"But how will this dismantled soul appear, / When stripped of all it lately held so dear, / Forced from its prison of expiring clay, / Afraid and shivering at the doubtful way?"
— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)
Author
Work Title
Date
1748
Metaphor
"But how will this dismantled soul appear, / When stripped of all it lately held so dear, / Forced from its prison of expiring clay, / Afraid and shivering at the doubtful way?"
Metaphor in Context
Yet let me still, ah! let me grasp a friend:
And when each joy, when each loved object flies,
Be you the last that leaves my closing eyes.
But how will this dismantled soul appear,
When stripped of all it lately held so dear,
Forced from its prison of expiring clay,
Afraid and shivering at the doubtful way?
Yet did these eyes a dying parent see,
Loosed from all cares except a thought for me,
Without a tear resign her shortening breath,
And dauntless meet the lingering stroke of death.
(ll. 42-52, p. 216)
And when each joy, when each loved object flies,
Be you the last that leaves my closing eyes.
But how will this dismantled soul appear,
When stripped of all it lately held so dear,
Forced from its prison of expiring clay,
Afraid and shivering at the doubtful way?
Yet did these eyes a dying parent see,
Loosed from all cares except a thought for me,
Without a tear resign her shortening breath,
And dauntless meet the lingering stroke of death.
(ll. 42-52, p. 216)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
See Poems Upon Several Occasions: By Mrs. Leapor (London: Printed and sold by J. Roberts, 1748). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Reading Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
