| |
| WHEN that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, | |
| Whom all do celebrate, who know they’ve one | |
| —For who is sure he hath a soul, unless | |
| It see, and judge, and follow worthiness, | |
| And by deeds praise it? he who doth not this, | 5 |
| May lodge an inmate soul, but ’tis not his— | |
| When that queen ended here her progress time, | |
| And, as to her standing house, to heaven did climb | |
| Where, loth to make the saints attend her long, | |
| She’s now a part both of the choir and song, | 10 |
| This world in that great earthquake languished; | |
| For in a common bath of tears it bled, | |
| Which drew the strongest vital spirits out. | |
| But succour’d then 1 with a perplexed doubt, | |
| Whether the world did lose, or gain in this | 15 |
| —Because, since now no other way there is, | |
| But goodness, to see her, whom all would see, | |
| All must endeavour to be good as she— | |
| This great consumption to a fever turn’d, | |
| And so the world had fits; it joy’d, it mourn’d; | 20 |
| And as men think that agues physic are, | |
| And th’ ague being spent, give over care; | |
| So thou, sick world, mistakest thyself to be | |
| Well, when, alas! thou’rt in a lethargy. | |
| Her death did wound and tame thee then, and then | 25 |
| Thou might’st have better spared the sun, or man. | |
| That wound was deep, but ’tis more misery, | |
| That thou hast lost thy sense and memory. | |
| ’Twas heavy then to hear thy voice of moan, | |
| But this is worse, that thou art speechless grown. | 30 |
| Thou hast forgot thy name thou hadst; thou wast | |
| Nothing but she, and her thou hast o’erpast. | |
| For, as a child kept from the fount, until | |
| A prince, expected long, come to fulfil | |
| The ceremonies, thou unnamed hadst laid, | 35 |
| Had not her coming thee her palace made. | |
| Her name defined thee, gave thee form and frame, | |
| And thou forget’st to celebrate thy name. | |
| Some months she hath been dead—but being dead, | |
| Measures of time are all determined— | 40 |
| But long she hath been away, long, long, yet none | |
| Offers to tell us who it is that’s gone. | |
| But as in states doubtful of future heirs, | |
| When sickness without remedy impairs | |
| The present prince, they’re loth it should be said, | 45 |
| The prince doth languish, or the prince is dead. | |
| So mankind, feeling now a general thaw, | |
| A strong example gone, equal to law, | |
| The cement, which did faithfully compact | |
| And glue all virtues, 2 now resolved and slack’d, | 50 |
| Thought it some blasphemy to say she was dead, | |
| Or that our weakness was discovered | |
| In that confession; therefore spoke no more, | |
| Than tongues, the soul being gone, the loss deplore. | |
| But though it be too late to succour thee, | 55 |
| Sick world, yea dead, yea putrefied, since she, | |
| Thy intrinsic balm and thy preservative, | |
| Can never be renew’d, thou never live, | |
| I—since no man can make thee live—will try | |
| What we may gain by thy Anatomy. | 60 |
| Her death hath taught us dearly, that thou art | |
| Corrupt and mortal in thy purest part. | |
| Let no man say, the world itself being dead, | |
| ’Tis labour lost to have discovered | |
| The world’s infirmities, since there is none | 65 |
| Alive to study this dissection; | |
| For 3 there’s a kind of world remaining still; | |
| Though she, which did inanimate and fill | |
| The world, be gone, yet in this last long night | |
| Her ghost doth walk, that is, a glimmering light, | 70 |
| A faint weak love of virtue and of good | |
| Reflects from her, on them which understood | |
| Her worth; and though she have shut in all day, | |
| The twilight of her memory doth stay; | |
| Which, from the carcase of the old world free, | 75 |
| Creates a new world, and new creatures be | |
| Produced; the matter and the stuff of this | |
| Her virtue, and the form our practice is. | |
| And, though to be thus elemented arm | |
| These creatures from home-born intrinsic harm | 80 |
| —For all assumed unto this dignity | |
| So many weedless paradises be, | |
| Which of themselves produce no venomous sin, | |
| Except some foreign serpent bring it in— | |
| Yet because outward storms the strongest break, | 85 |
| And strength itself by confidence grows weak, | |
| This new world may be safer, being told | |
| The dangers and diseases of the old. 4 | |
| For with due temper men do then forego, 5 | |
| Or covet things, when they their true worth know. | 90 |
| There is no health; 6 physicians say that we, | |
| At best, enjoy but a neutrality. | |
| And can there be worse sickness than to know | |
| That we are never well, nor can be so? | |
| We are born ruinous; poor mothers cry | 95 |
| That children come not right, nor orderly, | |
