Insteed of dirges this complaint;
And for sweet flowres to crown thy hearse,
Receive a strew of weeping verse
From thy griev'd friend, whom thou might'st see
Quite melted into tears for thee.
Dear loss! fince thy untimely fate
My task hath been to meditate
On thee, on thee: thou art the book,
The library whereon I look
Though almost blind, for thee (lov'd clay)
I languish out not live the day,
Ufing no other exercise
But what I practise with mine eyes:
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily Time creeps about
To one that mourns: this, onely this
My exercise and bus'ness is :
So I compute the weary houres
With fighs dissolved into show'res.
Nor wonder if my time go thus
Backward and most preposterous;
Thou hast benighted me, thy set,
This Eve of blackness did beget,
Who wast my day, (though overcast
Before thou hadst thy noontide past)
And I remember must in tears,
Thou scarce hadst seen so many years
As day tells houres, by thy clear Sun
My love and fortune first did run;
But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphear,
Since both thy light and motion
Like a fled star is fall'n and gon,
And twixt me and my foules dear wish
The earth now interposed is,
Which such a strange eclipse doth make
As ne're was read in Almanake.
I could allow thee for a time
To darken me and my fad clime-
Were it a month, a year, or ten,
I would thy exile live till then;
And all that space my mirth adjourn,
So thou would'st promise to return;
And putting off thy ashy shrowd
At length disperse this forrow's cloud.
But woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes: never shall I
Be so much blest as to descry
A glimpse of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doome,
And a fierce feaver must calcine
The body of this world like thine,
(My little world!) that fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire
To our foules bliss: then we shall rise,
And view ourselves with cleerer eyes
In that calm region, where no night
Can hide us from each others fight.
Mean time, thou hast her Earth: much good May my harm do thee, since it stood
With Heaven's will I might not call
Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-liv'd right and interest
In her, whom living I lov'd best:
With a most free and bounteous grief,
I give thee what I could not keep.
Be kind to her, and prethee look
Thou write into thy doomf-day book
Each parcel of this Rarity
Which in thy casket shrin'd doth ly :
See that thou make thy reck'ning streight,
And yield her back again by weight;
For thou must audit on thy truft
Each graine and atome of this dust,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,
Not gave thee my dear monument.
So close the ground, and 'bout her fhade
Black curtains draw, my Bride is laid.
Sleep on, my Love, in thy cold bed
Never to be disquieted!
My last good night! thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake :
Till age, or grief, or fickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves; and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there; I will not faile
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or forrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And ev'ry houre a step towards thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rife neerer my west
Of life, almost by eight houres saile,
Then when fleep breath'd his drowsie gale.
Thus from the Sun my bottom stears
And my dayes compass downward bears:
Nor labour I to stemme the tide
Through which to thee I swiftly glide.
'Tis true, with shame and grief I yield,
Thou like the vann first took'st the field,
And gotten haft the victory
In thus adventuring to dy
Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But heark! my pulse like a soft drum
Beats my approach, tells Thee I come;
And flow howere my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by Thee.
The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolution
With hope and comfort, Dear (forgive
The crime) I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.
Of my deare Sonne, GERVASE BEAUMONT.
CAN I, who have for others oft compil'd
The fongs of Death, forget my sweetest child,
Which like a flow'r crusht, with a blast is dead,
And ere full time hangs downe his smiling head,
Expecting with cleare hope to live anew,
Among the Angels fed with heav'nly dew?
We have this signe of joy, that many dayes,
While on the earth his struggling spirit stayes,
The name of Jesus in his mouth contains
His onely food, his fleepe, his ease from paines.
O may that found be rooted in my mind
Of which in him such strong effect I find.
Deare Lord, receive my Sonne, whose winning love
To me was like a friendship, farre above
The course of nature, or his tender age,
Whose lookes could all my bitter griefes afsswage;
Let his pure foule ordain'd sev'n yeeres to be
In that fraile body, which was part of me,
Remaine my pledge in Heav'n, as fent to shew,
How to this port at ev'ry step I goe.
Bosworth Field, with other
Poems, by Sir John Beaumont.
Lond. 1629. Ed.
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