[Epitaph on Mrs Clerke]

1 Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
2 A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps:
3 A heart, within whose sacred cell
4 The peaceful virtues loved to dwell.
5 Affection warm, and faith sincere,
6 And soft humanity were there.
7 In agony, in death, resigned,
8 She felt the wound she left behind.
9 Her infant image, here below,
10 Sits smiling on a father's woe:
11 Whom what awaits, while yet he strays
12 Along the lonely vale of days?
13 A pang, to secret sorrow dear;
14 A sigh; an unavailing tear;
15 Till time shall every grief remove,
16 With life, with memory, and with love.

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About this text

Title (in Source Edition): [Epitaph on Mrs Clerke]
Author: Thomas Gray
Themes: death
Genres: epitaph

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Source edition

Gray, Thomas, 1716-1771. Thomas Gray: English poems. Web. Oxford: Thomas Gray Archive, 2002. http://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems.shtml

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