| Except they headlong come and fall upon | |
| An ominous precipitation. | |
| How witty’s ruin, how importunate | |
| Upon mankind! it labour’d to frustrate | 100 |
| Even God’s purpose, and made woman, sent | |
| For man’s relief, cause of his languishment. | |
| They were to good ends, and they are so still, | |
| But accessory, and principal in ill; | |
| For that first marriage was our funeral; | 105 |
| One woman, at one blow, then kill’d us all; | |
| And singly, one by one, they kill us now. | |
| We do delightfully ourselves allow | |
| To that consumption; and, profusely blind, | |
| We kill ourselves to propagate our kind. | 110 |
| And yet we do not that; we are not men; | |
| There is not now that mankind which was then, | |
| When as the sun and man did seem to strive | |
| —Joint-tenants of the world—who should survive; 7 | |
| When stag, and raven, and the long-lived tree, | 115 |
| Compared with man, died in minority; | |
| When if a slow-paced star had stolen away | |
| From the observer’s marking, he might stay | |
| Two or three hundred years to see it again, | |
| And then make up his observation plain; | 120 |
| When, as the age was long, the size was great; | |
| Man’s growth confess’d, and recompensed the meat; | |
| So spacious and large, that every soul | |
| Did a fair kingdom and large realm control; | |
| And when the very stature, thus erect, | 125 |
| Did that soul a good way towards heaven direct. | |
| Where is this mankind now? who lives to age | |
| Fit to be made Methusalem his page? | |
| Alas! we scarce live long enough to try | |
| Whether a true-made clock run right, or lie. | 130 |
| Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow; | |
| And for our children we reserve to-morrow. | |
| So short is life, that every peasant strives, | |
| In a torn house, or field, to have three lives; | |
| And as in lasting, so in length is man, | 135 |
| Contracted to an inch, who was a span. 8 | |
| For had a man at first in forests stray’d, | |
| Or shipwreck’d in the sea, one would have laid | |
| A wager, that an elephant or whale, | |
| That met him, would not hastily assail | 140 |
| A thing so equal to him; now, alas! | |
| The fairies and the pigmies well may pass | |
| As credible; mankind decays so soon, | |
| We’re scarce our fathers’ shadows cast at noon. | |
| Only death adds to our length; nor are we grown | 145 |
| In stature to be men, till we are none. | |
| But this were light, did our less volume hold | |
| All the old text; or had we changed to gold | |
| Their silver, or disposed into less glass | |
| Spirits of virtue, which then scatter’d was. | 150 |
| But ’tis not so; we’re not retired, but damp’d; | |
| And, as our bodies, so our minds are cramp’d. | |
| ’Tis shrinking, not close weaving that hath thus | |
| In mind and body both bedwarfed us. | |
| We seem ambitious God’s whole work to undo; | 155 |
| Of nothing He made us, and we strive too | |
| To bring ourselves to nothing back; and we | |
| Do what we can to do ’t so soon as He. | |
| With new diseases on ourselves we war, | |
| And with new physic, a worse engine far. | 160 |
| This man, 9 this world’s vice-emperor, in whom | |
| All faculties, all graces are at home | |
| —And if in other creatures they appear, | |
| They’re but man’s ministers and legates there, | |
| To work on their rebellions, and reduce | 165 |
| Them to civility, and to man’s use— | |
| This man, whom God did woo, and, loth to attend | |
| Till man came up, did down to man descend; | |
| This man so great, that all that is, is his, | |
| O, what a trifle, and poor thing he is! | 170 |
| If man were anything, he’s nothing now. | |
| Help, or at least some time to waste, allow | |
| To his other wants, yet when he did depart | |
| With her whom we lament, he lost his heart. | |
| She, of whom th’ ancients seemed to prophesy, | 175 |
| When they called virtues by the name of she; | |
| She, in whom virtue was so much refined, | |
| That for allay unto so pure a mind | |
| She took the weaker sex; she that could drive | |
| The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve, | 180 |
| Out of her thoughts and deeds, and purify | |
| All by a true religious alchemy; | |
| She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this | |
| Thou know’st how poor a trifling thing man is, | |
| And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, | 185 |
| The heart being perish’d, no part can be free, | |
| And that except thou feed, not banquet, on | |
| The supernatural food, religion, | |
| Thy better growth grows withered and scant; | |
| Be more than man, or thou’rt less than an ant. | 190 |
| Then as mankind, so is the world’s whole frame, | |
| Quite out of joint, almost created lame; | |
| For before God had made up all the rest, | |
