Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
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A47404
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Ben. Johnson's poems, elegies, paradoxes, and sonnets; Selections. 1700
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King, Henry, 1592-1669.
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1700
(1700)
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Wing K497; ESTC R17230
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44,767
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174
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Parents shame let it forgotten be And may the sad example die with thee It is not now thy grieved friends intent To render thee dull Pities argument Thou hast a bolder title unto fame And at Edge-Hill thou didst make good the claime When in thy Royal Masters Cause and Warre Thy ventur'd life brought off a noble skarre Nor did thy faithful services desist Till death untimely strook thee from the List Though in that prouder vault then which doth tomb Thy ancestors thy body find not room Thine own deserts have purchas'd thee a place Which more renowned is then all thy race For in this earth thou dost ennobled ly With marks of Valour and of Loyalty To my dead friend Ben Johnson I See that wreath which doth the wearer arm ' Gainst the quick strokes of thunder is no charm To keep off deaths pale dart For Johnson then Thou hadst been number'd still with living men Times sithe had fear'd thy Lawrel to invade Nor thee this subject of our sorrow made Amongst those many votaries who come To offer up their Garlands at thy Tombe Whil'st some more lofty pens in their bright verse Like glorious Tapers flaming on thy herse Shall light the dull and thankless world to see How great a maim it suffers wanting thee Let not thy learned shadow scorn that I Pay meaner Rites unto thy memory And since I nought can adde but in desire Restore some sparks which leapt from thine own fire What ends soever others quills invite I can protest it was no â—tch to write Nor any vain ambition to be read But meerly Love and Justice to the dead Which rais'd my fameless Muse and caus'd her bring These drops as tribute thrown into that spring To whose most rich and fruitful head we ow The purest streams of language which can flow For 't is but truth thou taught'st the ruder age To speake by Grammar and reform'dst the Stage Thy Comick Sock induc'd such purged sence A Lucrece might have heard without offence Amongst those soaring wits that did dilate Our English and advance it to the rate And value it now holds thy self was one Helpt lift it up to such proportion That thus refin'd and roab'd it shall not spare With the full Greck or Latine to compare For what tongue ever durst but ours translate Great Tully's Eloquence or Homers State Both which in their unblemisht lustre shine From Chapmans pen and from thy Catiline All I would ask for thee in recompence Of thy successful toyl and times expence Is onely this poor Boon that those who can Perhaps read French or talk Italian Or do the lofty Spaniard affect To shew their skill in Forrein Dialect Prove not themselves so unnaturally wife They therefore should their Mother-tongue despise As if her Poets both for style and wit Not equall'd or not pass'd their best that writ Untill by studying Johnson they have known The height and strength and plenty of their own Thus in what low earth or neglected room Soere thou sleep'st thy book shall be thy tomb Thou wilt go down a happy Coarse bestrew'd With thine own Flowres and feel thy self renew'd Whil'st thy immortal neve-with'ring Bayes Shall yearly flourish in thy Readers praise And when more spreading Titles are forgot Or spight of all their Lead and Sear-cloth rot Thou wrapt and Shrin'd in thine own sheets wilt ly A Relick fam'd by all Posterity AN ELEGY Vpon Prince Henry's death KEep station Nature and rest Heaven sure On thy supporters shoulders lest past cure Thou dasht in ruine fall by a griefs weight Will make thy basis shrink and lay thy height Low as the Center Heark and feel it read Through the astonisht Kingdom Henry's dead It is enough who seeks to aggravate One strain beyond this prove more sharp his fate Then sad our doom The world dares not survive To parallel this woes superlative O killing Rhetorick of Death two words Breathe stronger terrours then Plague Fire or Swords Ere conquer'd This were Epitaph and Verse Worthy to be prefixt in Natures herse Or Earths sad dissolution whose fall Will be less grievous though more generall For all the woe ruine ere buried Sounds in these fatal accents Henry's dead Cease then unable Poetry thy phrase Is weak and dull to strike us with amaze Worthy thy vaster subject Let none dare To coppy this sad hap but with despair Hanging at his quills point For not a stream Of Ink can write much less improve this Theam Invention highest wrought by grief or wit Must sink with him and on his Tomb-stone split Who like the dying Sun tells us the light And glory of our Day set in his Night AN ELEGY Vpon S. W. R. I Will not weep for 't were as great a sin To shed a tear for thee as to have bin An Actor in thy death Thy life and age Was but a various Scene on fortunes Stage With whom thou tugg'st strov'st ev'n out of breath In thy long toil nere master'd till thy death And then despight of trains and cruell wit Thou did'st at once subdue malice and it I dare not then so blast thy memory As say I do lament or pity thee Were I to choose a subject to bestow My pity on he should be one as low In spirit as desert That durst not dy But rather were content by slavery To purchase life or I would pity those Thy most industrious and friendly foes Who when they thought to makethee scandals story Lent thee a swifter flight to Heav'n and glory That thought by cutting off some wither'd dayes Which thou could'st spare them to eclipse thy praise Yet gave it brighter foil made thy ag'd fame Appear more white and fair then foul their shame And did promote an Execution Which but for them Nature and Age had done Such worthless things as these were onely born To live on Pities almes too mean for scorn Thou dy'dst an envious wonder whose high fate The world must still admire scarce imitate AN ELEGY Vpon the L. Bishop of London John King SAd Relick of a blessed Soul whose trust We sealed up in this religious dust O do not thy low Exequies suspect As the cheap arguments of our neglect 'T was a commanded duty that thy grave As little pride as thou thy self should have Therefore thy covering is an humble stone And but a word * Resurgam for thy inscription When those that in the same earth neighbour thee Have each his Chronicle and Pedigree They have their waving pennons and their flagges Of Matches and Alliance formal bragges VVhen thou although from Ancestors thou came Old as the Heptarchy great as thy Name â—leep'st there inshrin'd in thy admired parts â—nd hast no Heraldry but thy deserts Yet let not Them their prouder Marbles boast For They rest with less honour though more cost Go search the world and with your Mattox wounâ— The groaning bosom of the patient ground Digge from the hidden veins of her dark womb All that is rare and precious
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