Gateway to the Classics: Oxford Book of English Verse, Part 3 by Arthur Quiller-Couch
 
Oxford Book of English Verse, Part 3 by  Arthur Quiller-Couch

On a Virtuous Young Gentlewoman
That Died Suddenly

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 dragg'd away, or must be driven,

She only saw her time and stept to Heaven;

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 assumed than born;

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.

— William Cartwright
1611–1643   


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