On the Death of a Lady's Owl.
1 THE Owl expires! death gave the dreadful word,
2 And lovely Anna weeps her fav'rite bird.
3 Ye feather'd choir in willing throngs repair,
4 And sooth the sorrows of the melting fair;
5 In sounds of woe the dear-departed greet,
6 With cypress strew, ye doves, the green retreat;
7 The fateful raven tolls the passing bell,
8 The solemn dirge be sung by Philomel;
9 Sir Chanticlear, a chief of hardy race,
10 Shall guard from kites and daws the sacred place.
11 With your just tears a bard shall mix his own,
12 And thus, in artless verse, inscribe the stone.
13 INTERR'D within this little space
14 The bird of wisdom lies;
15 Learn hence, how vain is ev'ry grace,
16 How fruitless to be wise.
17 Can mortal stop the arm of Death
18 Who ne'er compassion knew?
* Adonis.Venus' lover robb'd of breath,
20 He, Anna's darling slew.
21 Ah happy bird, to raise those sighs
22 Which man could ne'er obtain!
23 Ah happy bird, to cloud those eyes
24 That fir'd each kneeling swain!
25 Thrice bless'd thy life, her joy, her bliss,
26 Thrice bless'd thy happy doom;
27 She gave thee many a melting kiss,
28 She wept upon thy tomb.
About this text
Title (in Source Edition): On the Death of a Lady's Owl.
Author: Moses Mendez
Themes: animals; death
References: DMI 26660
Text view / Document view
The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the ECCO-TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 3.0.