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ELEGY ON SHAKESPEARE

RENOWNED Spenser lie a thought more nigh
To learnèd Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold
tomb.

To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain,
For whom your curtains may be drawn again.
If your precedency in death doth bar

A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carved marble of thine own,
Sleep, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone:
Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave
Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave,

That unto us and others it may be
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.

1633.

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William Basse.

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ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER

MORTALITY, behold and fear!

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within these heaps 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, royallest 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.

1653.

Francis Beaumont.

EPITAPH ON THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

UNDERNEATH this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother;
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Learn'd and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

Marble piles let no man raise
To her name, for after days;

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1641.

Some kind woman, born as she,
Reading this, like Niobe,

Shall turn statue, and become

Both her mourner and her tomb.

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Ben. Jonson.

1616.

ON ELIZABETH L. H.

WOULDST thou hear what Man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.

Underneath this stone doth lie
As much Beauty as could die :
Which in life did harbour give
To more Virtue than doth live.
If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth,

The other, let it sleep with death:

Fitter, where it died, to tell,

Than that it lived at all. Farewell!

Ben. Jonson.

10

UPON THE DEATH OF SIR ALBERT MORTON'S WIFE

He first deceased; she for a little tried

To live without him, liked it not, and died.

1627.

Sir Henry Wotton

1640.

EPITAPH

On the Lady Mary Villiers

THE Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.
If any of them, Reader, were

Known unto thee, shed a tear;
Or if thyself possess a gem,
As dear to thee, as this to them;
Though a stranger to this place,
Bewail in theirs thine own hard case:
For thou perhaps at thy return
May'st find thy Darling in an urn.

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Thomas Carew.

A NAMELESS EPITAPH

Ask not my name, O friend!

That Being only, which hath known each man From the beginning, can

Remember each unto the end.

1867.

Matthew Arnold

V

ON SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

SILENCE augmenteth grief, writing increaseth

rage,

Stal'd are my thoughts, which loved and lost, the wonder of our age,

Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now,

Enraged I write I know not what: dead quick, I know not how.

Hard-hearted minds relent, and Rigor's tears abound,

And Envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she found;

Knowledge his light hath lost, Valor hath slain her knight:

Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.

Place pensive wailes his fall, whose presence

was her pride,

Time crieth out, my ebb is come, his life was

my spring-tide;

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