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Satires—Imitations—AND
Sonnets.
by
Cornwall Bayley
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On
the Death of ROBERT SUMNER, A.B. Christ. Coll.
Comb. ob. June, 1804, etat. 22.
“I
am distressed for thee my brother! Very pleasant
hast thou been unto me!—Thy love to me was
wonderful!” 2.
Sam. I. 26.
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OH!
my prophetic soul! and did my heart
So justly true the fatal fear impart?
Did sorrow tell me when my Sumner’s
breast
First bade me slumber in its generous rest;
That soon, e’re friendship’s raptures
could commence.
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My heart
should mourn an early exile thence?
And yet, dear youth, the same internal dread,
Had mark’d thee (conscious) for the
fleeting dead;
The hour that gave reflecting wisdom birth,
Told thee how short thy sad career on earth;
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Each
rising year proclaim’d the tale again,
With louder summons and severer pain;
Whilst nature seem’d to tremble on the brink,
Ev’n life itself in hourly death to sink;
And every pulse chain’d by the sad controul
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Died
in the yielding conflict ’save thy Soul!
That soul the mirror of ingenuous youth,
Whose every wish and every thought was truth;
That soul which yet in mercy may impart
Its wanted influence to my bleeding heart;
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That
soul, oppress’d by sorrow’s bitterest
sway,
Taught thee, resign’d, to suffer and obey;
Undaunted watch’d the limits of thy breath,
And smil’d in triumph ’midst the pangs
of Death! [Page 26]
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