Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

On the Picture of a Fair Youth, Taken After He Was Dead

As gather’d flowers, while their wounds are new,
Look gay and fresh, as on the stalk they grew;
Torn from the root that nourish’d them, awhile
(Not taking notice of their fate) they smile,
And, in the hand which rudely pluck’d them, show
Fairer than those that to their autumn grow;
So love and beauty still that visage grace;
Death cannot fright them from their wonted place.
Alive, the hand of crooked Age had marr’d,
Those lovely features which cold Death has spared.

No wonder then he sped in love so well,
When his high passion he had breath to tell;
When that accomplish’d soul, in this fair frame,
No business had but to persuade that dame,
Whose mutual love advanced the youth so high,
That, but to heaven, he could no higher fly.