| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXVI. Melancholy
On a vertuous young Gentlewoman who dyed suddenly | | By William Cartwright (1611–1643) |
| | | WHEN the old flaming prophet climbed the sky, | |
| Who, at one glimpse, did vanish and not dye, | |
| He made more preface to a death than this. | |
| So far from sick, she did not breath amiss: | |
| She who to Heaven more Heaven doth annex, | 5 |
| Whose lowest thought was above all our sex, | |
| Accounted nothing death but t’ be repriev’d, | |
| And dyed as free from sickness as she liv’d. | |
| Others are dragg’d away, or must be driven, | |
| She only saw her time and stept to Heaven; | 10 |
| Where seraphims view all her glories o’er, | |
| As one return’d that had been there before. | |
| For while she did this lower world adorn, | |
| Her body seem’d rather assum’d than born; | |
| So rarified, advanced, so pure and whole, | 15 |
| That body might have been another’s soul; | |
| And equally a miracle it were | |
| That she could die, or that she could live here. | | | | |
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