Rather Too Long For My Chapter, But I Quote It For The Sake Of The Last
Four Lines, Characteristic Of That Period, The Age Of Conceits, Of The
Love Of Fantasticalness, Of Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan.
A jump from Ripon of 600 odd miles to the little village of Ludgvan,
near Penzance, brings us to a tablet of nearly the same date, 1635, and
an inscription conceived in the same style and spirit.
It is
interesting, on account of the name of Catherine Davy, an ancestress of
the famous Sir Humphry, whose marble statue stands before the Penzance
Market House facing Market Jew Street.
Death shall not make her memory to rott
Her virtues were too great to be forgott.
Heaven hath her soul where it must still remain
The world her worth to blazon forth her fame
The poor relieved do honour and bless her name.
Earth, Heaven, World, Poor, do her immortalize
Who dying lives and living never dies.
Here is another of 1640:
Here lyeth the body of my Husband deare
Whom next to God I did most love and fear.
Our loves were single: we never had but one
And so I'll be although that thou art gone.
Which means that she has no intention of marrying again. Why have I set
this inscription down? Solely to tell how I copied it. I saw it on a
brass in the obscure interior of a small village church in Dorset, but
placed too high up on the wall to be seen distinctly.
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