Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

A New England Gentleman’s Epitaph

By Thomas Dudley (1576–1653)

DIM eyes, deaf ears, cold stomach show

My dissolution is in view;

Eleven times seven near lived have I,

And now God calls, I willing die:

My shuttle ’s shot, my race is run,

My sun is set, my deed is done;

My span is measur’d, tale is told,

My flower is faded and grown old,

My dream is vanish’d, shadow ’s fled,

My soul with Christ, my body dead;

Farewell dear wife, children and friends,

Hate heresy, make blessed ends;

Bear poverty, live with good men,

So shall we meet with joy again.

Let men of God in courts and churches watch

O’er such as do a toleration hatch;

Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice,

To poison all with heresy and vice.

If men be left, and otherwise combine,

My epitaph ’s, I dy’d no libertine.