| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | On a Virtuous Young Gentlewoman That Died Suddenly | | By William Cartwright (1611–1643) |
| | | SHE who to Heaven more Heaven doth annex, | |
| Whose lowest thought was above all our sex, | |
| Accounted nothing death but t’ be reprieved, | |
| And died as free from sickness as she lived. | |
| Others are dragged away, or must be driven, | 5 |
| She only saw her time and stept to Heaven; | |
| Where seraphims view all her glories o’er, | |
| As one returned that had been there before. | |
| For while she did this lower world adorn, | |
| Her body seemed rather assumed than born; | 10 |
| So rarified, advanced, so pure and whole, | |
| That body might have been another’s soul; | |
| And equally a miracle it were | |
| That she could die, or that she could live here. | | | | |
|
|
