Or make another my own griefs bemoan;
Or to be least alone when most alone.
In this can I, as oft as I will choose,
Hug sweet Content by my retired muse,
And in a study find as much to please
As others in the greatest palaces.
Each man that lives (according to his power)
On what he loves bestows an idle hour;
Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
I like the pleasing cadence of a line
Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine.
In lieu of hawks, the raptures of my soul
Transcend their pitch, and baser earths control.
For running horses, Contemplation flies
With quickest speed to win the greatest prize.
For courtly dancing, I can take more pleasure
To hear a verse keep time and equal measure.
For winning riches, seek the best directions
How I may well subdue mine own affections.
For raising stately piles for heirs to come,
Here in this
poem
I erect
my
tomb.
And time may be so kind, in these weak lines
To keep my name enroll’d, past his, that shines
In gilded marble, or in brazen leaves:
Since verse preserves, when stone and brass deceives.
Or if (as worthless) Time not lets it live
To those full days which others Muses give,
Yet I am sure I shall be heard and sung
Of most severest eld, and kinder
young
Beyond my days, and maugre Envy's strife
Add to my name some hours beyond my life.
Such, of the Muses, are the able powers,
And, since with them I spent my vacant hours,
I find nor hawk, nor hound, nor other thing;
Tournays nor revels, (pleasures for a king)
Yield more delight; for I have oft possess'd
As much in this as all in all the rest,
And that without expense, when others oft
With their undoings have their pleasures bought.
Britannia's Pastorals, by W. Browne,
B. II. Song iv.
DEATH OF MRS. ELIZABETH FILMER,
You that shall live awhile before
Old Time tires, and is no more;
When that this ambitious stone
Stoops low as what it tramples on;
Know that in that
age
when Sin
Gave the world law, and govern’d queen,
A virgin liv'd, that still put............
White thoughts, though out of fashion;
That trac'd the stars spite of report,
And durst be good, though chidden fort:
Of such a soul ......
heav'n
Repented what it thus had giv’n ;
For finding equal happy man,
Th’impatient pow’rs snatch'd it again;
Thus chaste as th' air whither she's fled,
She making her celestial bed
In her warm alabaster lay
As cold as in this house of clay;
Nor were the rooms unfit to feast
Or circumscribe this angel-guest;
The radiant gem was brightly set
In as divine a carkanet;
For which the clearer was not known,
Her mind, or het complexion :
Such an everlasting grace,
Such a beatific face
Incloisters here this narrow floor
That possess'd all hearts before.
Bless'd and bewail'd in death and birth!
The smiles and tears of heav'n and earth!
Virgins at each step are afcard,
Filmer is shot by which they steerd,
Their star extinct, their beauty dead
That the young world to honour led;
But see! the rapid spheres stand still,
And tune themselves unto her will.
Thus, although this marble must,
As all things, crumble into dust,
And though you find this fair-built tomb
Ashes, as what lies in its womb;
Yet her saint-like name shall shine
A living glory to this shrine,
And her eternal fame be read,
When all, but very Virtue's dead*.
Lucasta, &c. by Richard Lovelace,
Edit. 1649.
* And her eternal fame be read,
When all but very Virtue's dead.) Somewhat in the manner of Collins :
Belov'd till life can charm no more ;
And mourn'd till Pity's self be dead.
Dirge in Cymbeline.
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 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 urna.
T. Carew's Poems, p. 90,
Edit. 1640.
* I have always considered this Epitaph as Carew's masterpiece. The subject of it may possibly be the same person, to whose nuptials with Lord Charles Herbert, Davenant has inscribed some verses. P, 238, fol. edit.
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