The Virginia Gazette

On the death of Miss WILKINSON

Absent or dead, I'll let a friend be dear,
A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear.

POPE.

Ye mournful muses that with tuneful lays
Assist th'afflicted when they sing the praise
Of friends deceas'd; your leavy murmurs bring,
And echo to my sorrows as I sing;
Help me in solitary strains deplore
The much lamented Betsy, who's no more,
Like a too early, hasty, vernal flow'r,
That does its head unseasonably tow'r,
Awhile secure she stood, and gaz'd the plain,
Promising fair perfection to attain;
But e'er she could to puberty arrive,
Inexorable Death forbad her live,
Nor youth, nor innocence, could make him spare
Th'amiable, inimitable fair.

Ah! fatal hour! when Disease malignant mock'd the Doctor's art,
And ev'ry vital aid forsook the heart,
Nor friends, nor relatives, cou'd comfort give,
Nor any sublunary help relieve;
The feeble strength decays, the fainting breath,
Forsakes and leaves her in the arms of Death,
Breathless and pale, a lifeless lump of clay,
The horrid, ghastly, corpse extended lay';
Each piteous relative, each weeping friend,
In vain their sorrows nurse, in vain their bosoms rend.

Oh! how shall I describe the dire distress
That does her tender mother now oppress;
The teeming pain, th'unutterable woe,
The heart-felt grief which mothers only know?
As on the paler corse she gazing stands,
Dumb as a statue with enfolded hands,
With tears and sighs, the eloquence of pain,
Laments her loss, her loss laments in vain;
See how she struggles with maternal grief.
Sinks with the weight, nor can admit relief;
Her racking sorrows with her tears encrease,
And now! (Oh, kinder Heaven, restore her peace!)
With frantic raptures! and distortions wild!
To patience lost! she cries my child! my child!
Would I'd dy'd for thee! would for thee I'd dy'd!
When will my sorrows cease? When will my grief
subside?
Oh! never, never! -never comfort know
Till I descend with thee
Into the hospitable grave below.

Father and brothers with repeated cries,
Repeated groans, unutterable sighs,
Like the sad turtle, banish'd from its mate,
Inexorable mourns her hapless fate
More distant friends in memory revive
Her amiable virtues while alive:
Some tell how with officious pious care,
She'd often to Jehovah's courts repair,
And with a Saint's devotion worship there.
Some, how with conscientious thoughts discharge
The duties of a daughter, some enlarge
Upon her social virtues, what a friend!
What a companion! but we can't commend
Sufficiently her worth: her worth's above
The best description of her better love.

Oh! had relenting Heav'n prolong'd her days,
This mournful verse, these melancholy lays,
In joyous, gladsome, numbers unconfin'd,
Had sung the living graces of her mind;
But now dejected at thy gloomy urn,
The muse laments in vain, in vain does mourn,
Thy woeful dire inauspicious fate,
Thou art forever lost! annihilate.

Annihilate! -forbear the impious thought,
Reason, the christian system's better taught,
Her soul's immortal as almighty Jove,
Her being's parallel to cherubims above.
Methinks I see her, on celestial wings,
Fly from this ball of transitory things,
Rapid as lightning thro' the midway air,
Swift as Elijah on his fiery car,
She mounts impetuous to that bless'd abode.
Where virtue meets reward from virtue's God.