T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
An Elegy on the Lady Markham
By Francis Beaumont (1584–1616)| AS unthrifts groan in straw for their pawn’d beds, | |
| As women weep for their lost maidenheads, | |
| When both are without hope or remedy, | |
| Such an untimely grief I have for thee. | |
| I never saw thy face, nor did my heart | 5 |
| Urge forth mine eyes unto it whilst thou wert; | |
| But being lifted hence, that, which to thee | |
| Was death’s sad dart, proved Cupid’s shaft to me. | |
| Whoever thinks me foolish that the force | |
| Of a report can make me love a corse, | 10 |
| Know he that when with this I do compare | |
| The love I do a living woman bear, | |
| I find myself most happy: now I know | |
| Where I can find my mistress, and can go | |
| Unto her trimm’d bed, and can lift away | 15 |
| Her grass-green mantle, and her sheet display; | |
| And touch her naked; and though th’ envious mold | |
| In which she lies uncover’d, moist, and cold, | |
| Strive to corrupt her, she will not abide | |
| With any art her blemishes to hide, | 20 |
| As many living do, and know their need; | |
| Yet cannot they in sweetness her exceed, | |
| But make a stink with all their art and skill, | |
| Which their physicians warrant with a bill; | |
| Nor at her door doth heaps of coaches stay, | 25 |
| Footmen and midwives to bar up my way; | |
| Nor needs she any maid or page to keep, | |
| To knock me early from my golden sleep, | |
| With letters that her honour all is gone, | |
| If I not right her cause on such a one. | 30 |
| Her heart is not so hard to make me pay | |
| For every kiss a supper and a play; | |
| Nor will she ever open her pure lips | |
| To utter oaths, enough to drown our ships, | |
| To bring a plague, a famine, or the sword, | 35 |
| Upon the land, though she should keep her word; | |
| Yet, ere an hour be past, in some new vein | |
| Break them, and swear them double o’er again. | |
| Pardon me, that with thy blest memory | |
| I mingle mine own former misery: | 40 |
| Yet dare I not excuse the fate that brought | |
| These crosses on me, for then every thought | |
| That tended to thy love was black and foul, | |
| Now all as pure as a new-baptiz’d soul: | |
| For I protest, for all that I can see, | 45 |
| I would not lie one night in bed with thee; | |
| Nor am I jealous, but could well abide | |
| My foe to lie in quiet by thy side. | |
| You worms, my rivals, whilst she was alive, | |
| How many thousands were there that did strive | 50 |
| To have your freedom? for their sake forbear | |
| Unseemly holes in her soft skin to wear; | |
| But if you must (as what worms can abstain | |
| To taste her tender body?) yet refrain | |
| With your disordered eatings to deface her, | 55 |
| But feed yourselves so as you most may grace her. | |
| First, through her ear-tips see you make a pair | |
| Of holes, which, as the moist inclosed air | |
| Turns into water, may the clean drops take, | |
| And in her ears a pair of jewels make. | 60 |
| Have ye not yet enough of that white skin, | |
| The touch whereof, in times past, would have been | |
| Enough to have ransom’d many a thousand soul | |
| Captive to love? If not, then upward roll | |
| Your little bodies, where I would you have | 65 |
| This Epitaph upon her forehead grave: | |
| “Living, she was young, fair, and full of wit; | |
| Dead, all her faults are in her forehead writ.” | |