Our youth, our joyes, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave
(When we have wandered all our ways)
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust."—W. R.
P. 396, 3d edition, London, 1672.
In the Collection of Sacred Poetry, edited for the Parker Society by Mr. Farr (vol. i. p. 236.), the lines I have adduced are headed "An Epitaph" and attributed to Sir W. Raleigh on the above melancholy occasion.
"The Soul's Errand," which ÆGROTUS quotes from, is entitled "The Farewell" in the same collection; but so much ambiguity rests upon Sir Walter's poetry that I shall merely add my conviction that the "Epitaph" is only a fragment—"judicent peritiores."