The fuel erst of your ambitious fire,
What help they now? The vast and bad desire
Of wealth and power at a bloody rate
Is wicked,--better bread and water eat
With peace; a wooden dish doth seldom hold
A poison'd draught; glass is more safe than gold;
But for this theme a larger time will ask,
I must betake me to my former task.
The fatal hour of her short life drew near,
That doubtful passage which the world doth fear;
Another company, who had not been
Freed from their earthy burden there were seen,
To try if prayers could appease the wrath,
Or stay th' inexorable hand, of Death.
That beauteous crowd convened to see the end
Which all must taste; each neighbour, every friend
Stood by, when grim Death with her hand took hold,
And pull'd away one only hair of gold,
Thus from the world this fairest flower is ta'en
To make her shine more bright, not out of spleen
How many moaning plaints, what store of cries
Were utter'd there, when Fate shut those fair eyes
For which so oft I sung; whose beauty burn'd
My tortured heart so long; while others mourn'd,
She pleased, and quiet did the fruit enjoy
Of her blest life: "Farewell," without annoy,
"True saint on earth," said they; so might she be
Esteem'd, but nothing bates Death's cruelty.
What shall become of others, since so pure
A body did such heats and colds endure,
And changed so often in so little space?
Ah, worldly hopes, how blind you be, how base!
If since I bathe the ground with flowing tears
For that mild soul, who sees it, witness bears;
And thou who read'st mayst judge she fetter'd me
The sixth of April, and did set me free
On the same day and month. Oh! how the way
Of fortune is unsure; none hates the day
Of slavery, or of death, so much as I
Abhor the time which wrought my liberty,
And my too lasting life; it had been just
My greater age had first been turn'd to dust,
And paid to time, and to the world, the debt
I owed, then earth had kept her glorious state:
Now at what rate I should the sorrow prize
I know not, nor have heart that can suffice
The sad affliction to relate in verse
Of these fair dames, that wept about her hearse;
"Courtesy, Virtue, Beauty, all are lost;
What shall become of us? None else can boast
Such high perfection; no more we shall