Take, holy earth, all that my soul holds dear.
Take that best gift which heav’n so lately gave.
To Bristol’s fount I bore with trembling care
Her faded for: she bow’d to taste the wave
And died. Does youth. Does beauty read the line?
Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm?
Speak, dead Maria. Breathe a strain divine.
Ev’n from the grave thou shalt have power to charm.
Bid them be chaste. Be innocent like thee.
Bid them in duties sphere as meekly move.
And if so fair, from vanity as free.
As firm in friendship and as fond in love.
Tell them tho’ ’tis an awful thing to die
(Twas ev’n to thee) yet. The dread path once trod
Heav’n lifts its everlasting portals high
And bids “the pure in heart behold their God.”