The pale cold form these gates of death inclose,
When warm with life, the gem of women rose.
Immortal RICHARDSON, through many a year,
Watch’d her pure soul along its bright career,
Saw it arise, collected, and sedate,
O’er the oppressive gloom of wayward fate.
Her friendship taught his eagle-glance to find
Each perfect model rising in her mind,
When female virtues from his hallow’d page
In cloudless glory school’d a thoughtless age.
BENNET, tho’ set thy earthly sun, whose ray
Pour’d all the fires of intellectual day,
Yet its sunk orb on every heart has spread,
That living honour’d, and that mourn’d thee dead,
A glow celestial, potent to illume
The mists of grief, the shadows of the tomb.