Which by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast
Behind hand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last.
AN 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 tho' as yet
God hath set marks and bounds 'twixt us and it,
Yet doth it roar, and knaw, and still pretend
To break 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 our sins let fall)
Take all a brackish taste and funeral,
And even those tears which should wash sin are sin;
We, after God, new-drown our world again."
Nothing but man, of all envenom'd things,
Doth work upon itself with inborn stings.
Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see
Thro' 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 refin'd by Death's cold hand.
As men of China, after an age's stay,
Do take up porc'lain where they buried clay,
So at this grave, her timbeck, (which refines new of
The Diamonds, rubies, saphires, pearls, and mines, I
Of which this flesh was) her soul shall inspire woll
Flesh of such stuff as God, when his last fire se î
Annuls this world, to recompence it, shall
Make and name them 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 'ath 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 spots pure white complains! Alas!"E
How little poison cracks a crystal glass!
She sinn'd, but just enough to let us see
That God's Word must be true, "All sinners be."
So much did zeal her conscience rarify,
That extreme truth lack'd little of a lie,
Making omissions acts, laying the touch
Of sin on things that some time may be such.
As Moses' cherubins, whose natures do
Surpass all speed, by hint are winged too;
So would her soul, already' in heav'n, seem then.
To climb by tears the common stairs of men.
How fit she was for God I am content
To speak, that Death his vain haste may repent:
How fit for us, how even and how sweet,
How good in all her titles and how meet..
To have reform'd this forward heresy,
That women can no parts of friendship be:..
How moral, how divine, shall not be told,
Lest they that hear her virtues think her old,
And lest we take Death's part, and make him glad
Of such a prey, and to his triumph add.
DEATH! I recant, and say, unsaid by me
Whate'er hath slipt that might diminish thee.
Spiritual treason, atheism, 'tis, to say
That any can thy summons disobey.
Th' earth's face is but thy table; there are set...
Plants, cattle, men, dishes for Death to eat.
In a rude hunger now he millions draws
Into his-bloody, or plaguy, or starv'd jawskim
Now he will seem to spare, and doth more waste,
Eating the best first, well preserv'd to last; vi
Now wantonly he spoils and eats us not,
But breaks off friends, and lets us piece-meal rot.
Nor will this earth serve him; he sinks the deep,
Where harmless fish monastic silence keep;
Who (were Death dead) the rows of living sandss
Might spunge that element, and make it land, mis ¿A.
He rounds the air, and breaks the hymnic notes
In birds' (heav'n's choristers) organic throats,
Which (if they did not die) might seem to be
A tenth rank in the heav'nly hierarchy.
O strong and long-liv'd Death! how camst thou in X And how without creation didst begin?
Thou hast and shalt see dead before thou diest
All the four monarchies and Antichrist.
How could I think thee nothing, that see now
In all this all nothing else is but thou?
Our births and lives, vices and virtues, be
Wasteful consumptions and degrees of thee;
For we to live our bellows wear and breath,
Nor are we mortal, dying, dead, but death:
And tho' thou beest (O mighty bird of prey!)
So much reclaim'd by God, that thou must lay
All that thou kill'st at his feet, yet doth he
Reserve but few, and leaves the most for thee;
And of those few, now thou hast overthrown
One whom thy blow makes not ours nor thine own:* She was more stories high: hopeless to come
To' her soul, thou' hast offer'd at her lower room. få
Her soul and body was a king and court,
But thou hast both of captain miss'd and fort.
As houses fall not, tho' the kings remove,
Bodies of saints rest for their souls above.
Death gets twixt souls and bodies such a place
As sin insinuates 'twixt just men and grace's
Both work a separation, no divorce:
Her soul is gone to usher up her corse,
Which shall be' almost another soul, for there
Bodies are purer than best souls are here.
Because in her hervirtues did outgo
Her years, wouldst thou, O emulous Death! do so, ja
And kill her young to thy loss? Must the cost
Of beauty' and wit, apt to do harm, be lost?
What tho' thou foundst her proof 'gainst sins of youth?
Oh! every age a divers sin pursu’th.
Thou shouldst have stay'd, and taken better hold:
Shortly ambitious, covetous when old,
She might have prov'd; and such devotion
Might once have stray'd to superstition.
If all her virtues might have grown, yet might
Abundant virtue have bred a proud delight.
Had she persever'd just, there would have been
Some that would sin, mis-thinking she did sin;
Such as would call her friendship Love, and feign
To sociableness a name profane,
Or sin by tempting, or, not daring that,
By wishing, though they never told her what.
Thus might'st thou 'ave slain more souls, hadst thou
Thyself, and to triumph thine army lost.
[not crost
Yet tho' these ways be lost thou hast left one,
Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone:
Volume 111.
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