All but yon widowed, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread,
To strip the brook, with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain.
Her name was Catherine Geraghty.
Widow (The), courted by Sir Hudibras, was the relict of Amminadab Wilmer or Willmot, an independent, slain at Edgehill. She was left with a fortune of £200 a year. The knight’s “Epistle to the Lady” and the “Lady’s Reply,” in which she declines his offer, are usually ap pended to the poem entitled Hudibras.