Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A43379
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Occasional verses of Edward Lord Herbert, Baron of Cherbery and Castle-Island deceased in August, 1648.; Poems. Selections
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Herbert of Cherbury, Edward Herbert, Baron, 1583-1648.
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1665
(1665)
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Wing H1508; ESTC R2279
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35,027
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105
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OCCASIONAL VERSES OF EDWARD Lord HERBERT BARON OF CHERBERY AND CASTLE-ISLAND Deceased in August 1648. LONDON Printed by T. R. for Thomas Dring at the George in Fleet-street near Cliffords-Inn 1665. To the Right Honourable EDWARD Lord HERBERT Baron of Cherbery in England and Castle-Island in Ireland My Lord THIS Collection of some of the scattered Copies of Verses composed in various and perplexed times by Edward Lord Herbert your late Grand-father belongs of double right to your Lordship as Heir and Executor And had it been in his power t' have bequeathed his Learning by Will as his Library and personal Estate it may be presumed he would have given it to you as the best Legacy But Learning being not of our Gift though of our Acquisition nor of the Parapharnalia of a Ladies Chamber nor of the casual and fortunate Goods of the World it must be acknowledged of a transcendency beyond natural things and a beam of the Divinity For by the powers of Knowledge Men are not only distinguished from Men but carried above the reach of ordinary Persons to give Reasons even of their Belief not that Men believe because they know but know because they believe Faith must precede Knowledg and yet Men are not bound t' accept matters of Religion though Religion be th' object and employment of Faith not of reasoning meerly without Reason and probable Inducements That the learned Centuries are past and Learning in declension is too great a truth which may introduce Atheisme with Ignorance for as Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion amongst the Papists so 't is the Mother of Atheisme amongst th' Ignorant The great and most dangerous design of our Church and National Enemies is to make us out of love with Learning as a Mechanick thing and beneath the Spirits of the Nobility and of Princes Whereas nothing improves and inlightens th' understandings of great Persons but Learning and not only innobles them far above their birth but inables them t' impose on others and to give rather then take advice The Learned Generous and Vertuous Person needs no Ancestors And what can so properly be call'd ours as what is of our purchase Gentiles agunt sub nomine Christiano was an old Reproach upon the Primitive Christians and now Men out-act the Gentiles The Goods of this life are all Hydropick Quo plus bibuntur plus sitiuntur Men are the dryer for drinking and the poorer for covetousness no satiety no fulness but in spiritual things The way of Vertue appeared to th' Heathen to be th' only way to Happiness and yet they knew not many Vertues which are the Glory of Christianity as Humility Denying of our selves Taking up the Cross Forgiving and loving our Enemies which th' Heathen took for follies rather then Vertues As for Poetry it bears date before Prose and was of so great authority with the common People and the wiser sort of Antiquity that it was in veneration with their sacred Writ and Records from which they derived their Divinity and belief concerning their Gods and that their Poets as Orpheus Linus and Musaeus were descended of the Gods and divinely inspired from th' extraordinary Motions of their Minds and from the Relations of strange Visions Raptures and Apparitions My Lord Excuse the liberty of this Dedication and believe me Your Lordships Uncle and Humble Servant HENRY HERBERT March 18. 1664 5. TO HIS WATCH When he could not sleep UNcessant Minutes whil'st you move you tell The time that tells our life which though it run Never so fast or farr you 'r new begun Short steps shall overtake for though life well May scape his own Account it shall not yours You are Death's Auditors that both divide And summ what ere that life inspir'd endures Past a beginning and through you we bide The doom of Fate whose unrecall'd Decree You date bring execute making what 's new Ill and good old for as we die in you You die in Time Time in Eternity Ditty DEep Sighs Records of my unpitied Grief Memorials of my true though hopeless Love Keep time with my sad thoughts till wish'd Relief My long despairs for vain and caussess prove Yet if such hap never to you befall I give you leave break time break heart and all Lord thus I sin repent and sin again As if Repentance only were in me Leave for new Sin thus do I entertain My short time and thy Grace abusing thee And thy long-suffering which though it be Ne'r overcome by Sin yet were in vain If tempted oft thus we our Errours see Before our Punishment and so remain Without Excuse and Lord in them 't is true Thy Laws are just but why dost thou distrain Ought else for life save life that is thy due The rest thou mak'st us owe and mayst to us As well forgive But oh my sins renew Whil'st I do talk with my Creator thus A Description I Sing her worth and praises Ey Of whom a Poet cannot ly The little World the Great shall blaze Sea Earth her Body Heaven her Face Her Hair Sun-beams whose every part Lightens enflames each Lover's Heart That thus you prove the Axiom true Whilst the Sun help'd Nature in you Her Front the White and Azure Sky In Light and Glory raised Ey Being o'recast by a Cloudy frown All Hearts and Eyes dejecteth down Her each Brow a Coelestial Bow Which through this Sky her Light doth show Which doubled if it strange appear The Sun 's likewise is doubled there Her either Cheek a Blushing Morn Which on the Wings of Beauty born Doth never set but only fair Shineth exalted in her hair Within her Mouth Heavens Heav'n reside Her Words the Soul 's there Glorifi'd Her Nose th' Aequator of this Globe Where Nakedness Beauties best Robe Presents a form all Hearts to win Last Nature made that dainty Chin Which that it might in every fashion Answer the rest a Constellation Like to a Desk she there did place To write the Wonders of her Face In this Coelestial Frontispiece Where Happiness eternal lies First aranged stand three Senses This Heavens Intelligences Whose several Motions sweet combin'd Come from the first Mover her Mind The weight of this harmonique Sphere The Atlas of her Neck doth bear Whose Favours Day to Us imparts When Frowns make Night in Lovers Hearts Two foming Billows are her Breasts That carry rais'd upon their Crests The Tyrian Fish More white 's their Fome Then that whence Venus once did come Here take her by the Hand my Muse With that sweet Foe to make my Truce To compact Manna best compar'd Whose dewy inside's not full hard Her Waste's an envers'd Pyramis Upon whose Cone Love's Trophee is Her Belly is that Magazine At whose peep Nature did resigne That pretious Mould by which alone There can be framed such a One At th' entrance of which hidden Treasure Happy making above measure Two Alabaster pillars stand To warn all passage from that Land At foot whereof engraved
