Sonnet XLVI.
By Anna Seward
Dark as the silent stream beneath the night,
Thy funeral glides to Life's eternal home,
Child of its narrow house! - how late the bloom,
The facile smile, the soft eye's crystal light,
Each grace of Youth's gay morn, that charms our sight,
Play'd o'er that Form! - now sunk in Death's cold gloom,
Insensate! ghastly! - for the yawning tomb,
Alas! fit Inmate. - Thus we mourn the blight
Of Virgin-Beauty, and endowments rare
In their glad hours of promise. - O! when Age
Drops, like the o'er-blown, faded rose, tho' dear
Its long known worth, no stormy sorrows rage;
But swell when we behold, unsoil'd by time,
Youth's broken Lily perished in its prime.