The common profit; and some people have
Some stay, no more than kings should give, to crave;
Some women have some taciturnity;
Some nunneries some grains of chastity;
She, that did thus much, and much more could do,
But that our age was iron, and rusty too,
She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this
Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is;
And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy,
That ’tis in vain to dew, or mollify
It with thy tears, or sweat, or blood; nothing
Is worth our travail, grief, or perishing,
But those rich joys which did possess her heart,
Of which she’s now partaker, and a part.
But as in cutting up a man that’s dead,
The body will not last out, to have read
On every part, and therefore men direct
Their speech to parts that are of most effect;
So the world’s carcase would not last, if I
Were punctual in this Anatomy;
Nor smells it well to hearers, if one tell
Them their disease, who fain would think they’re well.
Here therefore be the end; and blessed maid,
Of whom is meant whatever has been said,
Or shall be spoken well by any tongue,
Whose name refines coarse lines, and makes prose song,
Accept this tribute, and his first year’s rent;
Who till his dark short taper’s end be spent,
As oft as thy feast sees this widow’d earth,
Will yearly celebrate thy second birth;
That is, thy death; for though the soul of man
Be got when man is made, ’tis born but then
When man doth die; our body’s as the womb,
And as a midwife death directs it home.
And you, her creatures, whom she works upon,
And have your last and best concoction
From her example and her virtue, if you
In reverence to her do think it due,
That no one should her praises thus rehearse,
As matter fit for chronicle, not verse;
Vouchsafe to call to mind that God did make
A last and lasting’st piece, a song. He spake
To Moses to deliver unto all
That song, because He knew they would let fall
The law, the prophets, and the history,
But keep the song still in their memory.
Such an opinion, in due measure, made
Me this great office boldly to invade;
Nor could incomprehensibleness deter
Me from thus trying to imprison her;
Which when I saw that a strict grave could do,
I saw not why verse might not do so too.
Verse hath a middle nature; heaven keeps souls,
The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrolls.
A Funeral Elegy
Smallness of stature.
’Tis loss to trust a tomb with such a guest,
Or to confine her in a marble chest.
Alas! what’s marble, jet, or porphyry,
Prized with the chrysolite of either eye,
Or with those pearls and rubies which she was?
Join the two Indies in one tomb, ’tis glass;
And so is all, to her materials,
Though every inch were ten Escurials;
Yet she’s demolish’d; can we keep her then
In works of hands, or of the wits of men?
Can these memorials, rags of paper, give
Life to that name, by which name they must live?
Sickly, alas! short-lived, abortive be
Those carcase verses, whose soul is not she;
And can she, who no longer would be she,
Being such a tabernacle stoop to be
In paper wrapp’d; or when she would not lie
In such an house, dwell in an elegy?
But ’tis no matter; we may well allow
Verse to live so long as the world will now,
For her death wounded it. The world contains
Princes for arms, and counsellors for brains,
Lawyers for tongues, divines for hearts, and more,
The rich for stomachs, and for backs the poor;
The officers for hands, merchants for feet,
By which remote and distant countries meet;
But those fine spirits, which do tune and set
This organ, are those pieces which beget
Wonder and love; and these were she; and she
Being spent, the world must needs decrepit be.
For since death will proceed to triumph still,
He can find nothing, after her, to kill,
Except the world itself, so great as she.
Thus brave and confident may nature be,
Death cannot give her such another blow,
Because she cannot such another show.
But must we say she’s dead? may ’t not be said,
That as a sunder’d clock is piecemeal laid,
Not to be lost, but by the maker’s hand
Repolish’d, without error then to stand,
Or as the Afric Niger stream enwombs
Itself into the earth, and after comes
—Having first made a natural bridge, to pass
For many leagues—far greater than it was,
May ’t not be said, that her grave shall restore
Her, greater, purer, firmer than before?
Heaven may say this, and joy in ’t, but can we
Who live, and lack her here, this vantage see?
What is ’t to us, alas! if there have been
An angel made a throne, or cherubin?
We lose by ’t: and as agèd men are glad
Being tasteless grown, to joy in joys they had,
So now the sick, starved world must feed upon
This joy, that we had her, who now is gone.
Rejoice then, nature, and this world, that you,
Fearing the last fires hastening to subdue
Your force and vigour, ere it were near gone,
Wisely bestow’d and laid it all on one;
One, whose clear body was so pure and thin,
Because it need disguise no thought within;
’Twas but a through-light scarf her mind to enroll,
Or exhalation breathed out from her soul;
One whom all men, who durst no more, admired;
And whom, whoe’er had worth enough, desired;
As when a temple’s built, saints emulate
To which of them it shall be consecrate.
But as, when heaven looks on us with new eyes,
Those new stars every artist exercise;
What place they should assign to them they doubt,
Argue, and agree not, till those stars go out;
So the world studied whose this piece should be,
Till she can be nobody’s else, nor she;
But like a lamp of balsamum, desired
Rather to adorn than last, she soon expired.
Clothed in her virgin white integrity
—For marriage, though it doth not stain, doth dye—
To ’scape th’ infirmities which wait upon
Woman, she went away before she was one;
And the world’s busy noise to overcome,
Took so much death as served for opium;
For though she could not, nor could choose to die,
She hath yielded to too long an ecstasy.
He which, not knowing her sad history,
Should come to read the book of destiny,
How fair, and chaste, humble and high she’d been,
Much promised, much perform’d, at
