| |
| CAN 1 we not force from widow’d Poetry, | |
| Now thou art dead, great Donne, one elegy | |
| To crown thy hearse? Why yet did we not trust, | |
| Though with unkneaded, dough-bak’d 2 prose, thy dust; | |
| Such as the unsizar’d lect’rer from the flow’r | 5 |
| Of fading rhetoric, short-liv’d as his hour, | |
| Dry as the sand that measures it, might lay | |
| Upon the ashes on the funeral day? | |
| Have we nor tune, nor voice? Didst thou dispense | |
| Through all our language both the words and sense? | 10 |
| ’Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain | |
| And sober Christian precepts still retain; | |
| Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame, | |
| Grave homilies, and lectures; but the flame | |
| Of thy brave soul (that shot such heat and light | 15 |
| As burnt our Earth, and made our darkness bright, | |
| Committed holy rapes upon the will, | |
| Did through the eye the melting hearts distil, | |
| And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach | |
| As sense might judge what fancy could not reach) | 20 |
| Must be desir’d forever. So the fire | |
| That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire, | |
| Which kindled first by the Promethean breath, | |
| Glow’d here a while, lies quench’d now in thy death. | |
| The Muses’ garden, with pedantic weeds 3 | 25 |
| O’erspread, was purg’d by thee; the lazy seeds | |
| Of servile imitation thrown away, | |
| And fresh invention planted. Thou didst pay | |
| The debts of our penurious bankrupt age: | |
| Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage | 30 |
| A mimic fury, when our souls must be | |
| Possest, or with Anacreon’s ecstasy | |
| Or Pindar’s, not their own; the subtle cheat | |
| Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat | |
| Of two-edg’d words; or whatsoever wrong | 35 |
| By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, | |
| Thou hast redeem’d; and open’d us a mine | |
| Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line | |
| Of masculine expression, which had good | |
| Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood | 40 |
| Our superstitious fools admire, and hold | |
| Their lead more precious than thy burnish’d gold, | |
| Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more | |
| They each in other’s dung had search’d for ore. | |
| Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time, | 45 |
| And the blind fate of language, whose tun’d chime | |
| More charms the outward sense; yet thou may’st claim | |
| From so great disadvantage greater fame, | |
| Since to the awe of thy imperious wit | |
| Our troublesome language bends, made only fit | 50 |
| With her tough thick-rib’d hoops to gird about | |
| Thy giant fancy, which had prov’d too stout | |
| For their soft, melting phrases. As in time | |
| They had the start, so did they cull the prime | |
| Buds of invention many a hundred year, | 55 |
| And left the rifled fields, besides the fear | |
| To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands | |
| Of what was only thine, thy only hands | |
| (And that their smallest work) have gleaned more | |
| Than all those times and tongues could reap before. | 60 |
| |
| But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be | |
| Too hard for libertines in poetry; | |
| They will recall the goodly, exil’d train | |
| Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign | |
| Was banish’d noble poems. Now, with these, | 65 |
| The silenc’d tales i’ th’ Metamorphoses | |
| Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page; | |
| Till verse, refined by thee, in this last age | |
| Turn ballad-rhime, or those old idols be | |
| Adorn’d again with new apostasy. | 70 |
| |
| Oh pardon me! that break with untun’d verse | |
| The reverent silence that attends thy hearse; | |
| Whose solemn, awful murmurs were to thee, | |
| More than these rude lines, a loud elegy; | |
| That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence | 75 |
| The death of all the arts, whose influence, | |
| Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies, | |
| Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies: | |
| So doth the swiftly-turning wheel not stand | |
| I’ th’ instant we withdraw the moving hand, | 80 |
| But some short-time retain a faint, weak course, | |
| By virtue of the first impulsive force; | |
| And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile | |
| Thy crown of bays, oh let it crack a while, | |
| And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes | 85 |
| Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes. | |
| |
| I will not draw the envy, to engross | |
| All thy perfections, or weep all the loss; | |
| Those are too numerous for one elegy, | |
| And this too great to be express’d by me: | 90 |
| Let others carve the rest; it shall suffice, | |
| I on thy grave this epitaph incise: | |
| “Here lies a king that rul’d as he thought fit | |
| The universal monarchy of wit; | |
| Here lies two flamens, and both those the best; | 95 |
| Apollo’s first, at last the true God’s priest.” | |
