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Home  »  The English Poets  »  To Castara, upon the Death of a Lady

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

William Habington (1605–1654)

To Castara, upon the Death of a Lady

CASTARA weep not, tho’ her tomb appear

Sometime thy grief to answer with a tear:

The marble will but wanton with thy woe.

Death is the sea, and we like rivers flow

To lose ourselves in the insatiate main,

Whence rivers may, she ne’er, return again.

Nor grieve this crystal stream so soon did fall

Into the ocean; since she perfum’d all

The banks she past, so that each neighbour field

Did sweet flowers cherish’d by her watering yield,

Which now adorn her hearse. The violet there

On her pale cheek doth the sad livery wear,

Which Heaven’s compassion gave her: and since she

’Cause clothed in purple, can no mourner be,

As incense to the tomb she gives her breath,

And fading on her lady waits in death:

Such office the Ægyptian handmaids did

Great Cleopatra, when she dying chid

The asp’s slow venom, trembling she should be

By fate robb’d even of that black victory.

The flowers instruct our sorrows. Come, then, all

Ye beauties, to true beauty’s funeral,

And with her to increase death’s pomp, decay.

Since the supporting fabric of your clay

Is fallen, how can ye stand? How can the night

Show stars, when Fate puts out the day’s great light?