A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER
Reading edition
I dwelt in the shade of a city, She far by the sea, With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty; But never with me.
Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring I never once met, To guide her with accents adoring Through Weippert’s “First Set.” [46]
I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones In Vanity Fair, And she enjoyed hers among hale ones In salt-smelling air.
Maybe she had eyes of deep colour, Maybe they were blue, Maybe as she aged they got duller; That never I knew.
She may have had lips like the coral, But I never kissed them, Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel, Nor sought for, nor missed them.
Not a word passed of love all our lifetime, Between us, nor thrill; We’d never a husband-and-wife time, For good or for ill.
Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal, Lie I and lies she, This never-known lady, eternal Companion to me!