Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray and Smollett

Epitaph on Mrs Jane Clarke

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.

Notes

¹ ‘Mrs Jane Clarke’ this lady, the wife of Dr Clarke, physician at Epsom, died April 27, 1757, and is buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent.