Classic Poem

Reader, stay, it is but Just;
Thou dost not tread on common dust,
For underneath this Stone does ly
One whose name can never dy:
Who from an honourable linage sprung,
Was to another matched young;
Whose happiness she ever sought;
One blessing was, and many brought:
Was thirty seaven yeares of her life
A vertuous, prudent, humble Wife,
And to her Spouse her faith did prove
By fifteen pledges of their Love.
But when by death of him depriv'd,
An honourable widdow liv'd
Full fower and twenty yeares, wherein,
Though she had much afflicted been,
Saw many of her children fall,
And publick ruine threaten all;
Yet from above assisted, she
Both did and suffer'd worthily.
She to the Crown and Church adher'd,
And in their sorrows them rever'd,
With Piety which knew no strife,
But was as sober as her life
A furnish'd table, open door,
That for her friends, this for the poor,
She kept; yet did her fortune find
Too narrow for her nobler mind;
Which seeking objects to relieve,
Did food to many Orphans give,
Who in her life no want did know,
But all the poor are Orphans now
Yet hold, her fame is much too safe
To need a written Epitaph.
Her fame was so confess'd that she
Can never here forgotten be,
Till Cardigan it self become
To its own ruin'd heaps a Tomb.