Source on Edmund Waller
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“How, to thy sacred memory, shall I bring
(worthy thy fame) a grateful offering?
I, who by toils of sickness am become
Almost as near as thou art to a tomb;
While every soft, and every tender strain
Is ruffled, and ill-natur'd grown with pain?
But, at thy name, my languish'd muse revives,
And a new spark in the dull ashes strives.
Aphra Behn, On the Death of Mr. Waller (1687)”
“Athens and Rome, when learning flourish'd most,
could never such a finish'd poet boast:
Whose matchless softness in the English tongue
Out-does what Horace, or Anacreon, sung.
Sir Thomas Higgons, On Mr. Waller (1687)”