Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral/On the Death of Dr. Samuel Marshall
On the Death of Dr. SAMUEL MARSHALL. 1771.
THROUGH thickets glooms look back, immortal shade,
On that confusion which thy death has made;
Or from Olympus' height look down, and see
A Town involved in grief bereft of thee.
And rends the graceful tresses from her head,
Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest
Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast.
Too quickly fled, ah! whither art thou gone?
The hapless child, thine only hope and heir,
Clings round his mother's neck, and weeps his sorrows there.
The loss of thee on Tyler's foul returns,
And Boston for her dear physician mourns.
With what companion did his soul expand?
In him we found the father and the friend:
In life how lov'd! how honour'd in his end!
And must not then our Æsculapius stay
The babe unborn in the dark womb is tost,
And seems in anguish for its father lost.
Gone is Apollo from his house of earth,
But leaves the sweet memorials of his worth:
From yonder world unseen must come no more,
Yet 'midst our woes immortal hopes attend
The spouse, the sire, the universal friend.