Our blushing red, which us'd in cheeks to spread,
Is inward sunk, and only' our souls are red.
Perchance the world might have recover'd,
If she whom we lament had not been dead:
But she, in whom all white, and red, and blue,
(Beauty's ingredients) voluntary grew,
As in an unvext Paradise, from whom

Did all things' verdure and their lustre come,
Whose composition was miraculous,
Being all colour, all diaphanous,

(For air and fire but thick gross bodies were,
And liveliest stones but drowsy and pale to her)

She, she is dead; she's dead! When thou know'st this, Thou know'st how wan a ghost this our world is, 37°

And learn'st thus much by our Anatomie,

That it should more affright than pleasure thee:
And that, since all fair colour then did sink,
'Tis now but wicked vanity to think

To colour vicious deeds with good pretence,
Or with bought colours to illude men's sense.
Nor in ought more this world's decay appears
Than that her influence the heav'n forbears,
Or that the elements do not feel this,
The father of the mother barren is:
The clouds conceive not rain, or do not pour,
In the due birth-time, down the balmy shower;
Th' air doth not motherly sit on the earth,
To hatch her seasons, and give all things birth:

A

Spring-times were common cradles, but are tombs,
And false conceptions fill the general wombs;
Th' air shows such meteors, as none can see
Not only what they mean, but what they be.
Earth such new worms as would have troubled much,
Th' Fgyptian Magi to have made more such,
390
What artist now dares boast that he can bring
Heav'n hither, or constellate any thing,
So as the influence of those stars may be
Imprison'd in a herb, or charm, or tree,
And do by touch all which those stars could do?
The art is lost, and correspondence too;
For heav'n gives little, and the earth takes less,
And man least knows their trade and purposes.,

If this commerce 'twixt heav'n and earth were not
Embarr'd, and all this traffic quite forgot,
She, for whose loss we have lamented thus,
Would work more fully' and pow'rfully on us;
Since herbs and roots by dying lose not all,
But they, yea, ashes too, are med'cinal,
Death could not quench her virtue so, but that
It would be (if not follow'd) wonder'd at,
And all the world would be one dying swan,
To sing her Funeral praise, and vanish then,
But as some serpent's poison hurteth not,
Except it be from the live serpent shot,
So doth her Virtue need her here, to fit
That unto us, she working more than it,
Donne.]

"

Fij

400

410

But she, in whom to such maturity
Virtue

was grown past growth, that it must die She, from whose influence all impression came, But by receiver's impotencies lame;

Who, tho' she could not transubstantiate
All states to gold, yet gilded every state;
So that some princes have some temperance,
Some counsellors some purpose to advance
The common profit, and some people have

420

Some stay, no more than kings should give to crave; Some women have some taciturnity,

Some nunneries some grains of chastity:

་་་

She that did thus much, and much more could do,
But that our age was Iron, and rusty too;

She, she is dead; she's dead! When thou know'st this,
Thou know'st how dry a cinder this world is,
And learn'st thus much by our Anatomy,
That 'tis in vain to dew or molify

It with thy tears, or sweat, or blood: nothing
Is worth our travail, grief, or perishing,
But those rich joys which did possess her heart,
Of which she's now partaker and a part.
But as in cutting up a man that's dead,
The body will not last out, to have read
On every part, and therefore men direct
Their speech to parts that are of most effect;
So the world's carcass would not last, i
Were punctual in this Anatomy;

if I

439

Nor smells it well to hearers, if one tell

Them their disease, who fain would think they're well.
Here, therefore, be the end; and, blessed Maid!
Of whom is meant whatever hath been said,

Or shall be spoken well by any tongue,

450

Whose name refines coarse lines, and makes prose song,
Accept this tribute, aud his first year's rent,
Who, till his dark short taper's end be spent,
As oft' as thy feast sees this widow'd earth,
Will yearly celebrate thy second birth, ..
That is
thy death for tho' the soul of man
Be got when man is made, 'tis born but then
When man doth die; our body's as the womb,
And as a midwife death directs it home;
And you her creatures, whom she works upon,
And have your last and best concoction
From her example and her virtue, if you
In reverence to her do think it due,'
That no one should her praises thus rehearse,
As matter fit for chronicle, not verse,
Vouchsafe to call to mind that God did make
A last and lasting'st piece, a song. He spake
To Moses to deliver unto all

That song, because he knew they would let fall
The law, the prophets, and the history,

But keep the song still in their memory : Vos,
Such an opinion, in due measure, made
Me this great office boldly to invade;«

460

Nor could incomprehensibleness deteran on ait2 qu☎
Me from this trying to imprison her,

svif of 94474 Which when I saw that a strict grave could do,

I saw not why verse might not do so too. 11 ssani¶
Verse hath a middle nature; heav'n keeps souls, "wEI
The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrolls, 237 474

A FUNERAL ELEGY.

'Tis loss to trust a tomb with such a guest, baaW Or to confine her in a marble chest.

Alas! what's marble, jeat, or porphyry,

Or with those pearls and rubies, which she was a sand
Join the two Indies in one tomb, 'tis glass; ve OPAT
And so is all to her materials,

Tho' every inch were ten Escurials;

Yet she's demolish'd; can we keep her then em tud
In works of hands, or of the wits of men?
Can these memorials, rags of paper, give

Life to that name by which name they must live ?!
Sickly, alas! short-liv'd, abortive be

Those carcass verses whose soul is not she

figent And can she, who no longer would be she, real galva{}) (Being such a tabernacle) stoop to be a usm 10% In paper wrapt? or, when she would not lie on 1 yaM In such an house, dwell in an elegy?