of coxcombs died
In social Robin's stead,
Poor Sally's tears had soon been dried,
Or haply never shed.

But Bob was neither rudely bold
Nor spiritlessly tame,
Nor was, like theirs, his bosom cold,
But always in a flame.





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