A FRAGMENT.
“Child of a day—the being of an hour,
He hurries swiftly through life’s troublous scene
Treads the same path which thousands trod before,
Then dies, and is as though he ne’er had been.”
Mrs. Faugeres.
—“But just launched on time’s wide ocean!” exclaims the expiring Edward, “and, Oh! must the farewell be now? Must I now take a long, a last adieu of all I hold dear in life? ’Tis true! He that lays the king on a level with the beggar now calls on me. My glass is almost run; the sands fall fast; the last one now trembles to be gone; tis near the bottom!—it drops! ’tis gone!”——“And there fled thy spirit too,” sobbed out Matilda.
How despotic does Death wield his sceptre! but with what impartiality! It matters not; “the flower just opening into bloom,” or the hoary head that has long been ripening for the grave: He strikes indiscriminately; the young and the aged are alike exposed.
The silken bands of matrimony had but just fastened Edward to Matilda. No tender pledge of their mutual loves had yet blest them. Happiness seemed within their grasp. But, how transient are our pleasures! how fleeting are our joys!—Business had called Edward to the metropolis: On his return he was taken sick. A skilful physician was procured, who gave it as his opinion that his patient had caught the malignant distemper which so greatly prevailed in the capital. But it might give way to medecine, and it was liberally administered for that purpose. Unavailing were the efforts of the doctor to revive the almost expiring lamp of life. In a few days Edward laid down his mortal life, and his spirit took its flight to happier regions.
His amiable partner, to shew the love she bore him, had a marble slab, plain and neat, placed over his grave, on which is this inscription:
Near to this place
Reposeth
EDWARD BLACKRIDGE.
A pattern of unfeigned
Love:
Who was robbed of existence,
While yet in his
Prime.
And at intervals Matilda steals to this spot, and bathes the stone with her tears.
L. B.
New-York, Oct. 1, 1796.
