Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE DEATH OF MY DEAR BROTHER, MR. H.S., DROWNED: THE TOMB, by WILLIAM HAMMOND


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE DEATH OF MY DEAR BROTHER, MR. H.S., DROWNED: THE TOMB, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Why weeps this marble? Can his frigid form
Last Line: Lost her perfection and integrity.
Subject(s): Drowning; Sandys, Henry


WHY weeps this marble? Can his frigid power
Thicken the ambient air into a shower?
Ah no; these tears have sure another cause
Than the necessity of Nature's laws;
These tears their spring have from within; there lies
The spoil of Nature, crime of destinies.
How well this silent sadness doth become
This awful shade; the horror of the tomb
Strikes paleness through my soul; yet I must on,
And pay the rights of my devotion.
Pardon, you guardian angels, who attend
And keep his bones safe from the Stygian fiend,
That I disturb your watch with untun'd lays;
I come to mourn, and not to sing his praise.
A Sun that set in floods, but, oh sad haste,
Ere the meridian of his age was past.
A purer day the East did ne'er disclose,
Than in his clear affections orient rose.
Tempestuous passion did in him appear
But physic, as the lightnings purge the air:
Martial his temper was, yet overcame
Others by smiles, himself by force did tame.
Here lies the best of man; Nature with thee
Lost her perfection and integrity.





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