same heap of dust the self-same Urn Doth them and me alike to nothing turn If then of these I might election make Whether I would refuse and whether take Rather then like a sullen Anchorite I would live cas'd in stone and learn to write A Prisoners story which might steal some tears From the sad eyes of him that reads or hears Give me a peaceful death and let me meet My freedom seal'd up in my winding sheet Death is the pledge of rest and with one bayl Two Prisons quits the Body and the Jayl The Labyrinth LIfe is a crooked Labyrinth and we Are daily lost in that Obliquity 'T is a perplexed circle in whose round Nothing but sorrows and new sins abound How is the faint impression of each good Drown'd in the vicious Channel of our blood Whose Ebbes and tides by their vicissitude Both our great Maker and our selves delude O wherefore is the most discerning eye Unapt to make its own discovery Why is the clearest and best judging mind In her own ills prevention dark and blind Dull to advise to act precipitate We scarce think what to do but when too late Or if we think that fluid thought like seed Rots there to propagate some fouler deed Still we repent and sin sin and repent We thaw and freeze we harden and relent Those fires which cool'd to day the morrows heat Rekindles Thus frail nature does repeat What she unlearnt and still by learning on Perfects her lesson of confusion Sick soul what cure shall I for thee devise Whose leprous state corrupts all remedies What medicine or what cordial can be got For thee who poyson'st thy best antidot Repentance is thy bane since thou by it Onely reviv'st the fault thou didst commit Nor griev'st thou for the past but art in pain For fear thou mayst not act it o're again So that thy tears like water spilt on lime Serve not to quench but to advance the crime My blessed Saviour unto thee I flie For help against this homebred tyrannie Thou canst true sorrows in my soul imprint And draw contrition from a breast of flint Thou canst reverse this labyrinth of sin My wild affects and actions wander in O guide my faith and by thy graces clew Teach me to hunt that kingdom at the view Where true joyes reign which like their day shall last Those never clouded nor that overcast Being waked out of my sleep by a suâ—ff of Candle which offended me I thus thought PEthaps 't was but conceit Erroneous sence Thou art thine own distemper and offence Imagine then that sick unwholsom steam Was thy corruption breath'd into a dream Nor is it strange when we in charnells dwell That all our thoughts of earth and frailty smell Man is a Candle whose unhappy light Burns in the day and smothers in the night And as you see the dying taper waste By such degrees does he to darkness haste Here is the diffâ—rence When our bodies lamps Blinded by age or choakt with mortall damps Now faint and dim and sickly 'gin to wink And in their hollow sockets lowly sink When all our vital fires ceasing to burn Leave nought but snuff and ashes in our Urn God will restore those fallen lights again And kindle them to an Eternal flame Sic Vita LIke to the falling of a Starre Or as the flights of Eagles are Or like the fresh springs gawdy hew Or silver drops of morning dew Or like a wind that chafes the-flood Or bubbles which on water stood Even such is man whose borrow'd light Is streight call'd in and paid to night The Wind blowes out the Bubble dies The Spring entomb'd in Autumn lies The Dew dries up the Starre is shot The Flight is past and Man forgot My Midnight Meditation ILL busi'd man why should'st thou take such care To lengthen out thy lifes short Kalendar When e'ry spectacle thou lookst upon Presents and acts thy execution Each drooping season and each flower doth cry Fool as I fade and wither thou must dy The beating of thy pulse when thou art well Is just the tolling of thy Passing Bell Night is thy Hearse whose sable Canopie Covers a like deceased day and thee And all those weeping dewes which nightly fall Are but the tears shed for thy funerall A Penitential Hyâ—â—ne HEarken O God unto a Wretches cryes Who low dejected at thy footstool lies Let not the clamour of my heinous sin Drown my requests which strive to enter in At those bright gates which alwaies open stand To such as beg remission at thy hand Too well I know if thou in rigour deal I can nor pardon ask nor yet appeal To my hoarse voice heaven will no audience grant But deaf as brass and hard as adamant Beat back my words therefore I bring to thee A gracious Advocate to plead for me What though my leprous soul no Jordan can Recure nor flouds of the lav'd Ocean Make clean yet from my Saviours bleeding side Two large and medicinable rivers glide Lord wash me