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

Francis Beaumont (1584–1616)

Lines on the Tombs in Westminster

MORTALITY, behold and fear!

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within this heap of stones;

Here they lie had realms and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands;

Where from their pulpits seal’d with dust

They preach, ‘In greatness is no trust.’

Here ’s an acre sown indeed

With the richest royall’st seed

That the earth did e’er suck in,

Since the first man died for sin:

Here the bones of birth have cried,

‘Though gods they were, as men they died.’

Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruin’d sides of kings:

Here ’s a world of pomp and state,

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.