Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, STANZAS PRINTED ON BILLS OF MORTALITY: 1787, by WILLIAM COWPER


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STANZAS PRINTED ON BILLS OF MORTALITY: 1787, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: While thirteen moons saw smoothly run
Last Line: "and answer all--""amen!"
Subject(s): Mortality


Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres.--HORACE.

Pale Death with equal foot strikes wide the door
Of royal halls and hovels of the poor.

WHILE thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen's barge-laden wave,
All these, life's rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave.

Was man (frail always) made more frail
Than in foregoing years?
Did famine or did plague prevail,
That so much death appears?

No: these were vigorous as their sires,
Nor plague nor famine came;
This annual tribute Death requires,
And never waives his claim.

Like crowded forest-trees we stand,
And some are marked to fall;
The axe will smite at God's command,
And soon shall smite us all.

Green as the bay-tree, ever green,
With its new foliage on,
The gay, the thoughtless, have I seen;
I passed--and they were gone.

Read, ye that run, the awful truth
With which I charge my page;
A worm is in the bud of youth,
And at the root of age.

No present health can health ensure
For yet an hour to come;
No medicine, though it oft can cure,
Can always balk the tomb.

And oh! that humble as my lot,
And scorned as is my strain,
These truths, though known, too much forgot,
I may not teach in vain.

So prays your Clerk with all his heart,
And ere he quits the pen,
Begs you for once to take his part,
And answer all--"Amen!"





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