On the Death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, a celebrated actress.
What sight of woe thus harrows up my soul!
Must those love-darting eyes in anguish roll?
Shall ghastly death such charms divine invade?
You muses, graces, loves come to her aid.
Oh! you my gods and hers assist the fair,
Your image sure must well deserve your care.
Alas! thou diest, I press thy corpse alone;
Thou diest, the fatal news too soon is known.
In such a loss, each tender feeling heart
Is touched like mine, and takes in grief a part.
I hear the arts on every side deplore
Their loss, and cry, "Melpomene's no more:"
What exclamations will the future race
Utter, at hearing of those arts' disgrace?
See cruel men a burying place refuse,
To her whom Greece had worshipped as a muse;
When living, they adored her power divine,
To her they bowed like votaries at a shrine:
Should she then, breathless, criminal be thought,
And is it then to charm the world a fault?
Seine's[1] banks should now no more be deemed profane,
Lecouvreur's sacred ashes there remain:
At this sad tomb, shrine sacred to thy shade,
Our vows are still as at a temple paid.
- ↑ She was buried on a bank of the Seine.
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