Thee to invite the great God sent his star,
Whose friends and kinsmen mightie princes are,
For though they run the race of men and dye,
Death serves but to refine their majesty.
So did the queen from hencé her court remove,
And left the earth to be enthron'd above.
Thus is she chang'd, not dead, no good prince dyes
But like the day-star, onely sets to rise.
Here lyes the fathers hope, the mothers joy,
Though they seeme haplesse, happy was the boy,
Who of this life, the long and tedious race
Hath travell'd out in lesse then 2 moneths space.
Oh happie soule, to whom such grace was given,
To make so short a voyage backe to heaven,
As here a name and christendome t'obtaine
And to his maker then returne againe.
6. On Edmund Spencer, poet laureat.
He was, and is (see then where lyes the odds)
Once god of poets, poet now to th' gods,
And though his time of life be gone about,
The life of his lines never shall weare out.
Here worthy of a better chest,
A pretious stone inclos'd doth rest,
Whom nature had so rarely wrought
That Pallas it admir'd, and thought
No greater jewell than to weare
Still such a diamond in her eare :
But sicknesse did it from her wring,
And placed it in Libitina's ring,
Who changed natures worke anew
And death's pale image in it drew.
Pitty that paine had not been sav'd,
So good a stone to be engrav'd.
Loe here I lye, roll'd up like th' Indian weede,
My pipes I have pack'd up, for breath I neede.
Man's breath's a vapour, he himselfe is grasse
My breath, but of a weede, the vapour was.
When I shal turne to earth, good friends! beware
Least it evap'rate, and infect the ayre.
9. On M. Pricke.
Vpon the fifth day of November
Christ's colledge lost a privie member:
Cupid and death did both their arrowes nicke, Cupid shot short, but death did hit the pricke, Women lament, and maidens make great mones, Because the pricke is laid beneath the stones.
Loe where he shineth yonder
A fixed starre in heaven,
Whose motion thence comes under
None of the planets seven :
If that the moone should tender
The sunne her love and marry,
They both could not engender
So bright a starre as Harry,
On Richard Burbage a famous Actour,
On a Printer whose Wife was lame.
Sleepe William, sleepe, she that thine eyes did close, Makes lame iambiques for thee as shee goes.
On an Infant unborne, the Mother dying in
travell.
The father digg'd a pit, and in it left
Part of himselfe interr'd, that soone bereft
The mother of the gift, she gave, life; so
Both now are buried in one tombe of woe.
'Tis strange the mother should a being give,
And not have liberty to make it live.
'Twas strange, that the child blindfold espi'd
So quick and neere a way to parricide;
Yet both are justly question'd, child and mother
Are guilty of the killing of each other.
Not with an ill intent, both did desire
Preserves for life, and not a funerall fire;
And yet they needs must dye, and 'was thought best To keep the infant in the mother's chest ;
It had both life and death from her, the wombe
In which it was begot, became the tombe;
There was some marble sav'd, because in her
The wombe that bare it, was a sepulcher,
Whose epitaphs are these, here lies a child that shal
Be free from all sins but originall.
Here lies a pittied mother that did dye
Onely to beare her poore child companie.
14. On M. Washington, page to the Prince.
Knew'st thou whose these ashes were ;
Reader thou would'st weeping sweare,
The rash fate err'd here, as appeares,
Counting his vertues for his yeeres,
His goodnesse made them so o're seene,
Which shew'd him threescore; at eighteene.
Enquire not his disease or paine !
He dy'd of nothing else but spayne,
Where the worst calenture he feeles,
Are Jesuits, and Alguaziles,
Where he is not allow'd to have,
(Unlesse he steal't) a quiet grave.
He needs no other epitaph or stone
But this, here lyes lov'd Washington,
Write this in teares, in that loose dust,
And every greiv'd beholder must,
When he weighs him, and knowes his yeeres,
Renew the letters with his teares.
15. On the death of Mary, Countesse of Pembroke.
Under-neath this sable hearse,
Lies the subject of all verse.
Sidneys sister Pembrookes mother,
Death e're thou hast kill'd another,
Faire and learned good as shee,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Marble pillers let none raise
To her name for after dayes.
Some kind woman borne as shee,
Reading this as Niobe,
Shall turne marble and become,
Both thy mourner and thy tombe.
16. On the King of Sweden's death.
'Tis sin to praise or weepe; oh let me vent My passion onely in astonishment.
Who sheads a teare for thee (brave Swead thus slain)
His eyes do penance for his weaker braine;
And yet those eyes themselves deserve this doome,
Which thus mistake a trophie for a tombe.
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