| |
| ’TIS loss 1 to trust a tomb with such a guest, | |
| Or to confine her in a marble chest. | |
| Alas! what’s marble, jet, or porphyry, | |
| Prized with the chrysolite of either eye, | |
| Or with those pearls and rubies which she was? | 5 |
| Join the two Indies in one tomb, ’tis glass; | |
| And so is all, to her materials, | |
| Though every inch were ten Escurials; | |
| Yet she’s demolish’d; can we keep her then | |
| In works of hands, or of the wits of men? | 10 |
| Can these memorials, rags of paper, give | |
| Life to that name, by which name they must live? | |
| Sickly, alas! short-lived, abortive 2 be | |
| Those carcase verses, whose soul is not she; | |
| And can she, who no longer would be she, | 15 |
| Being such a tabernacle stoop to be | |
| In paper wrapp’d; or when she would not lie | |
| In such an house, dwell in an elegy? | |
| But ’tis no matter; we may well allow | |
| Verse to live so long as the world will now, | 20 |
| For her death wounded it. The world contains | |
| Princes for arms, and counsellors for brains, | |
| Lawyers for tongues, divines for hearts, and more, | |
| The rich for stomachs, and for backs the poor; | |
| The officers for hands, merchants for feet, | 25 |
| By which remote and distant countries meet; | |
| But those fine spirits, which do tune and set | |
| This organ, are those pieces which beget | |
| Wonder and love; and these were she; and she | |
| Being spent, the world must needs decrepit be. 3 | 30 |
| For since death will proceed to triumph still, | |
| He can find nothing, after her, to kill, | |
| Except the world itself, so great as she. 4 | |
| Thus brave and confident may nature be, | |
| Death cannot give her such another blow, | 35 |
| Because she cannot such another show. | |
| But must we say she’s dead? may ’t not be said, | |
| That as a sunder’d clock is piecemeal laid, | |
| Not to be lost, but by the maker’s hand | |
| Repolish’d, without error then to stand, | 40 |
| Or as the Afric Niger stream enwombs | |
| Itself into the earth, and after comes | |
| —Having first made a natural bridge, to pass | |
| For many leagues—far greater than it was, | |
| May ’t not be said, that her grave shall restore | 45 |
| Her, greater, purer, firmer than before? | |
| Heaven may say this, and joy in ’t, but can we | |
| Who live, and lack her here, this vantage see? | |
| What is ’t to us, alas! if there have been | |
| An angel made a throne, or cherubin? | 50 |
| We lose by ’t: and as agèd men are glad | |
| Being tasteless grown, to joy in joys they had, | |
| So now the sick, starved world must feed upon | |
| This joy, that we had her, who now is gone. | |
| Rejoice then, nature, and this world, that you, | 55 |
| Fearing the last fires hastening to subdue | |
| Your force and vigour, ere it were near gone, | |
| Wisely bestow’d and laid it all on one; | |
| One, whose clear body was so pure and thin, | |
| Because it need disguise no thought within; | 60 |
| ’Twas but a through-light scarf her mind to enroll, | |
| Or exhalation breathed out from her soul; | |
| One whom all men, who durst no more, admired; | |
| And whom, whoe’er had worth enough, desired; | |
| As when a temple’s built, saints emulate | 65 |
| To which of them it shall be consecrate. | |
| But as, when heaven looks on us with new eyes, | |
| Those new stars every artist exercise; | |
| What place they should assign to them they doubt, | |
| Argue, and agree not, till those stars go out; | 70 |
| So the world studied whose this piece should be, | |
| Till she can be nobody’s else, nor she; | |
| But like a lamp of balsamum, desired | |
| Rather to adorn than last, she soon expired. | |
| Clothed in her virgin white integrity | 75 |
| —For marriage, though it doth not stain, doth dye— | |
| To ’scape th’ infirmities which wait upon | |
| Woman, she went away before she was one; | |
| And the world’s busy noise to overcome, | |
| Took so much death as served for opium; | 80 |
| For though she could not, nor could choose to die, | |
| She hath yielded to too long an ecstasy. | |
| He which, not knowing her sad history, | |
| Should come to read the book of destiny, | |
| How fair, and chaste, humble and high she’d been, | 85 |
| Much promised, much perform’d, at not fifteen, | |
| And measuring future things by things before, | |
| Should turn the leaf to read, and read no more, | |
| Would think that either destiny mistook, | |
| Or that some leaves were torn out of the book. | 90 |
| But ’tis not so; fate did but usher her | |
| To years of reason’s use, and then infer | |
| Her destiny to herself, which liberty | |
| She took, but for thus much, thus much to die. | |
| Her modesty not suffering her to be | 95 |
| Fellow-commissioner with destiny, | |
| She did no more but die; if after her | |
| Any shall live, which dare true good prefer, | |
| Every such person is her delegate, | |
| To accomplish that which should have been her fate. | 100 |
| They shall make up that book, and shall have thanks | |
| Of fate, and her, for filling up their blanks; | |
| For future virtuous deeds are legacies, | |
| Which from the gift of her example rise; | |
| And ’tis in heaven part of spiritual mirth, | 105 |
| To see how well the good play her, on earth. | |
