Death & Dying

Epitaph on Mrs Jane Clarke

by Thomas Gray 1716–1771

From Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett (1855)

Death & Dying

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

MLA

Gray, Thomas. “Epitaph on Mrs Jane Clarke.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/gray/14/.

Chicago

Gray, Thomas. “Epitaph on Mrs Jane Clarke.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/gray/14/.

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