Elegy Upon the Untimely Death of the Incomparable Prince Henry

Look to me, faith, and look to my faith, God;
For both my centres feel this period.
Of weight one centre, one of greatness is;
And reason is that centre, faith is this;
For into our reason flow, and there do end,
All that this natural world doth comprehend,
Quotidian things, and equidistant hence,
Shut in, for man, in one circumference.
But for th’ enormous greatnesses, which are
So disproportion’d and so angular,
As is God’s essence, place, and providence,
Where, how, when, what souls do, departed hence,
These things (eccentric else) on faith do strike;
Yet neither all, nor upon all, alike.
For reason, put to her best extension,
Almost meets faith, and makes both centres one
And nothing ever came so near to this,
As contemplation of that prince we miss.
For all that faith might credit mankind could,
Reason still seconded that this prince would.
If, then, least moving of the centre make,
More than if whole hell belch’d, the world to shake,
What must this do, centres distracted so,
That we see not what to believe or know?
Was it not well believed till now, that he,
Whose reputation was an ecstasy
On neighbour states, which knew not why to wake,
Till he discover’d what ways he would take;
For whom, what princes angled, when they tried,
Met a torpedo, and were stupefied;
And others’ studies, how he would be bent,
Was his great father’s greatest instrument,
And activest spirit, to convey and tie
This soul of peace through Christianity?
Was it not well believed, that he would make
This general peace th’ eternal overtake,
And that his times might have stretch’d out so far,
As to touch those of which they emblems are?
For to confirm this just belief, that now
The last days came, we saw heaven did allow
That, but from his aspect and exercise,
In peaceful times rumours of wars did rise.
But now this faith is heresy; we must
Still stay, and vex our great-grandmother, Dust.
O, is God prodigal? hath He spent His store
Of plagues on us; and only now, when more
Would ease us much, doth He grudge misery,
And will not let’s enjoy our curse⁠—to die?
As for the earth thrown lowest down of all,
’Twere an ambition to desire to fall,
So God, in our desire to die, doth know
Our plot for ease, in being wretched so.
Therefore we live; though such a life we have,
As but so many mandrakes on his grave.
What had his growth and generation done,
When, what we are, his putrefaction
Sustains in us, earth, which griefs animate?
Nor hath our world now other soul than that;
And could grief get so high as heaven, that choir,
Forgetting this their new joy, would desire
—With grief to see him⁠—he had stay’d below,
To rectify our errors they foreknow.
Is the other centre, reason, faster then?
Where should we look for that, now we’re not men?
For if our reason be our connection
Of causes, now to us there can be none.
For, as if all the substances were spent,
’Twere madness to enquire of accident,
So is ’t to look for reason, he being gone,
The only subject reason wrought upon.
If fate have such a chain, whose divers links
Industrious man discerneth, as he thinks,
When miracle doth come, and so steal in
A new link, man knows not where to begin.
At a much deader fault must reason be,
Death having broke off such a link as he.
But now, for us, with busy proof to come,
That we’ve no reason, would prove we had some.
So would just lamentations; therefore we
May safelier say, that we are dead, than he;
So, if our griefs we do not well declare,
We’ve double excuse; he is not dead, and we are.
Yet I would not die yet; for though I be
Too narrow to think him, as he is he
—Our souls best baiting and mid-period,
In her long journey, of considering God⁠—
Yet, no dishonour, I can reach him thus,
As he embraced the fires of love, with us.
O may I, since I live, but see or hear
That she⁠—intelligence which moved this sphere,
I pardon fate, my life; whoe’er thou be,
Which hast the noble conscience, thou art she.
I conjure thee by all the charms he spoke,
By th’ oaths, which only you two never broke,
By all the souls ye sigh’d, that if you see
These lines, you wish I knew your history;
So, much as you two mutual heavens were here,
I were an angel, singing what you were.

