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 Tho' 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 are 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 carcasses.
SORROW, that to this house scarce knew the way,
Is, oh! heir of it; our all is his pay.
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 11 we might have store.
Oh! if a sweet-brier 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, tho' no family
E'er rigg'd a soul for heav'n's discovery
With whom more venturers more boldly dare
Venture their 'states, with him in joy to share.
We lose, what all friends lov'd, 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 school-men 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: oh! 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,
THE STORM.
TO MR. CHRISTOPHER BROOK.
From the Island Voyage with the Earl of Essex.
THOU, which art I, ('tis nothing to be so)
Thou, which art still thyself, by this shalt know
Part of our passage; and a hand or eye
By Hilliard drawn is worth a history
By a worse painter made; and (without pride)
When by thy judgment they are dignify'd
My lines are such. 'Tis the pre-eminence
Of friendship only t' impute excellence.
England, t' whom we owe what we be and have,
Sad that her sons did seek a foreign grave,
(For Fate's or Fortune's drifts none can gain-say,
Honour and mis'ry have one face one way)
From out her pregnant entrails sigh'd a wind,
Which at th' air's middle marble-room did find
Such strong resistance, that itself it threw
Downward again; and so when it did view
How in the port our fleet dear time did leese,
Withering like pris'ners, which lie but for fees,
Mildly it kiss'd our sails, and, fresh and sweet,
As to a stomach starv'd, whose insides meet;
Meat comes, it came, and swole our sails, when we
So joy'd as Sarah her swelling joy'd to see;
But 'twas but so kind as our countrymen, [then.
Which bring friends one day's way, and leave them
Then like two mighty kings which dwelling far
Asunder meet against a third to war,
The south and west winds join'd, and, as they blew,
Waves like a rolling trench before them threw.
Sooner than you read this line did the gale,
Like shot not' fear'd till felt, our sails assail;
And what at first was call'd a gust, the same
Hath now a Storm's, anon a tempest's name.
Jonas! I pity thee, and curse those men.
Who, when the storm rag'd most, did wake thee then. Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil
All offices of death except to kill.
But when I wak'd, I saw that I saw not;
I and the sun, which should teach me, had forgot
East, west, day,night; and I could only say,
Had the world lasted, that it had been day.
Thousands our noises were, yet we 'mongst all
Could none by his right name but thunder call.
Lightning was all our light, and it rain'd more
Than if the sun had drunk the sea before.
Some coffin'd in their cabins lie, 'equally
Griev'd that they are not dead, and yet must die:
And as sin-burden'd souls from graves will creep
At the last day, some forth their cabins peep,
And, trembling, ask what news? and do hear so
As jealous husbands, what they would not know.
Some, sitting on the hatches, would seem there,
With hideous gazing, to fear away Fear:
There note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast
Shak'd with an ague, and the hold and waist
With a salt dropsy clogg'd, and our tacklings
Snapping, like to too high-stretch'd treble strings,
And from our tatter'd sails rags drop down so
As from one hang'd in chains a year ago:
Yea, ev'n our ordnance, plac'd for our defence,
Strives to break loose, and 'scape away from thence:
Pumping hath tir'd our men, and what's the gain? 61
Seas into seas thrown we suck in again:
Hearing hath deaf'd cur sailors; and if they
Knew how to hear, there's none knows what to say.
Compar'd to these Storms, death is but a qualm,
Hell somewhat lightsome, the Bermudas' calm.
Darkness, Light's eldest brother, his birth-right ́
Claims o'er the world, and to heav'n hath chas'd light,
All things are one; and that one none can be,
Since all forms uniform deformity
Doth cover; so that we, cxcept God say
Another Fiat, shall have no more day:
So violent yet long these furies be,
That tho' thine absence starve me I wish not thee.
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