THE SAD DAY
by: Thomas Flatman (1637-1688)
- THE sad
day!
- When friends shall shake their heads, and say
- Of miserable me--
- 'Hark, how he groans!
- Look, how he pants for breath!
- See how he struggles with the pangs of death!'
- When they shall say of these dear eyes--
- 'How hollow, O how dim they be!
- Mark how his breast doth rise and swell
- Against his potent enemy!'
- When some old friend shall step to my bedside,
- Touch my chill face, and thence shall gently slide.
- But--when his next companions say
- 'How does he do? What hopes?'--shall turn away,
- Answering only, with a lift-up hand--
- 'Who can his fate withstand?'
-
- Then shall a gasp or two do more
- Than e'er my rhetoric could before:
- Persuade the world to trouble me no more!
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POEMS BY THOMAS FLATMAN |
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