Obsequies of the Lord Harrington, Brother to the Countess of Bedford

Fair soul, which wast, not only as all souls be,
Then when thou wast infusèd, harmony,
But didst continue so; and now dost bear
A part in God’s great organ, this whole sphere;
If looking up to God, or down to us,
Thou find that any way is pervious
’Twixt heaven and earth, and that men’s actions do
Come to your knowledge, and affections too,
See, and with joy, me to that good degree
Of goodness grown, that I can study thee,
And by these meditations refined,
Can unapparel and enlarge my mind,
And so can make, by this soft ecstasy,
This place a map of heaven, myself of thee.
Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest;
Times dead-low water, when all minds divest
Tomorrow’s business; when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last churchyard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now, when the client, whose last hearing is
Tomorrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then
Again by death, although sad watch he keep,
Doth practice dying by a little sleep;
Thou at this midnight seest me, and as soon
As that sun rises to me, midnight’s noon,
All the world grows transparent, and I see
Through all, both church and state, in seeing thee;
And I discern by favour of this light,
Myself, the hardest object of the sight.
God is the glass; as thou, when thou dost see
Him Who sees all, seest all concerning thee;
So, yet unglorified, I comprehend
All, in these mirrors of thy ways and end.
Though God be our true glass, through which we see
All, since the being of all things is He,
Yet are the trunks which do to us derive
Things, in proportion, fit by perspective,
Deeds of good men; for by their being here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
But where can I affirm, or where arrest
My thoughts on his deeds? which shall I call best?
For fluid virtue cannot be looked on,
Nor can endure a contemplation.
As bodies change, and as I do not wear
Those spirits, humours, blood I did last year,
And, as if on a stream I fix mine eye,
That drop, which I looked on, is presently
Push’d with more waters from my sight, and gone;
So in this sea of virtues, can no one
Be insisted on; virtues as rivers pass,
Yet still remains that virtuous man there was.
And as if man feed on man’s flesh, and so
Part of his body to another owe,
Yet at the last two perfect bodies rise,
Because God knows where every atom lies;
So, if one knowledge were made of all those,
Who knew his minutes well, he might dispose
His virtues into names and ranks; but I
Should injure nature, virtue, and destiny,
Should I divide and discontinue so
Virtue, which did in one entireness grow.
For as he that should say spirits are framed
Of all the purest parts that can be named,
Honours not spirits half so much as he
Which says they have no parts, but simple be;
So is ’t of virtue, for a point and one
Are much entirer than a million.
And had fate meant to have had his virtues told,
It would have let him live to have been old;
So then that virtue in season, and then this,
We might have seen, and said, that now he is
Witty, now wise, now temperate, now just.
In good short lives, virtues are fain to thrust,
And to be sure betimes to get a place,
When they would exercise, lack time and space.
So was it in this person, forced to be,
For lack of time, his own epitome;
So to exhibit in few years as much
As all the long-breathed chronicles can touch.
As when an angel down from heaven doth fly,
Our quick thought cannot keep him company;
We cannot think, “Now he is at the sun,
Now through the moon, now he through th’ air doth run”;
Yet when he’s come, we know he did repair
To all ’twixt heaven and earth, sun, moon, and air.
And as this angel in an instant knows,
And yet we know, this sudden knowledge grows
By quick amassing several forms of things,
Which he successively to order brings,
When they, whose slow-paced lame thoughts cannot go
So fast as he, think that he doth not so.
Just as a perfect reader doth not dwell
On every syllable, nor stay to spell,
Yet without doubt he doth distinctly see,
And lay together every A and B;
So, in short-lived good men, is not understood
Each several virtue, but the compound good;
For they all virtue’s paths in that pace tread,
As angels go, and know, and as men read.
O, why should then these men, these lumps of balm,
Sent hither the world’s tempest to becalm,
Before by deeds they are diffused and spread,
And so make us alive, themselves be dead?
O soul, O circle, why so quickly be
Thy ends, thy birth and death closed up in thee?
Since one foot of thy compass still was placed
In heaven, the other might securely have paced,
In the most large extent, through every path
Which the whole world or man th’ abridgment hath.
Thou know’st that though the tropic circles have
—Yea, and those small ones which the Poles engrave⁠—
All the same roundness, evenness, and all
The endlessness of th’ equinoctial;
Yet, when we come to measure distances,
How here, how there, the sun affected is,
When he doth faintly work, and when prevail,
Only great circles, then, can be our scale.
So though thy circle to thyself express
All, tending to thy endless happiness,
And we by our good use of it may try,
Both how to live well, young, and how to die;
Yet since we must be old, and age endures
His torrid zone at court, and calentures
Of hot ambitions, irreligion’s ice,
Zeal’s agues, and hydroptic avarice
—Infirmities, which need the scale of truth,
As well as lust and ignorance of youth⁠—
Why didst thou not for these give medicines too,