where those streams of life abound And new Bâ—thesdaâ—s flow from ev'ry wound If I this precious Lather may obtain I shall not then despair for any stain I need no Gileads balm nor oyl nor shall I for the purifying Hyssop call My spots will vanish in His purple flood And Crimson there turn white though washt with blood See Lord with broken heart and bended knee How I address my humble suit to Thee O give that suit admittance to thy ears Which floats to thee not in my words but tears And let my sinful soul this mercy crave Before I fall into the silent grave AN ELEGY Occasioned by sickness VVEll did the Prophet ask Lord what is man Implying by the question none can But God resolve the doubt much less define What Elements this child of dust combine Man is a stranger to himself and knowes Nothing so naturally as his woes He loves to travel countreys and confer The sides of Heavens vast Diameter Delights to sit in Nile or Boetis lap Before he hath sayl'd over his own Map By which means he returnes his travel spent Less knowing of himself then when he went Who knowledge hunt kept under forrein locks May bring home wit to hold a Paradox Yet be fools still Therefore might I advise I would inform the soul before the eyes Make man into his proper Opticks look And so become the student and the book With his conception his first leaf begin What is he there but complicated sin When riper time and the approaching birth Ranks him among the creatures of the earth His wailing mother sends him forth to greet The light wrapt in a bloudy winding sheet As if he came into the world to crave No place to dwell in but bespeak a grave Thus like a red and tempest-boading morn His dawning is for being newly born He hayles th' ensuing storm with shrieks and cryes And fines for his admission with wet eyes How should that Plant whose leaf is
for a tomb Yet when much treasure and more time is spent You must grant His the nobler Monument Whose Faith stands ore Him for a Hearse and haâ— The Resurrection for His Epitaph Vpon the death of my ever desired friend Doctor Donne Dean of Pauls TO have liv'd eminent in a degreee Beyond our lofty'st flights that is like thee Or t' have had too much merit is not safe For such excesses find no Epitaph At common graves we have Poetick eyes Can melt themselves in easie Elegies Each quill can drop his tributary verse And pin it with the Hatchments to the Herse But at thine Poem or inscription Rich Soul of wit and language we have none Indeed a silence does that Tomb befit Where is no Herald left to blazon it Widdow'd invention justly doth forbear To come abroad knowing thou art not here Late her great Patron whose prerogative Maintain'd and cloth'd her so as none alive Must now presume to keep her at thy rate Though he the Indies for her dowre estate Or else that awful fire which once did burn In thy clear brain now fall'n into thy Urn. Lives there to fright rude Empericks from thence Which might profane thee by their ignorance Who ever writes of thee and in a style Unworthy such a Theme does but revile Thy precious dust and wake a learned spirit Which may revenge his rapes upon thy merit For all a low-pitcht fancie can devise Will prove at best but hallow'd injuries Thou like the dying Swan didst lately sing Thy mournful Dirge in audience of the King When pale looks and faint accents of thy breath Presented so to life that piece of death That it was fear'd and prophesi'd by all Thou thither cam'st to preach thy Funerall O! hadst thou in an Elegiack knell Rung out unto the world thine own farewell And in thy high victorious numbers beat The solemn measure of thy griev'd retreat Thou might'st the Poets service now have mist As well as then thou didst prevent the Priest And never to the world beholden be So much as for an Epitaph for thee I do not like the office Nor is' t fit Thou who didst lend our age such summes of wit Should'st now reborrow from her Bankrupt Mine That Ore to bury thee which once was thine Rather still leave us in thy debt and know Exalted Soul More glory 't is to ow Unto thy Herse what we can never pay Then with embased coin those Rites defray Commit we then Thee to Thy Self nor blame Our drooping loves which thus to thine own fame Leave Thee Executour since but thy own No pen could do Thee Justice nor Bayes crown Thy vast desert save that we nothing can Depute to be thy ashes Guardian So Jewellers no Art or Metal trust To form the Diamond but the Diamonds dust AN ELEGY Vpon the most victorious King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus LIke a cold fatal sweat which ushers death My thoughts hang on me my lab'ring breath Stopt up with sighs my fancie big with woes Feels