WHat on Earth deserves our trust ? <br /> Youth and Beauty both are dust. <br /> Long we gathering are with pain, <br /> What one moment calls again. <br /> Seven years childless, marriage past, <br /> A Son, a son is born at last : <br /> So exactly lim'd and fair. <br /> Full of good Spirits, Meen, and Air, <br /> As a long life promised, <br />Yet, in less than six weeks dead. <br />Too promising, too great a mind <br />In so small room to be confin'd : <br />Therefore, as fit in Heav'n to dwell, <br />He quickly broke the Prison shell. <br />So the subtle Alchimist, <br />Can't with Hermes Seal resist <br />The powerful spirit's subtler flight, <br />But t'will bid him long good night. <br />And so the Sun if it arise <br />Half so glorious as his Eyes, <br />Like this Infant, takes a shrowd, <br />Buried in a morning Cloud.<br /><br />Katherine Philips<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/epitaph-on-her-son-h-p/