And by thy doing set us what to do?
Though as small pocket-clocks, whose every wheel
Doth each mismotion and distemper feel,
Whose hands get shaking palsies, and whose string
(His sinews) slackens, and whose soul, the spring,
Expires, or languishes; whose pulse, the fly,
Either beats not, or beats unevenly;
Whose voice, the bell, doth rattle or grow dumb,
Or idle as men which to their last hours are come,
If these clocks be not wound, or be wound still,
Or be not set, or set at every will;
So youth is easiest to destruction,
If then we follow all, or follow none.
Yet, as in great clocks which in steeples chime,
Placed to inform whole towns to employ their time,
An error doth more harm, being general,
When small clocks’ faults only on the wearer fall;
So work the faults of age, on which the eye
Of children, servants, or the state rely.
Why wouldst not thou, then, which hadst such a soul,
A clock so true, as might the sun control,
And daily hadst from Him, who gave it thee,
Instructions, such as it could never be
Disorder’d, stay here, as a general
And great sundial, to have set us all?
O, why wouldest thou be an instrument
To this unnatural course, or why consent
To this, not miracle, but prodigy,
That when the ebbs longer than flowings be,
Virtue, whose flood did with thy youth begin,
Should so much faster ebb out, than flow in?
Though her flood were blown in by thy first breath,
All is at once sunk in the whirlpool death.
Which word I would not name, but that I see
Death, else a desert, grown a court by thee.
Now I am sure that if a man would have
Good company, his entry is a grave.
Methinks all cities, now, but anthills be,
Where, when the several labourers I see,
For children, house, provision taking pain,
They’re all but ants, carrying eggs, straw, and grain.
And churchyards are our cities, unto which
The most repair, that are in goodness rich.
There is the best concourse and confluence,
There are the holy suburbs, and from thence
Begins God’s city, New Jerusalem,
Which doth extend her utmost gates to them.
At that gate, then, triumphant soul, dost thou
Begin thy triumph. But since laws allow,
That at the triumph day the people may
All that they will ’gainst the triumpher say,
Let me here use that freedom, and express
My grief, though not to make thy triumph less.
By law to triumphs none admitted be,
Till they as magistrates get victory.
Though then to thy force all youth’s foes did yield,
Yet till fit time had wrought thee to that field,
To which thy rank in this state destined thee,
That there thy counsels might get victory,
And so in that capacity remove
All jealousies ’twixt prince and subjects’ love,
Thou couldst no title to this triumph have;
Thou didst intrude on death, usurp a grave.
Then, though victoriously, thou hadst fought as yet
But with thine own affections, with the heat
Of youth’s desires, and colds of ignorance,
But till thou shouldst successfully advance
Thine arms ’gainst foreign enemies, which are
Both envy, and acclamation popular
—For both these engines equally defeat,
Though by a divers mine, those which are great⁠—
Till then thy war was but a civil war,
For which to triumph none admitted are;
No more are they who, though with good success,
In a defensive war their power express.
Before men triumph, the dominion
Must be enlarged, and not preserved alone.
Why shouldst thou, then, whose battles were to win
Thyself from those straits nature put thee in,
And to deliver up to God that state,
Of which He gave thee the vicariate,
Which is thy soul and body, as entire
As he who takes indentures doth require;
But didst not stay to enlarge His kingdom too,
By making others, what thou didst, to do;
Why shouldst thou triumph now, when heaven no more
Hath got by getting thee, than it had before;
For heaven and thou, e’en when thou livedst here,
Of one another in possession were.
But this from triumph most disables thee,
That that place which is conquered must be
Left safe from present war, and likely doubt
Of imminent commotions to break out;
And hath he left us so? or can it be
His territory was no more than he?
No, we were all his charge; the diocese
Of every exemplar man the whole world is;
And he was joined in commission
With tutelar angels, sent to everyone.
But though this freedom to upbraid and chide
Him who triumph’d were lawful, it was tied
With this, that it might never reference have
Unto the senate, who this triumph gave;
Men might at Pompey jest, but they might not
At that authority by which he got
Leave to triumph, before by age he might;
So though, triumphant soul, I dare to write,
Moved with a reverential anger, thus,
That thou so early wouldst abandon us;
Yet I am far from daring to dispute
With that great sovereignty, whose absolute
Prerogative hath thus dispensed with thee,
’Gainst nature’s laws, which just impugners be
Of early triumphs; and I, though with pain,
Lessen our loss, to magnify thy gain
Of triumph, when I say, it was more fit
That all men should lack thee, than thou lack it.
Though then in our time be not suffered
That testimony of love unto the dead,
To die with them, and in their graves be hid,
As Saxon wives, and French soldarii did;
And though in no degree I can express
Grief in great Alexander’s great excess,
Who at his friend’s death made whole towns divest
Their walls and bulwarks, which became them best;
Do not, fair soul, this sacrifice refuse,
That in thy grave I do inter my Muse,
Which, by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast
Behindhand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last.

