[Page 65]

To the Right Honourable the Lady Sarah Cowper
[ed.] "Lady Sarah Cowper, daughter of William, first Earl Cowper; friend of Pope. She died unmarried in 1758." (Tucker [1992], 212) (AH)
.

Written when the Author was sick at Tunbridge-Wells.

1 Let me the Honour soon obtain,
2 For which I long have hop'd in vain;
3 Since I, alas! am now confin'd,
4 Your Visit would be doubly kind.
5 What Sorrows have I not to fear,
6 Ty'd to the Bed of Sickness here?
7 When all that's human, quits the Place,
8 And Winter shews his horrid Face;
9 Whilst Desolation proudly stalks
10 Along the dull, deserted Walks.
[Page 66]
11 Methinks the Skies already lour;
12 Loud, from the Hills, the Torrents pour;
13 The Shops are shut; the Days are dark;
14 And scarce a Dog is left to bark.
15 O, shield me from the dreadful Storms,
16 Which my distemper'd Fancy forms!
17 The thoughtless Fair the Toilet prize,
18 There practise Smiles, and point their Eyes:
19 But Cowper, negligent of Art,
20 Chose, early wise, the better Part.
21 Yet from your Mind some Moments spare;
22 The Stranger be a-while your Care,
23 Who now beneath Affliction bends,
24 Far from her Country, and her Friends.
25 Come, and my anxious Heart relieve:
26 For in your Presence who could grieve?

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 54K / ZIP - 6.8K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 1.0K / ZIP - 817 )

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [Harding C 3644].)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 2.2M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): To the Right Honourable the Lady Sarah Cowper. Written when the Author was sick at Tunbridge-Wells.
Author: Mary Barber
Themes: illness; injury; friendship
Genres: epistle
References: DMI 11372

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Barber, Mary, ca. 1690-1757. Poems on Several Occasions [poems only]. London: Printed for C. Rivington, at the Bible and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1734, pp. 65-66. xlviii,283,[7]p.; 8⁰. (ESTC T42622; DMI 519; Foxon p. 45) (Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [Harding C 3644].)

Editorial principles

Typography, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been cautiously modernized. The source of the text is given and all significant editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. This ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

Other works by Mary Barber