Sonett-Forum

When pensive on that portraiture I gaze,
Where my four brothers round about me stand,
And four fair sisters smile with graces bland,
The goodly monument of happier days;

And think how soon insatiate Death, who preys
On all, has cropped the rest with ruthless hand;
While only I survive of all that band,
Which one chaste bed did to my father raise;

It seems that like a column left alone,
The tottering remnant of some splendid fane,
'Scaped from the fury of the barbarous Gaul,

And wasting Time, which has the rest o'erthrown;
Amidst our house's ruins I remain
Single, unpropped, and nodding to my fall.