Nature

These Vales Were Saddened with No Common Gloom

by William Wordsworth 1770–1850

From Poetical Works, ed. Knight (1896), vol. VIII

Nature

These vales were saddened with no common gloom
When good Jemima perished in her bloom;
When, such the awful will of heaven, she died
By flames breathed on her from her own fireside.
On earth we dimly see, and but in part
We know, yet faith sustains the sorrowing heart;
And she, the pure, the patient and the meek,
Might have fit epitaph could feelings speak;
If words could tell and monuments record,
How Treasures lost are inwardly deplored,
No name by grief’s fond eloquence adorned
More than Jemima’s would be praised and mourned.
The tender virtues of her blameless life,
Bright in the daughter, brighter in the wife,
And in the cheerful mother brightest shone,--
That light hath past away--the will of God be done.

MLA

Wordsworth, William. “These Vales Were Saddened with No Common Gloom.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/wordsworth/865/.

Chicago

Wordsworth, William. “These Vales Were Saddened with No Common Gloom.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/wordsworth/865/.

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