Poetry

than flowings be,
Virtue, whose flood did with thy youth begin,
Should so much faster ebb out, than flow in?
Though her flood were blown in by thy first breath,
All is at once sunk in the whirlpool death.
Which word I would not name, but that I see
Death, else a desert, grown a court by thee.
Now I am sure that if a man would have
Good company, his entry is a grave.
Methinks all cities, now, but anthills be,
Where, when the several labourers I see,
For children, house, provision taking pain,
They’re all but ants, carrying eggs, straw, and grain.
And churchyards are our cities, unto which
The most repair, that are in goodness rich.
There is the best concourse and confluence,
There are the holy suburbs, and from thence
Begins God’s city, New Jerusalem,
Which doth extend her utmost gates to them.
At that gate, then, triumphant soul, dost thou
Begin thy triumph. But since laws allow,
That at the triumph day the people may
All that they will ’gainst the triumpher say,
Let me here use that freedom, and express
My grief, though not to make thy triumph less.
By law to triumphs none admitted be,
Till they as magistrates get victory.
Though then to thy force all youth’s foes did yield,
Yet till fit time had wrought thee to that field,
To which thy rank in this state destined thee,
That there thy counsels might get victory,
And so in that capacity remove
All jealousies ’twixt prince and subjects’ love,
Thou couldst no title to this triumph have;
Thou didst intrude on death, usurp a grave.
Then, though victoriously, thou hadst fought as yet
But with thine own affections, with the heat
Of youth’s desires, and colds of ignorance,
But till thou shouldst successfully advance
Thine arms ’gainst foreign enemies, which are
Both envy, and acclamation popular
—For both these engines equally defeat,
Though by a divers mine, those which are great⁠—
Till then thy war was but a civil war,
For which to triumph none admitted are;
No more are they who, though with good success,
In a defensive war their power express.
Before men triumph, the dominion
Must be enlarged, and not preserved alone.
Why shouldst thou, then, whose battles were to win
Thyself from those straits nature put thee in,
And to deliver up to God that state,
Of which He gave thee the vicariate,
Which is thy soul and body, as entire
As he who takes indentures doth require;
But didst not stay to enlarge His kingdom too,
By making others, what thou didst, to do;
Why shouldst thou triumph now, when heaven no more
Hath got by getting thee, than it had before;
For heaven and thou, e’en when thou livedst here,
Of one another in possession were.
But this from triumph most disables thee,
That that place which is conquered must be
Left safe from present war, and likely doubt
Of imminent commotions to break out;
And hath he left us so? or can it be
His territory was no more than he?
No, we were all his charge; the diocese
Of every exemplar man the whole world is;
And he was joined in commission
With tutelar angels, sent to everyone.
But though this freedom to upbraid and chide
Him who triumph’d were lawful, it was tied
With this, that it might never reference have
Unto the senate, who this triumph gave;
Men might at Pompey jest, but they might not
At that authority by which he got
Leave to triumph, before by age he might;
So though, triumphant soul, I dare to write,
Moved with a reverential anger, thus,
That thou so early wouldst abandon us;
Yet I am far from daring to dispute
With that great sovereignty, whose absolute
Prerogative hath thus dispensed with thee,
’Gainst nature’s laws, which just impugners be
Of early triumphs; and I, though with pain,
Lessen our loss, to magnify thy gain
Of triumph, when I say, it was more fit
That all men should lack thee, than thou lack it.
Though then in our time be not suffered
That testimony of love unto the dead,
To die with them, and in their graves be hid,
As Saxon wives, and French soldarii did;
And though in no degree I can express
Grief in great Alexander’s great excess,
Who at his friend’s death made whole towns divest
Their walls and bulwarks, which became them best;
Do not, fair soul, this sacrifice refuse,
That in thy grave I do inter my Muse,
Which, by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast
Behindhand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last.

Elegy on the Lady Markham

Man is the world, and death the ocean,
To which God gives the lower parts of man,
This sea environs all, and though as yet
God hath set marks and bounds ’twixt us and it,
Yet doth it roar, and gnaw, and still pretend,
And breaks our bank, whene’er it takes a friend.
Then our land waters, tears of passion, vent;
Our waters, then, above our firmament
—Tears which our soul doth for her sins let fall⁠—
Take all a brackish taste, and funeral.
And e’en those tears which should wash sin, are sin.
We, after God’s “No,” drown the world again.
Nothing but man of all envenom’d things
Doth work upon itself with inborn stings.
Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see,
Through passion’s mist, what we are or what she.
In her this sea of death hath made no breach,
But as the tide doth wash the slimy beach,
And leaves embroider’d works upon the sand,
So is her flesh refined by death’s cold hand.
As men of China, after an age’s stay,
Do take up porcelain, where they buried clay;
So at this grave, her limbec⁠—which refines
The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and mines,
Of which this flesh was⁠—her soul shall inspire
Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire
Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall
Make and name then th’ elixir of this all.
They say the sea, when it gains, loseth too;
If carnal death, the younger brother, do
Usurp the body, our soul, which subject is
To th’ elder death by sin, is freed by this.
They perish both, when they attempt the just;
For graves our trophies are, and both death’s dust.
So, unobnoxious now, she hath buried both;
For none to death sins, that to sin is loth;
Nor do they die, which are not loth to die;
So hath she this and that virginity.
Grace was in her extremely diligent,
That kept her from sin, yet made her repent.
Of what small