LIFE. BY MRS. A. L. BARBAULD.
Reading edition
Anna Letitia Barbauld, the daughter of the Rev. John Aiken, was born at Kilworth-Harcourt, in Leicestershire, 1743. She married the Rev. Rochemond Barbauld. A poet as well as an essayist, she wrote “Poems,” “Hymns in Prose for Children,” “The Female Spectator,” and “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.” She died at Stoke Newington in 1825.
Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met I own to me ’s a secret yet.
Life! we’ve been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; ’Tis hard to part when friends are dear— Perhaps ’t will cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not “Good night,” but in some brighter clime Bid me “Good morning.”