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| O’ERWHELMING sorrow now demands my song: | |
| From death the overwhelming sorrow sprung. | |
| What flowing tears? What hearts with grief opprest? | |
| What sighs on sighs heave the fond parent’s breast? | |
| The brother weeps, the hapless sisters join | 5 |
| Th’ increasing woe, and swell the crystal brine; | |
| The poor, who once his gen’rous bounty fed, | |
| Droop, and bewail their benefactor dead. | |
| In death the friend, the kind companion lies, | |
| And in one death what various comfort dies! | 10 |
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| Th’ unhappy mother sees the sanguine rill | |
| Forget to flow, and nature’s wheels stand still, | |
| But see from earth his spirit far remov’d, | |
| And know no grief recals your best-belov’d: | |
| He, upon pinions swifter than the wind, | 15 |
| Has left mortality’s sad scenes behind | |
| For joys to this terrestrial state unknown, | |
| And glories richer than the monarch’s crown. | |
| Of virtue’s steady course the prize behold! | |
| What blissful wonders to his mind unfold! | 20 |
| But of celestial joys I sing in vain: | |
| Attempt not, muse, the too advent’rous strain. | |
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| No more in briny show’rs, ye friends around, | |
| Or bathe his clay, or waste them on the ground: | |
| Still do you weep, still wish for his return? | 25 |
| How cruel thus to wish, and thus to mourn? | |
| No more for him the streams of sorrow pour, | |
| But haste to join him on the heav’nly shore, | |
| On harps of gold to tune immortal lays, | |
| And to your God immortal anthems raise. | 30 |
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