Classic Poem

If scenes funereal serious thoughts dispense,
And wake the soul to sympathetic sense,
Attend, vain Passenger, this awful shrine,
A state like this will soon alas! be thine!
Shall full maturity securely rest,
And chace reflection from its sanguine breast?
Like the fleet courser no obstruction heed,
Seek Pleasure's goal with unremitted speed?
The op'ning bud, and fair expanded flow'r,
Fade, and are cropt by Death's resistless pow'r.
His rig'rous laws a Parent's hopes destroy,
By snatching to himself their pride and joy.
This modest snow-drop, eldest born of Spring,
Whose verse sepulchral with regret I sing,
Too early did her various gifts display,
In form and mind, as radiant as the day.
We prais'd, admir'd, beheld with fond surprise,
Death gave the stroke, and pluck'd her from our eyes;
Where now transplanted to a milder sky,
She blooms unfaded, and can never die.