[Page 326]

SONNET V.

On a FAMILY-PICTURE.

1 WHEN pensive on that portraiture I gaze,
2 Where my four brothers round about me stand,
3 And four fair sisters smile with graces bland,
4 The goodly monument of happier days;
5 And think, how soon insatiate death, who preys
6 On all, has cropp'd the rest with ruthless hand,
7 While only I survive of all that band,
8 Which one chaste bed did to my father raise;
9 It seems, that like a column left alone,
10 The tott'ring remnant of some splendid fane,
11 'Scap'd from the fury of the barb'rous Gaul,
12 And wasting Time, which has the rest o'erthrown,
13 Amidst our house's ruins I remain,
14 Single, unprop'd, and nodding to my fall.

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About this text

Title (in Source Edition): SONNET V. On a FAMILY-PICTURE.
Author: Thomas Edwards
Themes: parents; children; art; painting; death
Genres: sonnet; Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet
References: DMI 23543

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Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. II. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], p. 326. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.002) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

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