A universal pain ....

Rachel Speght, writing in 1621 about her mother's death:

"...A sodeine sorrow pierceth to the quicke,
Speedie encounters fortitude doth try;
Unarmed men receive the deepest wound,
Expected perils time doth lenifie;
Her sodeine losse hath cut my feeble heart,
So deepe, that daily I indure the smart.

The roote is kil'd, how can the bough but fade?
But sith that Death this cruel deed hath done,
I'le blaze the nature of this mortall foe,
And shew how it to tyranize begun.
The sequell then with judgement view aright,
The profit my and will the paines requite."

(From Mortalities Memorandum, with a Dream Prefixed, Jacob Bloom, London.)
It is not known when Rachel's mother died; she was 19 when she wrote this.

A post for my Mum, Joy Louise Bennett (White)
09/08/46- 25/4/89
and my grandmother, Bertha Bennett (Broughton)
1/1/09-12/7/04