Elegy on the Lady Markham

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,
And breaks our bank, 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.
And e’en those tears which should wash sin, are sin.
We, after God’s “No,” drown 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,
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.
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
Flesh of such stuff, as God, when His last fire
Annuls this world, to recompense it, shall
Make and name then th’ elixir of this all.
They say the sea, when it gains, loseth too;
If carnal death, the younger brother, do
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;
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.
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,
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;
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,
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, think her old;
And lest we take death’s part, and make him glad
Of such a prey, and to his triumph add.

Elegy on Mistress Boulstred

Death I recant, and say, “Unsaid by me,
Whate’er hath slipp’d, that might diminish thee.
Spiritual treason, atheism” ’tis to say
That any can thy summons disobey.
Th’ earth’s face is but thy table; there are set
Plants, cattle, men, dishes for death to eat.
In a rude hunger now he millions draws
Into his bloody, or plaguy, or starved jaws.
Now he will seem to spare, and doth more waste,
Eating the best first, well preserved to last.
Now wantonly he spoils, and eats us not,
But breaks off friends, and lets us piecemeal rot.
Nor will this earth serve him; he sinks the deep
Where harmless fish monastic silence keep;
Who⁠—were Death dead⁠—by roes of living sand
Might sponge that element, and make it land.
He rounds the air, and breaks the hymnic notes
In birds’, heaven’s choristers, organic throats;
Which, if they did not die, might seem to be
A tenth rank in the heavenly hierarchy.
O strong and long-lived death, how camest thou in?
And how without creation didst begin?
Thou hast, and shalt see dead, before thou diest,
All the four Monarchies, and Antichrist.
How could I think thee nothing, that see now
In all this All nothing else is, but thou?
Our births and lives, vices and virtues, be
Wasteful consumptions, and degrees of thee.
For we, to live, our bellows wear and breath,
Nor are we mortal, dying, dead, but death.
And though thou be’st, O mighty bird of prey,
So much reclaim’d by God, that thou must lay
All that thou kill’st at His feet, yet doth He
Reserve but few, and leaves the most to thee.
And of those few now thou hast overthrown
One whom thy blow makes, not ours, nor thine own.
She was more storeys high; hopeless to come
To her soul, thou hast offer’d at her lower room.
Her soul and body was a king and court;
But thou hast both of captain miss’d and fort.
As houses fall not, though the kings remove,
Bodies of saints rest for their souls above.
Death gets ’twixt souls and bodies such a place
As sin insinuates ’twixt just men and grace;
Both work a separation, no divorce.
Her soul is gone to usher up her corse,
Which shall be almost another soul⁠—for there
Bodies are purer than best souls are here.
Because in her, her virtues did outgo
Her years, would’st thou, O emulous death, do so,
And kill her young to thy loss? must the cost
Of beauty and wit, apt to do harm, be lost?
What though thou found’st her proof ’gainst sins of youth?
O, every age a diverse sin pursueth.
Thou should’st have stayed, and taken better hold.
Shortly, ambitious; covetous, when old,
She might have proved; and such devotion
Might once have stray’d to superstition.
If all her virtues must have grown, yet might
Abundant virtue have bred a proud delight.
Had she persever’d just, there would have been
Some that would sin, misthinking she did sin.
Such as would call her friendship, love, and feign
To sociableness, a name profane,
Or sin by tempting, or, not daring that,
By wishing, though they never told her what.
Thus mightst thou have slain more souls had’st thou not cross’d
Thyself, and to triumph, thine army lost.
Yet though these ways be lost, thou hast left one,
Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone.
But we may ’scape that sin, yet weep as much;
Our tears are due because we are not such.
Some tears, that knot of friends, her death must cost,
Because the chain is broke, but no link lost.