two twinn'd mountains struggle in her throws Of boundless sorrow one t'other of sin For less let no one rate it to begin Where honour ends In Great Gustavus flame That style burnt out and wasted to a name Does barely live with us As when the snuff That fed it failes the Taper turns to snuff With this poor snuff this ayerie shadow we Of Fame and Honour must contented be Since from the vain grasp of our wishes fled Their glorious substance is now He is dead Speak it again and louder louder yet Else whil'st we hear the sound we shall forget What it delivers Let hoarse rumor cry Till she so many ecchoes multiply Those may like num'rous witnesses confute Our unbelieving soules that would dispute And doubt this truth for ever This one way Is left our incredulity to sway To waken our deaf sense and make our ears As open and dilated as our fears That we may feel the blow and feeling grieve At what we would not feign but must believe And in that horrid faith behold the world From her proud height of expectation hurl'd Stooping with him as if she strove to have No lower Center now then Swedens grave O could not all thy purchas'd victories Like to thy Fame thy Flesh immortalize Were not thy vertue nor thy valour charmes To guard thy body from those outward harmes Which could not reach thy soul could not thy spirit Lend somewhat which thy frailty might inherit From thy diviner part that Death nor Hate Nor envy's bullets ere could penetrate Could not thy early Trophies in stern fight Torn from the Dane the Pole the Moscovite Which were thy triumphs seeds as pledges sown That when thy honours harvest was ripe grown With full-summ'd wing thou Falcon-like wouldst fly And cuff the Eagle in the German sky Forcing his iron beak and feathers feel They were not proof ' gainst thy victorious steel Could not all these protect thee or prevaile To fright that Coward Death who oft grew pale To look thee and thy battails in the face Alas they could not Destiny gives place To none nor is it seen that Princes lives Can saved be by their prerogatives No more was thine who clos'd in thy cold lead Dost from thy self a mournful lecture read Of Mans short-dated glory learn you Kings You are like him but penetrable things Though you from Demi-Gods derive your birth You are at best bâ—t honourable earth And howere sisted from that courser bran Which does compound and knead the common man Nothing 's immortal or from earth refin'd About you but your Office and your Mind â—ere then break your false Glasses which present â—ou greater then your Maker ever meant Make truth your Mirrour now since you find all That flatter you confuted by his fall Yet since it was decreed thy lifes bright Sun â—ust be eclips'd ere thy full course was run â—e proud thou didst in thy black Obsequies â—ith greater glory set then others rise â—or in thy death as life thou heldest one â—ost just and regular proportion â—ook how the Circles drawn by Compass meet â—ndivisibly joyned head to feet â—nd by continued points which them unite â—row at once Circular and Infinite 〈◊〉 did thy Fate and honour now contend â—o match thy brave beginning with thy end â—herefore thou hadst instead of Passing bells â—he Drums and Cannons thunder for thy knells â—nd in the Field thou did'st triumphing dy â—osing thy eye-lids with a victory â—hat so by thousands who there lost their breath â—ing-like thou might'st be waited on in death Liv'd Plutarch now and would of Caesar tell He could make none but Thee his parallel Whose tide of glory swelling to the brim Needs borrow no addition from Him When did great Julius in any Clime Atchieve so much and in so small a time Or if he did yet shalt Thou in that land Single for him and unexampled stand When ore the Germans first his Eagle towr'd What saw the
benights my day Sad eyes like mine and wounded hearts Shun the bright rayes which beauty darts Unwelcome is the Sun that pries Into those shades where sorrow lies Go shine on happy things To me That blessing is a miserie Whom thy fierce Sun not warmes but burnes Like that the sooty Indian turnes I le serve the night and there confin'd Wish thee less fair or else more kind SONNET DRy those fair those chrystal eyes Which like growing fountains rise To drown their banks Griefs sullen brooks Would better flow in furrow'd looks Thy lovely face was never meant To be the shoar of discontent Then clear those watrish starres again Which else portend a lasting rain Lest the clouds which settle there Prolong my Winter all the Year And the example others make In love with sorrow for thy sake SONNET VVHen I entreat either thou wilt not hear Or else my suit arriving at thy ear Cools and dies there A strange