Katherine Philips > Quotes

“Epitaph

'On her Son H.P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies interred'



What on Earth deserves our trust?
Youth and Beauty both are dust.
Long we gathering are with pain,
What one moment calls again.
Seven years childless marriage past,
A Son, a son is born at last:
So exactly lim’d and fair,
Full of good Spirits, Meen, and Air,
As a long life promised,
Yet, in less than six weeks dead.
Too promising, too great a mind
In so small room to be confined:
Therefore, as fit in Heaven to dwell,
He quickly broke the Prison shell.
So the subtle Alchemist,
Can’t with Hermes Seal resist
The powerful spirit’s subtler flight,
But t’will bid him long good night.
And so the Sun if it arise
Half so glorious as his Eyes,
Like this Infant, takes a shrowd,
Buried in a morning Cloud.”
― Katherine Philips

“I am not thine, but thee.”
― Katherine Philips

“What angry star then governs me
That I must feel a double smart,
Prisoner to fate as well as thee;
Kept from thy face, link’d to thy heart?
Because my love all love excels,
Must my grief have no parallels?”
― Katherine Philips

“Tis not thy love I fear to lose,
That will in spite of absence hold”
― Katherine Philips

“Beauty is but composure, and we find
Content is but the concord of the mind”
― Katherine Philips