| |
| MAN is the world, and death the ocean, | |
| To which God gives the lower parts of man. | |
| This sea environs all, and though as yet | |
| God hath set marks and bounds ’twixt us and it, | |
| Yet doth it roar, and gnaw, and still pretend, | 5 |
| And breaks our bank, 1 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 her sins let fall— | |
| Take all a brackish taste, and funeral. | 10 |
| And e’en those tears which should wash sin, are sin. | |
| We, after God’s ‘No,’ drown 2 the world again. | |
| Nothing but man of all envenom’d things | |
| Doth work upon itself with inborn stings. | |
| Tears are false spectacles; we cannot see, | 15 |
| Through 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 refined by death’s cold hand. | 20 |
| As men of China, after an age’s stay, | |
| Do take up porcelain, where they buried clay; | |
| So at this grave, her limbec—which refines | |
| The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and mines, | |
| Of which this flesh was—her soul shall inspire | 25 |
| Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire | |
| Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall | |
| Make and name then 3 th’ elixir of this all. | |
| They say the sea, when it gains, loseth too; | |
| If carnal death, the younger brother, do | 30 |
| 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 hath buried both; | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| Of what small spots pure white complains! Alas, | |
| 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, 4 | 45 |
| That extreme truth lacked little of a lie, | |
| Making omissions acts, laying the touch | |
| Of sin on things that sometime may be such. | |
| As Moses’ cherubins, whose natures do | |
| Surpass all speed, by him are winged too; | 50 |
| So would her soul, already in heaven, 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, | 55 |
| 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, 5 think her old; | 60 |
| And lest we take death’s part, and make him glad | |
| Of such a prey, and to his triumph add. | |