extremitie To freeze i th' Sun and in the shade to frie. Whil'st all my blasted hopes decline so soon T is Evening with me though at high Noon For pity to thy self if not to me Think time will ravish what I lose from thee If my scorcht heart wither through thy delay Thy beauty withers too And swift decay Arrests thy Youth So thou whil'st I am slighted Wilt be too soon with age or sorrow nighted To a Lady who sent we a copy of verses at my going to bed LAdy your art or wit could nere devise To shame me more then in this nights surprise Why I am quite unready and my eye Now winking like my candle doth deny To guide my hand if it had ought to write Nor can I make my drowsie sense indite Which by your verses musick as a spell Sent from the Sybellean Oracle Is charm'd and bound in wonder and delight Faster then all the leaden chains of night What pity is it then you should so ill Employ the bounty of your flowing quill As to expend on him your bedward thought Who can acknowledge that large love in nought But this lean wish that fate soon send you those Who may requite your rhimes with midnight prose Mean time may all delights and pleasing Theams Like Masquers revell in your Mâ—â—den dreams Whil'st dull to write and to do more unmeet I as the night invites me fall asleep The Pink. FAir one you did on me beâ—tow Comparisons too sweet to ow And but I found them sent from you I durst not think they could be true But 't is your uncontrolled power Goddess-like to produce a flower And by your breath without more seed Make that a Pink which was a Weed Because I would be loth to miss So sweet a Metamorphosis Upon what stalk soere I grow Disdain not you sometimes to blow And cherish by your Virgin eye What in your frown would droop and die So shall my thankful leaf repay Perfumed wishes every day And o're your fortune breathe a spell Which may his obligation tell Who though he nought but she can give Must ever your Sweet creature live To his Friends of Christ-Church upon the mislike of the Marriage of the Arts acted at Woodstock BUt is it true the Court mislik't the Play That Christ Church and the Aâ—ts have lost the day That Ignoramus should so far excell Their Hobby horse from ours hath born the Bell Troth you are justly serv'd that would present Ought unto them but shallow merriment Or to your Marriage-table did admit Guests that are stronger far in smell then wit Had some quaint Bawdry larded ev'ry Scene Some fawning Sycophant or courted queane Had there appear'd some sharp cross-garter'd man Whom their loud laugh might nick-name Puritan Cas'd up in factious breeches and small ruffe That hates the surplis and defies the cuffe Then sure they would have given applause to crown That which their ignorance did now cry down Let me advise when next you do bestow Your pains on men that do but little know You do no Chorus nor a Comment lack Which may expound and construe ev'ry Act That it be short and slight for if 't be good T is long and neither lik't nor understood Know t is Court fashion still to discommend All that which they want brain to comprehend The Surrender MY once dear Love hapless that I no more Must call thee so the rich affections store That fed our hopes lies now exhaust and spent Like summes of treasure unto Bankrupts lent We that did nothing study but the way To love each other with which thoughts the day Rose with delight to us and with them set Must learn the hateful Art how to forget We that did nothing wish that Heav'n could give Beyond our selves nor did desire to live Beyond that wish all these now cancell must As if not writ in faith but words and dust Yet witness those cleer vowes which Lovers make Witness the chast desires that never brake Into unruly heats witness that brest Which in thy bosom anchor'd his whole rest T is no default in us I dare acquite Thy Maiden faith thy purpose fair and white As thy pure self Cross Planets did envie â—s to each other and Heaven did untie â— after then vowes could binde O that the Starres When Lovers meet should stand oppos'd in warres Since then some higher Destinies command Let us not strive nor labour to withstand What is past help The longest date of grief Can never yield a hope of our relief And though we waste our selves in moist laments Tears may drown us but not our discontents Fold back our arms take home our fruitless loves That must new fortunes trie like Turtle Doves Dislodged from their haunts We must in tears â—nwind a love knit up in many years â—n this last kiss I here surrender thee â—ack to thy self so thou again art free â—hou in another sad as that resend â—he truest heart that Lover ere did lend Now turn from each So fare our sever'd hearts â—s