FRANCIS BEAUMONT

ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Mortality, behold and fear:

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within this heap of stones.

Here they lie had realms and lands,

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Who now want strength to stir their hands,
Where from their pulpits, sealed with dust,

They preach, "In greatness is no trust."

Here's an acre sown indeed

With the richest, royallest seed

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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 ruined sides of kings.

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And, when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm.
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men;
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

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ΙΟ

1612.

HARK! NOW EVERYTHING IS STILL

Hark! now everything is still,

The screech-owl and the whistler shrill

Call upon our dame aloud,

And bid her quickly don her shroud.

Much you had of land and rent:

Your length in clay's now competent.

A long war disturbed your mind:

Here your perfect peace is signed.

Of what is 't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,

Their life a general mist of error,

Their death a hideous storm of terror.

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ΙΟ

Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,
And-the foul fiend more to check-

A crucifix let bless your neck.

'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day;
End your groan and come away.

About 1616.

1623.

GILES FLETCHER

FROM

CHRIST'S VICTORY AND TRIUMPH

JUSTICE AND MERCY

But Justice had no sooner Mercy seen
Smoothing the wrinkles of her Father's brow,
But up she starts and throws herself between;
As when a vapour, from a moory slough,
Meeting with fresh Eoüs, that but now

Opened the world which all in darkness lay,
Doth heav'n's bright face of his rays disarray,
And sads the smiling orient of the springing day.

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She was a virgin of austere regard;

Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind,

But as the eagle, that hath oft compared

Her eye with heav'n's, so and more brightly shined

Her lamping sight, for she the same could wind
Into the solid heart; and with her ears

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The silence of the thought loud-speaking hears; And in one hand a pair of even scoals she wears.

No riot of affection revel kept

Within her breast, but a still apathy
Possessed all her soul, which softly slept
Securely, without tempest: no sad cry
Awakes her pity; but wronged Poverty,

Sending her eyes to heav'n swimming in tears,
With hideous clamours ever struck her ears,

Whetting the blazing sword that in her hand she bears.

The winged lightning is her Mercury,

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And round about her mighty thunders sound:

Impatient of himself lies pining by

Pale Sickness, with his kerchered head upwound,

And thousand noisome plagues attend her round:
But if her cloudy brow but once grow foul,
The flints do melt, and rocks to water rowle,

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And airy mountains shake, and frighted shadows howl.

Famine, and bloodless Care, and bloody War,

Want, and the Want of Knowledge how to use

Abundance; Age, and Fear that runs afar
Before his fellow Grief, that aye pursues

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His winged steps-for who would not refuse

Grief's company, a dull and raw-boned spright,

That lanks the cheeks, and pales the freshest sight,

Unbosoming the cheerful breast of all delight?

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Before this cursed throng goes Ignorance,
That needs will lead the way he cannot see;
And after all Death doth his flag advance;

And in the midst Strife still would roaguing be,
Whose ragged flesh and clothes did well agree;
And round about amazèd Horror flies;
And over all Shame veils his guilty eyes;

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And underneath Hell's hungry throat still yawning lies.

Upon two stony tables, spread before her,

She leaned her bosom, more than stony hard:

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There slept th' unpartial Judge, and strict restorer
Of wrong or right, with pain or with reward;
There hung the score of all our debts, the card

Where good and bad, and life and death, were painted; Was never heart of mortal so untainted

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But when that scroll was read with thousand terrors

fainted.

Witness the thunder that Mount Sinai heard
When all the hill with fi'ry clouds did flame,
And wand'ring Israel, with the sight afeard,
Blinded with seeing, durst not touch the same,

бо

But like a wood of shaking leaves became.

On this dead Justice she, the Living Law,
Bowing herself with a majestic awe,

All heav'n, to hear her speech, did into silence draw.

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She ended, and the heav'nly hierarchies,
Burning in zeal, thickly imbranded were,
Like to an army that allarum cries,
And every one shakes his ydraded spear;
And the Almighty's Self, as He would tear

The Earth and her firm basis quite in sunder,
Flamed all in just revenge and mighty thunder;
Heav'n stole itself from Earth by clouds that moistered

under.

As when the cheerful Sun, elamping wide,
Glads all the world with his uprising ray,
And wooes the widowed Earth afresh to pride,
And paints her bosom with the flow'ry May,
His silent sister steals him quite away,

Wrapt in a sable cloud from mortal eyes;
The hasty stars at noon begin to rise,

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And headlong to his early roost the sparrow flies;

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But soon as he again disshadowed is,

Restoring the blind World his blemished sight,
As though another day were newly ris,

The coozened birds busily take their flight,
And wonder at the shortness of the night:

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So Mercy once again herself displays, Out from her sister's cloud, and open lays Those sunshine looks whose beams would dim a thousand

days.

How may a worm, that crawls along the dust,
Clamber the azure mountains thrown so high,

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And fetch from thence thy fair idea just,
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie,
Clothed with such light as blinds the angels' eye?
How may weak mortal ever hope to file
His unsmooth tongue and his deprostrate style?
O raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile! ..

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