Classic Poem

What means this solemn damp quite through the Strand
To Westminster ? Oh! see how sad they stand!
Sorrow invadeth all: as when a Prince
Lov'd, is in pomp of funeral waited hence.
The Town is sadned, and the Temples mourn,
As having lost what never can return.
The greedy Lawyer, and his proud pert Clark,
Lets fall his pleading and his pen, to mark
What 'tis amazes the litigious Hall.
When lo! the fatal murmur reaches all;
And through the shuffling throng the news is spred
In a faint whisper, Hopeful Leigh is dead!
Dead of the Plague! dead in his early Youth!
Leaving quite widowed Handsomnesse and Truth.
His shape was womans envy, and her stain;
His mind all sweet, his Conversation gain
To all, to whom he did the honour grant
T'enjoy those parts, which Nobles boast, yet want.
If he had errors, they were such as ne'r
Could grow to faults, but the next riper year
Would clean have chac'd away. For as from fire
At the first kindling some smoak will aspire;
So youth must be allow'd his vapours, which
Maturity and time will turn to rich
And brightning flames, whereby the world may prove,
Though Man derive from Earth, he mounts to Jove .
Scorning his soul should any other food
Pursue, but that which is supremely good.
Thus he assur'd, yet these in him with grief
We find cut off by fate without relief.
Nor was this all: the Plague which humbly fed,
And onely th'unfann'd Vulgar harrassed;
Perhaps in pity, for to them a Grave
Is far more blest than that poor life they have;
Now is exalted grown, and shews more grim,
Boding a stroke at Gentry thorough him:
And though already thousands be extinct,
Yet they shall be recorded but as linkt
In one dull masse together: In whose fall
There shall no Plague be nam'd: but they that shall
Mention this time, their Annal thus shall run,
This year the first of May the Plague begun.
And for his sake all our Successors shall
This day the second evil May-day call.