title: To the memory of Sarah Livingston
author: Henry Livingston Jr.
date: c. 1783
source: Henry Livingston's manuscript poetry book (Thomas Collection; scans and transcription on henrylivingston.com), p. 17 (wife Sarah Welles Livingston died 1 Sep 1783). URL: https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/deathsarah.htm (fetched via https://web.archive.org/web/20250421171535/http://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/deathsarah.htm)
form: iambic pentameter
lines: 16
attribution: certain
notes: Serious elegy on his first wife. Later reworked by Livingston as the printed elegy on Gilbert Cortlandt (1786, signed R) and, per the site, as the obituary verse for daughter Catharine Livingston Breese (1808). Site heading/headnote: To the memory of Sarah Livingston | who was born on the 7th of Novr. 1752 | & died Sepr. 1st, 1783 MS scan: https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/poetry/doublepages/doublepage16-17.htm

BEYOND where billows roll or tempests vex
Is gone the gentlest of the gentle sex!
---Her brittle bark on life's wild ocean tost
Unequal to the conflict soon was lost.
Severe her sufferings! much, alas, she bore,
Then sunk beneath the storm & rose no more.

But when th' Archangel's awful trump shall sound
And vibrate life thro all the deep profound
Her renovated vessel will be seen,
Transcendant floating on the silver stream!
All beauteous to behold! serene she glides
Borne on by mildest & propitious tides;
While fanning zephyrs fill her snow white sails
And aid her passage with the friendliest gales
Till safe within the destin'd port of bliss
She furls her sails and moors in endless peace.