| |
| THEN 1 withered the primrose of delight, | |
| Hanging the head ore sorrowe’s garden wall, | |
| When you might see all pleasures shun the light, | |
| And love obscuer, at Eliza’s fall— | |
| Her fall from life to death: oh! stay not there; | 5 |
| Though she were dead, the shril-tong’d trump of heaven | |
| Rais’d her again: think that you see her heere, | |
| E’en heere,—oh, where? not heere; shee ’s hence bereaven; | |
| For sweet Eliza in Elizium lives, | |
| In joy beyond all thought. Then weepe no more, | 10 |
| Your sighing weedes put off; for weeping gives | |
| (Wayling her losse) as seeming to deplore | |
| Our future toward fortunes: mourne not, then; | |
| You cease awhile, but now you weepe agen. | |
| |
| Why should a soule in passion be denied | 15 |
| To have true feelings of her essence misse? | |
| My soule hath lost herself; now deified, | |
| I needes must moane her losse, ’tho crown’d with blisse. | |
| Then give me leave, for I must weepe awhile, | |
| Till sorrow’s deluge have a lower ebbe: | 20 |
| Let lamentation never finde a stile | |
| To passe this dale of woe, untill the webbe | |
| Appointed for my latest mourning weed | |
| Be spun and woven with a heavie band; | |
| Then will I cease to weepe,—I will indeed, | 25 |
| And every beating billowe will withstand. | |
| ’Twill not be long before this web be spun, | |
| Dy’d blacke, worne out, and then my teares be done. | |
| |
| Of April’s month the eight and twentith day, | |
| M. six hundred and three, by computation, | 30 |
| Is the prefixed time for sorowe’s stay; | |
| That past, my mourning weedes grow out of fashion. | |
| Shall I by prayer hasten on the time? | |
| Faine would I so, because mine eyes are drie. | |
| What cannot prayers doo for soules divine, | 35 |
| Although the bodies be mortallitie? | |
| Divine she is, for whom my muse doth mourne, | |
| Though lately mortall: now she sits on hie, | |
| Glorious in heaven, thither by angells borne, | |
| To live with Him in bliss eternally. | 40 |
| Then come, faire day of joy full smiling sorrow; | |
| Since my teares dry, come, happie day, to-morrow. | |
| |
| Ye heralds of my heart, my heavie groanes, | |
| My teares which, if they could, would showre like raine,— | |
| My heavie lookes, and all my surdging mones,— | 45 |
| My moaning lamentations that complayne,— | |
| When will you cease? or shall paine never ceasing | |
| Seaze on my heart? oh, mollifie your rage, | |
| Least your assaults, with over-swift increasing, | |
| Procure my death, or call on tymeles age. | 50 |
| She lives in peace whome I doe mourne for so; | |
| She lives in heaven, and yet my soule laments. | |
| Since shee’s so happie, I’le converte my woe, | |
| To present joy turne all my languishments; | |
| And with my sorrowes see the time doth wast, | 55 |
| The day is come, and mid-day wel-nigh past. | |
| |
| Gaze, greedy eye; note what thou dost beholde: | |
| Our horizon’s of a perfect hew, | |
| As cleere as christall, and the day not olde, | |
| Yet thousand blacks present them to thy view: | 60 |
| Three thousand and od hundred clowds appere | |
| Upon the earthly element below, | |
| As blacke as night, trampling the lower sphere, | |
| As by degrees from place to place they goe, | |
| They passe away—oh, whither passe they then? | 65 |
| Into a further climate, out of sight; | |
| Like clowds they were, but yet like clowded men, | |
| Whose presence turned the day to sable night. | |
| They vanish thence: note what was after seene— | |
| The lively picture of a late dead Queene; | 70 |
| |
| Who, like to Phœbus in his golden car, | |
| Was the bright eye of the obscured day; | |
| And though her glorious prograce was not far, | |
| Yet like the smiling sunne this semblance lay, | |
| Drawne in a jetty charriot, vayled with blacke, | 75 |
| By four faire palfries, that did hang the head | |
| As if their lady mistres they did lacke, | |
| And they but drew the figure of the dead. | |
| Oh yee spectators, which did view that sight, | |
| Say, if you trulie say, could you refraine | 80 |
| To shed a sea of teares in Deathe’s despight, | |
| That reft her hence, whom Art brought back againe? | |
| He that knew her, and had Eliza seen, | |
| Would sweare that figure were faire England’s Queene. | |
| |
| “Faire England’s Queene, e’en to the life, tho’ dead;” | 85 |
| Speake, if I write not true, did you not crye— | |
| Cry foorth amaine, and say, “Her princely head | |
| Lay on a pillowe of a crimson dye, | |
| Like a sweat beauty in a harmless slumber;— | |
| She is not dead: no, sure, it cannot be”? | 90 |
| Thus with unlikely hopes the vulgar number | |
| Flatter themselves—(oh, sweet-lyv’d flatterie!) | |
| Indeed, a man of judgment would have thought, | |
| Had he not known her dead, but seene her so | |
| Tryumphant drawne, in robes so richly wrought, | 95 |
| Crowne on her head, in hand her sceptre too: | |
| At this rare sight he would have sworn and said, | |
| “To parliament rides this sweet slumb’ring maid.” | |
| |
| But that my warrant’s seal’d by Truthe’s one 2 hand, | |
| That in her counterfeit Art did excell, | 100 |
| I would not say that in this little land | |
| Pigmalion’s equal doth admired dwell. | |
| Enough of that:—and now my teares are done, | |
| Since she that dy’d lives now above the spheres. | |
| Luna’s extinct; and now beholde the sunne, | 105 |
| Whose beames soake up the moysture of all teares: | |
| A phœnix from her ashes doth arise, | |
| A King, at whose faire crowne all glory ayms; | |
| God grant his royal vertues simpathize | |
| With late Eliza’s!—so God save King James! | 110 |
| He that in love to this saies not Amen, | |
| Pray God the villaine never speake agen! Amen. | |
