Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79. | | | | Bristol | | Epitaph on Mrs. Mason, in the Cathedral of Bristol | | William Mason (1724–1797) |
| | | TAKE, holy earth! all that my soul holds dear; | |
| Take that best gift which heaven so lately gave; | |
| To Bristol’s fount I bore with trembling care | |
| Her faded form; she bowed to taste the wave, | |
| And died! Does youth, does beauty, read the line? | 5 |
| Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm? | |
| Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine: | |
| Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm. | |
| Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee; | |
| Bid them in duty’s sphere as meekly move; | 10 |
| And if so fair, from vanity as free; | |
| As firm in friendship, and as fond in love. | |
| Tell them, though ’t is an awful thing to die | |
| (’T was even to thee,) yet, the dread path once trod, | |
| Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high, | 15 |
| And bids the pure in heart behold their God. | | | | |
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