the divore't soul from her body parts The Legacy My dearest Love when thou and I must part And th' icy hand of death shall seize that heart Which is all thine within some spacious will He leave no blanks for Legacies to fill T is my ambition to die one of those Who but himself hath nothing to dispose And since that is already thine what need I to re-give it by some newer deed Yet take it once again Free circumstance Does oft the value of mean things advance Who thus repeats what he bequeath'd before Proclaims his bounty richer then his store But let me not upon my love bestow What is not worth the giving I do ow Somwhat to dust my bodies pamper'd care Hungry corruption and the worm will share That mouldring relick which in earth must lie Would prove a gift of horrour to thine eie With this cast ragge of my mortalitie â—et all my faults and errours buried he And as my sear-cloth rots so may kind fare Those
sailes That all designes which must on thee embark May be securely plac't as in the Ark. May'st thou where ere thy streamers shall display Enforce the bold disputers to obey That they whose pens are sharper then their swords May yield in fact what they deny'd in words Thus when th' amazed world our Seas shall see Shut from Usurpers to their own Lord free Thou may'st returning from the conquer'd Main With thine own Triumphs be crown'd Soveraign AN EPITAPH On his most honoured Friend Richard Earl of Dorset LEt no profane ignoble foot tread neer This hall ow'd peece of earth Dorset lies here A small sad relique of a noble spirit Free as the air and ample as his merit Whose least perfection was large and great Enough to make a common man compleat A soul refin'd and cull'd from many men That reconcil'd the sword unto the pen Using both well No proud forgetting Lord But mindful of mean names and of his word One that did love for honour not for ends And had the noblest way of making friends By loving first One that did know the Court Yet understood it better by report Then practice for he nothing took from thence But the kings favour for his recompence One for religion or his countreys good That valu'd not his Fortune nor his blood One high in fair opinion rich in praise And full of all we could have wisht but dayes He that is warn'd of this and shall forbear To vent a sigh for him or lend a tear May he live long and scorn'd unpiti'd fall And want a mourner at his funerall The Extquy ACcept thou Shrine of my dead Saint Insteed of Dirges this complaint And for sweet flowres to crown thy hearse Receive a strew of weeping verse From thy griev'd friend whom thou might'st see Quite melted into tears for thee Dear loss since thy untimely fate My task hath been to meditate On thee on thee thou art the book The library whereon I look Though almost blind For thee lov'd clay I languish out not live the day Using no other exercise But what I practise with mine eyes By which wet glasses I find out How lazily time creeps about To one that mourns this onely this My exercise and bus'ness is So I compute the weary houres With sighs dissolved into showres Nor wonder if my time go thus Backward and most preposterous Thou hast benighted me thy set This Eve of blackness did beget Who was 't my day though overcast Before thou had'st thy Noon-tide past And I remember must in tears Thou scarce had'st seen so many years â—s Day tells houres By thy cleer Sun â—y love and fortune first did run â—ut thou wilt never more appear â—olded within my Hemisphear â—ince both thy light and motion â—ike a fled Star is fall'n and gon And twixt me and my soules dear wish The earth now interposed is Which such a strange eclipse doth make As ne're was read in Almanake I could allow thee for a time To darken me and my sad Clime Were it a month a year or ten I would thy exile live till then And all that space my mirth adjourn So thou wouldst promise to return And putting off thy ashy shrowd At length disperse this sorrows cloud But woe is me the longest date Too narrow is to calculate These empty hopes never shall I Be so much blest as to descry A glimpse of thee till that day come Which shall the earth to cinders doome And a fierce Feaver must calcine The body of this world like thine My Little World that fit of fire Once off our bodies shall aspire To our soules bliss then we shall rise And view our selves with cleerer eyes In that calm Region where no night Can hide us from each others sight Mean time thou hast her earth much good May my harm do thee Since it stood With Heavens will I might not call Her longer mine I give thee all My short-liv'd right and interest In her whom living I lov'd best With a most free and bounteous grief I give thee what I could