| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | IV. Inevitable
From ‘Elegy to the Memory of an unfortunate Lady’ | | By Alexander Pope (1688–1744) |
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WHAT can atone, O ever-injured shade! | |
| Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid? | |
| No friend’s complaint, no kind domestic tear | |
| Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. | |
| By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, | 5 |
| By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, | |
| By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn’d, | |
| By strangers honour’d, and by strangers mourn’d! | |
| What tho’ no friends in sable weeds appear, | |
| Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year, | 10 |
| And bear about the mockery of woe | |
| To midnight dances, and the public show? | |
| What tho’ no weeping Loves thy ashes grace, | |
| Nor polish’d marble emulate thy face? | |
| What tho’ no sacred earth allow thee room, | 15 |
| Nor hallow’d dirge be mutter’d o’er thy tomb? | |
| Yet shall thy grave with rising flow’rs be drest, | |
| And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast: | |
| There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, | |
| There the first roses of the year shall blow; | 20 |
| While angels with their silver wings o’ershade | |
| The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made. | |
| So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name, | |
| What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. | |
| How loved, how honour’d once, avails thee not, | 25 |
| To whom related, or by whom begot; | |
| A heap of dust alone remains of thee; | |
| ’Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!… | | | | |
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