| |
| DEATH, I recant, and say, unsaid by mee, | |
| Whatere hath slip’d that might diminish thee. | |
| Spiritual treason, atheisme, ’tis to say | |
| That any can thy summons disobey. | |
| Th’ earth’s face is but thy table: there are set | 5 |
| Plants, cattell, men, dishes for Death to eate. | |
| In a rude hunger now hee millions drawes | |
| Into his bloody, or plaguy, or starv’d jawes. | |
| Now hee will seeme to spare, and doth more wast, | |
| Eating the best first, well preserved to last; | 10 |
| Now wantonly he spoiles and eates us not, | |
| But breakes off friends, and lets us peecemeale rot. | |
| Nor will this earth serve him: he sinkes the deepe, | |
| Where harmlesse fish monastique silence keepe. | |
| Who (were Death dead) by roes of living sand | 15 |
| Might spunge that element, and make it land. | |
| He rounds the aire, and breakes the hymnique notes | |
| In birds, heaven’s choristers, organique throats; | |
| Which, if they did not dye, might seeme to bee | |
| A tenth ranke in the heavenly hierarchie. | 20 |
| O strong and long-lived death, how cam’st thou in? | |
| And how without creation didst begin? | |
| Thou hast, and shalt see dead, before thou dyest, | |
| All the foure monarchies, and antichrist. | |
| How could I thinke thee nothing, that see now | 25 |
| In all this All, nothing else is but thou? | |
| Our births and life, vices and vertues, bee | |
| Wastefull consumptions, and degrees of thee. | |
| For we, to live, our bellows wear, and breath, | |
| Nor are wee mortall, dying, dead, but death. | 30 |
| And thou, 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 hee | |
| Reserve but few, and leaves the most to thee; | |
| And of those few, now thou hast overthrowne | 35 |
| One whom thy blow makes, not ours, nor thine own. | |
| She was more stories high: hopelesse to come | |
| To her soule, thou hast offer’d at her lower roome. | |
| Her soule and body was a king and court; | |
| But thou hast both of captaine mist and fort. | 40 |
| As houses fall not, though the king remove, | |
| Bodies of saints rest for their soules above. | |
| Death gets ’twixt soules and bodies such a place | |
| As sin insinuates ’twixt just men and grace: | |
| Both worke a separation, no divorce. | 45 |
| Her soule is gone to usher up her corse, | |
| Which shall be almost another soule; for there | |
| Bodies are purer than best soules are here. | |
| Because in her her virtues did outgoe | |
| Her yeares, wouldst thou, O emulous death, do so? | 50 |
| And kill her young, to thy losse? Must the cost | |
| Of beauty and wit, apt to doe harme, be lost? | |
| What, though thou found’st her proofe ’gainst sinnes of youth? | |
| Oh every age a diverse sinne pursueth. | |
| Thou shouldst have stay’d, and taken better hold: | 55 |
| Shortly ambitious; covetous, when old, | |
| She might have prov’d; and such devotion | |
| Might once have strayed to superstition. | |
| If all her vertues must have growne, yet might | |
| Abundant vertue have bred a proud delight. | 60 |
| Had she perséver’d just, there would have bin | |
| Some that would sinne, misthinking she did sinne; | |
| Such as would call her friendship love, and faine | |
| To sociablenesse a name profane. | |
| Or sinne by tempting, or, not daring that, | 65 |
| By wishing, though they never told her what. | |
| Thus might’st thou have slain more soules, hadst thou not crost | |
| Thyselfe, and, to triumph, thine army lost. | |
| Yet, though these wayes be lost, thou hast left one, | |
| Which is immoderate griefe that she is gone. | 70 |
| But we may ’scape that sinne, yet weepe as much; | |
| Our teares are due because we are not such. | |
| Some teares that knot of friends her death must cost, | |
| Because the chaine is broke, but no linke lost. | |
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