Language, thou art too narrow and too weak
To ease us now; great sorrows cannot speak.
If we could sigh out accents, and weep words,
Grief wears, and lessens, that tears breath affords.
Sad hearts, the less they seem, the more they are
—So guiltiest men stand mutest at the bar⁠—
Not that they know not, feel not their estate,
But extreme sense hath made them desperate.
Sorrow, to whom we owe all that we be,
Tyrant, in the fifth and greatest monarchy,
Was ’t that she did possess all hearts before,
Thou hast kill’d her, to make thy empire more?
Knew’st thou some would, that knew her not, lament,
As in a deluge perish th’ innocent?
Was ’t not enough to have that palace won,
But thou must raze it too, that was undone?
Hadst thou stay’d there, and look’d out at her eyes,
All had adored thee, that now from thee flies;
For they let out more light than they took in,
They told not when, but did the day begin.
She was too sapphirine and clear for thee;
Clay, flint, and jet now thy fit dwellings be.
Alas! she was too pure, but not too weak;
Whoe’er saw crystal ordnance but would break?
And if we be thy conquest, by her fall
Thou hast lost thy end; in her we perish all;
Or if we live, we live but to rebel,
That know her better now, who knew her well.
If we should vapour out, and pine, and die,
Since she first went, that were not misery.
She changed our world with hers; now she is gone,
Mirth and prosperity is oppression;
For of all moral virtues she was all,
That ethics speak of virtues cardinal.
Her soul was paradise; the cherubin
Set to keep it was grace, that kept out sin.
She had no more than let in death, for we
All reap consumption from one fruitful tree.
God took her hence, lest some of us should love
Her, like that plant, Him and His laws above;
And when we tears, He mercy shed in this,
To raise our minds to heaven, where now she is
Who if her virtues would have let her stay
We had had a saint, have now a holiday.
Her heart was that strange bush, where sacred fire,
Religion, did not consume, but inspire
Such piety, so chaste use of God’s day,
That what we turn to feast, she turn’d to pray;
And did prefigure here, in devout taste,
The rest of her high Sabbath, which shall last.
Angels did hand her up, who next God dwell,
For she was of that order whence most fell;
Her body’s left with us, lest some had said,
She could not die, except they saw her dead;
For from less virtue, and less beauteousness,
The Gentiles framed them gods and goddesses.
The ravenous earth, that now woos her to be
Earth too, will be a Lemnia, and the tree
That wraps that crystal in a wooden tomb
Shall be took up spruce, fill’d with diamond.
And we her sad glad friends all bear a part
Of grief, for all would break a Stoic’s heart.

Elegy on the Lord Chancellor

Sorrow, who to this house scarce knew the way,
Is, O, heir of it, our all is his prey.
This strange chance claims strange wonder, and to us
Nothing can be so strange as to weep thus.
’Tis well his life’s loud-speaking works deserve,
And give praise too, our cold tongues could not serve;
’Tis well he kept tears from our eyes before,
That to fit this deep ill we might have store.
O, if a sweet briar climb up by a tree,
If to a paradise that transplanted be,
Or fell’d, and burnt for holy sacrifice,
Yet that must wither which by it did rise,
As we for him dead; though no family
E’er rigg’d a soul for heaven’s discovery
With whom more venturers more boldly dare
Venture their states, with him in joy to share,
We lose what all friends loved, him; he gains now
But life by death, which worst foes would allow,
If he could have foes, in whose practice grew
All virtues, whose name subtle schoolmen knew.
What ease can hope that we shall see him beget,
When we must die first, and cannot die yet?
His children are his pictures; O, they be
Pictures of him dead, senseless, cold as he.
Here needs no marble tomb, since he is gone,
He, and about him his, are turn’d to stone.

A Hymn to the Saints, and to Marquis Hamilton

Whether that soul which now comes up to you
Fill any former rank, or make a new;
Whether it take a name named there before,
Or be a name itself and order more
Than was in heaven till now⁠—for may not he
Be so, if every several angel be
A kind alone? whatever order grow
Greater by him in heaven, we do not so.
One of your orders grows by his access,
But, by his loss, grow all our orders less;
The name of father, master, friend, the name
Of subject and of prince, in one is lame;
Fair mirth is damp’d, and conversation black,
The Household widow’d, and the Garter slack;
The Chapel wants an ear, Council a tongue;
Story, a theme; and Music lacks a song.
Blest order that hath him, the loss of him
Gangrened all orders here; all lost a limb.
Never made body such haste to confess
What a soul was; all former comeliness
Fled, in a minute, when the soul was gone;
And, having lost that beauty, would have none.
So fell our monasteries, in an instant grown
Not to less houses, but to heaps of stone;
So sent his body that fair form it wore
Unto the sphere of forms, and doth⁠—before
His soul shall fill up his sepulchral stone⁠—
Anticipate a resurrection.
For, as in his fame now his soul is here,
So, in the form thereof, his body’s there;
And if, fair soul, not with first Innocents
Thy station be, but with the Penitents,
—And who shall dare to ask then, when I am
Dyed scarlet in the blood of that pure Lamb,
Whether that colour, which is scarlet then,
Were black or white before in eyes of men?⁠—
When thou rememb’rest what sins thou didst find
Amongst those many friends now left behind,
And seest such sinners, as they are, with thee
Got thither by repentance, let it be
Thy wish to wish all there, to wish them clean,
Wish him a David, her a Magdalen.