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EPITAPH ON HER SON HECTOR PHILIPS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: What on earth deserves our trust?
Last Line: Bury'd in a morning cloud.
Alternate Author Name(s): Orinda
Variant Title(s): Epitaph On Her Son H.p. At St. Syth's Church
Subject(s): Beauty; Death - Children; Epitaphs; Life; Youth; Death - Babies


What on Earth deserves our Trust?
Youth and Beauty both are dust.
Long we gathering are with pain,
What one Moment calls again.
Seaven years Childless Marriage past,
A Son, A Son is born at last;
So exactly limm'd and Fair,
Full of good Spirits, Meen, and Aire,
As a long life promised;
Yet, in less than six weeks, dead.
Too promising, too great a Mind
In so small room to be confin'd:
Therfore, fit in Heav'n to dwell,
He quickly broke the Prison shell.
So the Subtle Alchymist,
Can't with Hermes=seal resist
The Powerfull Spirit's subtler flight,
But 'twill bid him long good night.
So the Sun, if it arise
Half so Glorious as his Ey's,
Like this Infant, takes a shroud,
Bury'd in a morning Cloud.





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