not keep Be kind to her and prethee look Thou write into thy Dooms-day book Each parcell of this Rarity Which in thy Casket shrin'd doth ly See that thou make thy reck'ning streight And yield her back again by weight For thou must audit on thy trust Each graine and atome of this dust As thou wilt answer Him that lent Not gave thee my dear Monument So close the ground and 'bout her shade Black curtains draw my Bride is laid Sleep on my Love in thy cold bed Never to be disquieted My last good night Thou wilt not wakâ— Till I thy fate shall overtake Till age or grief or sickness must Marry my body to that dust It so much loves and fill the room My heart keeps empty in thy Tomb. Stay for me there I will not faile To meet thee in that hallow Vale. And think not much of my delay I am already on the way And follow thee with all the speed Desire can make or sorrows breed Each minute is a short degree And ev'ry houre a step towards thee At night when I betake to rest Next morn I rise neerer my West Of life almost by eight houres saile Then when sleep breath'd his drowsie gale Thus from the Sun my Bottom stears And my dayes Compass downward bears Nor labour I to stemme the tide Through which to Thee I swiftly glide 'T is true with shame and grief I yield Thou like the Vann first took'st the field And gotten hast the victory In thus adventuring to dy Before me whose more years might crave A just precedence in the grave But heark My Pulse like a soft Drum Beats my approch tells Thee I come And slow howere my marches be I shall at last sit down by Thee The thought of this bids me go on And wait my dissolution With hope and comfort Dear forgive The crime I am content to live Divided with but half a heart Till we shall meet and never part The Anniverse AN ELEGY SO soon grown old hast thou been six years dead Poor earth once by my Love inhabited And must I live to calculate the time To which thy blooming youth could never climbe But fell in the ascent yet have not I Studi'd enough thy losses history How happy were mankind if Death's strict lawes Consum'd our lamentations like the cause Or that our grief turning to dust might end With the dissolved body of a friend But sacred Heaven O how just thou art In stamping deaths impression on that heart Which through thy favours would grow insolent Were it not physick't by sharp discontent If then it stand resolv'd in thy decree That still I must doom'd to a Desart be Sprung out of my lone thoughts which know no path But what my own misfortune beaten hath If thou wilt bind me living to a coarse And I must slowly waste I then of force Stoop to thy great appointment and obey That will
bath'd in tear Beat but a bitter fruit in elder years Just such is this and his maturer age Teems with event more sad then the presage For view him higher when his childhoods span Is raised up to Youths Meridian When he goes proudly laden with the fruit Which health or strength or beauty contribute Yet as the mounted Canon batters down The Towres and goodly structures of a town So one short sickness will his force defeat And his frail Cittadell to rubbish beat How does a dropsie melt him to a floud Making each vein run water more then bloud A Chollick wracks him like a Northern gust And raging feavers crumble him to dust In which unhappy state he is made worse By his diseases then his makers curse God said in toyl and sweat he should earn bread And without labour not be nourished Here though like ropes of falling dew his sweat Hangs on his lab'ring brow he cannot eat Thus are his sins scourg'd in opposed themes And luxuries reveng'd by their extremes He who in health could never be content With Rarities fetcht from each Element Is now much more afflicted to delight His tasteless Palate and lost appetite Besides though God ordain'd that with the light Man should begin his work yet he made night For his repose in which the weary sense Repaires it self by rests soft recompence But now his watchful nights and troubled dayes Confused heaps of fear and fancy raise His chamber seems a loose and trembling mine His Pillow quilted with a Porcupine Pain makes his downy Couch sharp thornes appear And ev'ry feather prick him like a spear Thus when all forms of death about him keep He copies death in any form but sleep Poor walking-clay hast thou a mind to know To what unblest beginnings thou dost ow Thy wretched self fall sick a while and than Thou wilt conceive the pedigree of Man Learn shalt thou from thine own Anatomie That earth his mother wormes his sisters be That he 's a short-liv'd vapour upward wrought And by corruption unto nothing brought A stagg'ring Meteor by cross Planets bear Which often reeles and