Sonnet on a Family Picture
by Thomas Edwards (1699-1757)

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 tott’ring remnant of some splendid fane,
      Scaped from the fury of the barb’rous Gaul
And wasting time, which has the rest o’erthrown,
   Amidst our house’s ruins I remain,
      Single, unpropped, and nodding to my fall.

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