is gone,
Mirth and prosperity is oppression;
For of all moral virtues she was all,
That ethics speak of virtues cardinal.
Her soul was paradise; the cherubin
Set to keep it was grace, that kept out sin.
She had no more than let in death, for we
All reap consumption from one fruitful tree.
God took her hence, lest some of us should love
Her, like that plant, Him and His laws above;
And when we tears, He mercy shed in this,
To raise our minds to heaven, where now she is
Who if her virtues would have let her stay
We had had a saint, have now a holiday.
Her heart was that strange bush, where sacred fire,
Religion, did not consume, but inspire
Such piety, so chaste use of God’s day,
That what we turn to feast, she turn’d to pray;
And did prefigure here, in devout taste,
The rest of her high Sabbath, which shall last.
Angels did hand her up, who next God dwell,
For she was of that order whence most fell;
Her body’s left with us, lest some had said,
She could not die, except they saw her dead;
For from less virtue, and less beauteousness,
The Gentiles framed them gods and goddesses.
The ravenous earth, that now woos her to be
Earth too, will be a Lemnia, and the tree
That wraps that crystal in a wooden tomb
Shall be took up spruce, fill’d with diamond.
And we her sad glad friends all bear a part
Of grief, for all would break a Stoic’s heart.
Elegy on the Lord Chancellor
Sorrow, who to this house scarce knew the way,
Is, O, heir of it, our all is his prey.
This strange chance claims strange wonder, and to us
Nothing can be so strange as to weep thus.
’Tis well his life’s loud-speaking works deserve,
And give praise too, our cold tongues could not serve;
’Tis well he kept tears from our eyes before,
That to fit this deep ill we might have store.
O, if a sweet briar climb up by a tree,
If to a paradise that transplanted be,
Or fell’d, and burnt for holy sacrifice,
Yet that must wither which by it did rise,
As we for him dead; though no family
E’er rigg’d a soul for heaven’s discovery
With whom more venturers more boldly dare
Venture their states, with him in joy to share,
We lose what all friends loved, him; he gains now
But life by death, which worst foes would allow,
If he could have foes, in whose practice grew
All virtues, whose name subtle schoolmen knew.
What ease can hope that we shall see him beget,
When we must die first, and cannot die yet?
His children are his pictures; O, they be
Pictures of him dead, senseless, cold as he.
Here needs no marble tomb, since he is gone,
He, and about him his, are turn’d to stone.
A Hymn to the Saints, and to Marquis Hamilton
Whether that soul which now comes up to you
Fill any former rank, or make a new;
Whether it take a name named there before,
Or be a name itself and order more
Than was in heaven till now—for may not he
Be so, if every several angel be
A kind alone? whatever order grow
Greater by him in heaven, we do not so.
One of your orders grows by his access,
But, by his loss, grow all our orders less;
The name of father, master, friend, the name
Of subject and of prince, in one is lame;
Fair mirth is damp’d, and conversation black,
The Household widow’d, and the Garter slack;
The Chapel wants an ear, Council a tongue;
Story, a theme; and Music lacks a song.
Blest order that hath him, the loss of him
Gangrened all orders here; all lost a limb.
Never made body such haste to confess
What a soul was; all former comeliness
Fled, in a minute, when the soul was gone;
And, having lost that beauty, would have none.
So fell our monasteries, in an instant grown
Not to less houses, but to heaps of stone;
So sent his body that fair form it wore
Unto the sphere of forms, and doth—before
His soul shall fill up his sepulchral stone—
Anticipate a resurrection.
For, as in his fame now his soul is here,
So, in the form thereof, his body’s there;
And if, fair soul, not with first Innocents
Thy station be, but with the Penitents,
—And who shall dare to ask then, when I am
Dyed scarlet in the blood of that pure Lamb,
Whether that colour, which is scarlet then,
Were black or white before in eyes of men?—
When thou rememb’rest what sins thou didst find
Amongst those many friends now left behind,
And seest such sinners, as they are, with thee
Got thither by repentance, let it be
Thy wish to wish all there, to wish them clean,
Wish him a David, her a Magdalen.
Epitaphs
Epitaph on Himself
To the Countess of Bedford
Madam,
That I might make your cabinet my tomb,
And for my fame, which I love next my soul,
Next to my soul provide the happiest room,
Admit to that place this last funeral scroll.
Others by wills give legacies, but I
Dying, of you do beg a legacy.
My fortune and my will this custom break,
When we are senseless grown to make stones speak,
Though no stone tell thee what I was, yet thou
In my grave’s inside see what thou art now,
Yet thou’rt not yet so good; till us death lay
To ripe and mellow there, we’re stubborn clay.
Parents make us earth, and souls dignify
Us to be glass; here to grow gold we lie.
Whilst in our souls sin bred and pamper’d is,
Our souls become worm-eaten carcases.
Omnibus
My fortune and my choice this custom break,
When we are speechless grown to make stones speak.
Though no stone tell thee what I was, yet thou
In my grave’s inside seest what thou art now,
Yet thou’rt not yet so good; till us death lay
To ripe and mellow here, we’re stubborn clay.
Parents make us earth, and souls dignify
Us to be glass; here to grow gold we lie.
Whilst in our souls sin bred and pamper’d is,
Our souls become worm-eaten carcases,
So we ourselves miraculously destroy.
Here bodies with less miracle enjoy
Such privileges, enabled here to scale
Heaven, when the trumpet’s air shall them exhale,
Hear this, and mend thyself,