falles before his set A tree which withers faster then it growes A torch puff't out by ev'ry wind that blowes A web of fourty weekes spun forth in pain And in a moment ravell'd out again This is the Model of frail man Then say â—hat his duration's onely for a day â—nd in that day more fies of changes pass â—hen Atomes run in the turn'd Hower-glass So that th' incessant cares which life invade â—ight for strong truth their heresie perswade Who did maintain that humane soules are sent â—to the body for their punishment 〈◊〉 least with that Greek Sage still make us cry Not to be born or being born to dy * Non nasci aut quà m citissinè mori But Faith steers up to a more glorious scope â—hich sweetens our sharp passage and firm hope â—â—hors our torne Barks on a blessed shore â—yond the Dead sea we here ferry o're 〈◊〉 this Death is our Pilot and disease â—e Agent which solicites our release Though crosses then poure on my restless head 〈◊〉 lingring sickness nail me to my bed â—t this my Thoughts eternall comfort bee â—at my clos'd eyes a better light shall see And when by fortunes or by natures stroke My bodies earthen Pitcher must be broke My Soul like Gideons lamp from her crackt urn Shall Deaths black night to endlesse lustre turn The Dirge VVHat is th'Existence of Mans life But open war or slumber'd strife Where sickness to his sense presents The combat of the Elements And never feels a perfect Peace Till deaths cold hand signs his release It is a storm where the hot blood Out-vies in rage the boyling flood And each loud Passion of the mind Is like a furious gust of wind Which beats his Bark with many a Wave Till he casts Anchor in the Grave It is a flower which buds and growes And withers as the leaves disclose Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep Like fits of waking before sleep Then shrinks into that fatal mold Where its first being was enroll'd It is a dream whose seeming truth Is moraliz'd in age and youth Where all the comforts he can share As wandring as his fancies are Till in a mist of dark decay The dreamer vanish quire away It is a Diall which points out The Sun-set as it moves about And shadowes out in lines of night The subtile stages of times slight Till all obscuring earth hath laid The body in perpetual shade It is a weary enterlude Which doth short joyes long woes include The World the Stage the Prologue tears The Acts vain hope and vary'd fears The Scene shuts up with loss of breath And leaves no Epilogue but Death AN ELEGY Occasioned by the lesse of the most incomparable Lady Stanhope daught or to the Earl of Northumberland LIghtned by that dimme Torch our sorrow bear We sadly trace thy Coffin with our rears And though the Ceremonious Rites are past Since thy fair body into earth was cast Though all thy Hatchments into ragges are come Thy Funerall Robes and Ornaments outwom We still thy mourners without Shew or Art With solemn Blacks hung round about our heart Thus constantly the Obsequies renew Which to thy precious memory are due Yet think not that we tudely would invade The dark recess of thine untroubled shade Or give disturbance to that happy peace Which thou enjoy'st at full since thy release Much less in sullen murmurs do complain Of His decree who took thee back again And did e're Fame had spread thy vertues light Eclipse and fold thee up in endless night This like an act of envy not of grief Might doubt thy bliss and shake our own belief Whose studi'd wishes no proportion bear With joyes which crown thee now in glories sphere Know then blest Soul we for our selves not thee Seal our woes dictate by this Elegie Wherein our tears united in one streame Shall to succeeding times convey this theme Worth all mens pity who discern how rare Such early growths of fame and goodness are Of these part must thy sexes loss bewail Maim'd in her noblest Patterns through thy fail For 't would require a double term of life To match thee as a daughter or a wife Both which Northumberlands dear loss improve And make his sorrow equal to his love The rest fall for our selves who cast behind Cannot yet reach the Peace which thou dost find But slowly follow thee in that dull stage Which most untimely poasted hence thy age Thus like religious Pilgrims who designe A short salute to their beloved Shrine Most sad and humble Votaries we come To offer up our sighs upon thy Tomb And wet thy Marble with our dropping eyes Which till the spring which feeds their current dries Resolve each falling night and rising day This mournfull homage at thy Grave to pay FINIS ERRATA PAge 2. The Pink never wrote by the Author of these Poems Pag. 22. lin 8. for she read air Pag. 100. lin 3. for Mattox read Mattocks