651. Of His Dear Son, Gervase

652.

DEA

EAR Lord, receive my son, whose winning love
To me was like a friendship, far above

The course of nature or his tender age;
Whose looks could all my bitter griefs assuage:
Let his pure soul, ordained seven years to be
In that frail body which was part of me,
Remain my pledge in Heaven, as sent to show
How to this port at every step I go.

Sir J. Beaumont

A Part of An Ode

To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison

T is not growing like a tree

IT

In bulk, doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,
And let thy looks with gladness shine;
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,

And think

nay, know

thy Morison's not dead.

He leap'd the present age,
Possest with holy rage

To see that bright eternal Day

Of which we Priests and Poets say Such truths as we expect for happy men; And there he lives with memory · and Ben

Jonson: who sung this of him, ere he went
Himself to rest,

Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
To have exprest

In this bright Asterism

Where it were friendship's schism
Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry -
To separate these twy
Lights, the Dioscuri,

And keep the one half from his Harry.

But fate doth so alternate the design,

Whilst that in Heav'n, this light on earth must shine.

And shine as you exalted are!

Two names of friendship, but one star: Of hearts the union: and those not by chance Made, or indenture, or leased out to advance The profits for a time.

No pleasures vain did chime.

Of rimes or riots at your feasts,
Orgies of drink or feign'd protests;

But simple love of greatness and of good,

That knit brave minds and manners more than blood.

This made you first to know the Why
You liked, then after, to apply

That liking, and approach so one the t'other
Till either grew a portion of the other:
Each styled by his end

The copy of his friend.

You lived to be the great surnames And titles by which all made claims Unto the Virtue nothing perfect done But as a CARY or a MORISON.

And such the force the fair example had
As they that saw

The good, and durst not practise it, were glad
That such a law

Was left yet to mankind,

Where they might read and find FRIENDSHIP indeed was written, not in words, And with the heart, not pen,

Of two so early men,

Whose lines her rules were and records:

Who, ere the first down bloomèd on the chin,
Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.

653.

On the Lady Mary Villiers

HE Lady Mary Villiers lies

THE

B. Jonson

Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.

654.

655.

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
Mayst find thy Darling in an urn.

T. Carew

DONE

Hero's Epitaph

to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies;
Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,
Gives her fame which never dies:
So the life that died with shame,
Lives in death with glorious fame.

W. Shakespeare

Epitaph

On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke

UNDERNEATH this sable hearse

Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother:
Death, ere thou hast slain another,
Fair, and learn'd, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

656.

657.

Marble piles let no man raise
To her name: in after days,
Some kind woman born as she,
Reading this, like Niobe

Shall turn marble, and become
Both her mourner and her tomb.

W. Browne or B. Jonson

Epitaph on Elizabeth L. H.

WOULD'ST 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.

B. Jonson

An Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy
A Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel

WEEP with me all you that read

This little story;

And know, for whom a tear you shed
Death's self is sorry.