others readier are Now that he speaks are complemental speeches That never go off but below the breeches Of him he doth salute while he doth wring And with some loose French words which he doth string Windeth about the arms the legs and sides Most serpent-like of any man that bides His indirect approach which being done Almost without an introduction If he have heard but any bragging French Boast of the favour of some noble Wench He 'll swear 't was he did her Graces possess And damn his own soul for the wickedness Of other men strangest of all in that But I am weary to describe you what E're this you can As for the little fry That all along the street turn up the eye At every thing they meet that have not yet Seen that swoln vitious Queen Margaret Who were a monster ev'n without her sin Nor the Italian Comedies wherein Women play Boys I cease to write To end this Satyre and bid thee good night Sept. 1608. I must depart but like to his last breath That leaves the seat of life for liberty I go but dying and in this our death Where soul and soul is parted it is I The deader part yet fly away While she alas in whom before I liv'd dyes her own death and more I feeling mine too much and her own stay But since I must depart and that our love Springing at first but in an earthly mould Transplanted to our souls now doth remove Earthly effects what time and distance would Nothing now can our loves allay Though as the better Spirits will That both love us and know our ill We do not either all the good we may Thus when our souls that must immortal be For our loves cannot dye nor we unless We dye not both together shall be free Unto their open and eternal peace Sleep Death's Embassadour and best Image doth yours often so show That I thereby must plainly know Death unto us must be freedom and rest May 1608. Madrigal HOw should I love my best What though my love unto that height be grown That taking joy in you alone I utterly this world detest Should I not love it yet as th' only place Where Beauty hath his perfect grace And is possest But I beauties despise You universal beauty seem to me Giving and shewing form and degree To all the rest in your fair eyes Yet should I not loâ—â— them as parts whereon Your beauty their perfection And top doth rise But ev'n my self I hate So far my love is from the least delight That at my very self I spite Sensless of any happy state Yet may I not wiâ—h justest reason fear How hating hers â— truly her Can celebrate Thus unresolved still Although world life nay what is fair beside I cannot for your sake abide Methinks I love not to my fill Yet if a greater love you can devise In loving you some otherwise Believe't I will Another DEar when I did from you remove I left my Joy but not my Love That never can depart It neither higher can ascend Nor lower bend Fixt in the center of my heart As in his place And lodged so how can it change Or you grow strange Those are earth's properties and base Each where as the bodies divine Heav'ns lights and you to me will shine To his Friend Ben Johnson of his Horace made English 'T Was not enough Ben Johnson to be thought Of English Poets best but to have brought In greater state to their acquaintance one So equal to himself and thee that none Might be thy second while thy Glory is To be the Horace of our times and his Epitaph Caecil Boulser quae post languescentem morbum non sine inquietudine spiritus conscientiae obiit MEthinks Death like one laughing lyes Shewing his teeth shutting his eys Only thus to have found her here He did with so much reason fear And she despise For barring all the gates of sin Death's open wayes to enter in She was with a strict siege beset To what by force he could not get By time to win This mighty Warrior was deceived yet For what he muting in her powers thought Was but their zeal And what by their excess might have been wrought Her fasts did heal Till that her noble soul by these as wings Transcending the low pitch of earthly things As b'ing reliev'd by God and set at large And grown by this worthy a higher charge Triumphing over Death to Heaven fled And did not dye but left her body dead July 1609. Epitaph Guli Herbert de Swansey qui sine prole obiit Aug. 1609. GReat Spirit that in new ambition Stoop'd not below his merit But with his proper worth being carry'd on Stoop'd at no second place till now in one He doth all place inherit Live endless here in such brave memory The best tongue cannot spot it While they which knew or but have heard of thee Must never hope thy like again can be Since thou hast not begot it In a Glass-Window for Inconstancy LOve of this clearest frailest Glass Divide the properties so as In the division may appear Clearness for me frailty for her Elegy for the Prince MUst he be ever dead Cannot we add Another life unto that Prince that had Our souls laid up in him Could not our love Now when he left us make that body move After his death one Age And keep unite That frame wherein our souls did so delight For what are souls but love Since they do know Only for it and can no further go Sense is the Soul of Beasts because none can Proceed so far as t' understand like Man And if souls be more where they love then where They animate why did it not appear In keeping him alive Or how is fate Equal to us when one man 's private hate May ruine Kingdoms when he will expose Himself to certain death and yet all those Not keep alive this Prince who now is gone Whose loves would give thousands of lives for one Do we then dye in him only as we May in the worlds harmonique body see An universally diffused soul Move in the parts which moves not in the whole So though we rest with him we do appear To live and stir a while as if he were Still quick'ning us Or do perchance we live And know it not See we not Autumn give Back to the earth again what it receiv'd In th' early Spring And may not we deceiv'd Think that those powers are dead which do but sleep And the world's soul doth reunited keep And though this Autumn gave what never more Any Spring can unto the world restore May we not be deceiv'd and think we know Our selves for dead Because that we are so Unto each other when as yet we live A life his love and memory doth give Who was our worlds soul and to whom we are So reunite that in him we repair All other our affections ill bestow'd Since by this love