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Epitaph On A Free But Tame Redbreast, A Favourite Of Miss Sally Hurdis.

By William Cowper

Topics: classic

These are not dewdrops, these are tears,     And tears by Sally shed     For absent Robin, who she fears,     With too much cause, is dead.     One morn he came not to her hand     As he was wont to come,     And, on her finger perchd, to stand     Picking his breakfast-crumb.     Alarmd, she calld him, and perplexd,     She sought him, but in vain     That day he came not , nor the next,     Nor ever came again.     She therefore raised him here a tomb,     Though where he fell, or how,     None knowsso secret was his doom,     Nor where he moulders now.     Had half a score of coxcombs died     In social Robins stead,     Poor Sallys tears had soon been dried,     Or haply never shed.     But Bob was neither rudely bold     Nor spiritlessly tame;     Nor was, like theirs, his bosom cold,     But always in a flame.

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"These are not dewdrops, these are tears,..."

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Author:William Cowper

"These are not dewdrops, these are tears,..." by William Cowper

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

William Cowper

About William Cowper

William Cowper (1731–1800) was an English poet and hymnodist whose work bridges the gap between the Augustan age and Romanticism. His poems "The Task" and "John Gilpin" were enormously popular, and his hymn "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" remains widely sung.

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