| Corruption enter’d and depraved the best. | |
| It seized the angels, and then first of all | 195 |
| The world did in her cradle take a fall, | |
| And turn’d her brains, and took a general maim, | |
| Wronging each joint of th’ universal frame. | |
| The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then | |
| Both beasts and plants, cursed in the curse of man. | 200 |
| So did the world from the first hour decay; 10 | |
| That evening was beginning of the day. | |
| And now the springs and summers which we see, | |
| Like sons of women after fifty be. | |
| And new philosophy calls all in doubt; | 205 |
| The element of fire is quite put out; | |
| The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit | |
| Can well direct him where to look for it. | |
| And freely men confess that this world’s spent, | |
| When in the planets, and the firmament | 210 |
| They seek so many new; they see that this | |
| Is crumbled out again to his atomies. | |
| ’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, | |
| All just supply, and all relation. | |
| Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, | 215 |
| For every man alone thinks he hath got | |
| To be a phœnix, and that then can be 11 | |
| None of that kind of which he is, but he. | |
| This is the world’s condition now, and now | |
| She that should all parts to reunion bow; | 220 |
| She that had all magnetic force alone, | |
| To draw and fasten sunder’d parts in one; | |
| She whom wise nature had invented then, | |
| When she observed that every sort of men | |
| Did in their voyage in this world’s sea stray, | 225 |
| And needed a new compass for their way; | |
| She that was best, and first original | |
| Of all fair copies, and the general | |
| Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast | |
| Gilt the West Indies, and perfumed the East; | 230 |
| Whose having breathed in this world did bestow | |
| Spice on those isles, and bade them still smell so; | |
| And that rich Indy, which doth gold inter, | |
| Is but as single money coin’d from her; | |
| She to whom this world must itself refer, | 235 |
| As suburbs, or the microcosm of her; | |
| She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, | |
| Thou know’st how lame a cripple this world is; | |
| And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, | |
| That this world’s general sickness doth not lie | 240 |
| In any humour, or one certain part, | |
| But as thou saw’st it, rotten at the heart. | |
| Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold | |
| Of the whole substance, not to be controll’d; | |
| And that thou hast but one way, not to admit | 245 |
| The world’s infection—to be none of it. | |
| For the world’s subtlest immaterial parts | |
| Feel this consuming wound and age’s darts; | |
| For the world’s beauty is decay’d, or gone 12 | |
| —Beauty; that’s colour and proportion. | 250 |
| We think the heavens enjoy their spherical, | |
| Their round proportion, embracing all; | |
| But yet their various and perplexed course, | |
| Observed in divers ages, doth enforce | |
| Men to find out so many eccentric parts, | 255 |
| Such diverse downright lines, such overthwarts, | |
| As disproportion that pure form; it tears | |
| The firmament in eight-and-forty shares, | |
| And in these constellations then arise | |
| New stars, and old do vanish from our eyes; | 260 |
| As though heaven suffered earthquakes, peace or war, | |
| When new towers rise, and old demolish’d are. | |
| They have impaled within a zodiac | |
| The free-born sun, and keep twelve signs awake | |
| To watch his steps; the Goat and Crab control, | 265 |
| And fright him back, who else to either pole, | |
| Did not these tropics fetter him, might run. | |
| For his course is not round, nor can the sun | |
| Perfect a circle, or maintain his way | |
| One inch direct; but where he rose to-day | 270 |
| He comes no more, but with a cozening line, | |
| Steals by that point, and so is serpentine; | |
| And seeming weary with his reeling 13 thus, | |
| He means to sleep, being now fallen nearer us. | |
| So of the stars which boast that they do run | 275 |
| In circle still, none ends where he begun. | |
| All their proportion ’s lame, it sinks, it swells; | |
| For of meridians and parallels | |
| Man hath weaved out a net, and this net thrown | |
| Upon the heavens, and now they are his own. | 280 |
| Loth to go up the hill, or labour thus | |
| To go to heaven, we make heaven come to us. | |
| We spur, we rein the stars, and in their race | |
| They’re diversely content to obey our pace. 14 | |
| But keeps the earth her round proportion still? | 285 |
| Doth not a Teneriffe 15 or higher hill | |
| Rise so high like a rock, that one might think | |
| The floating moon would shipwreck there and sink? | |
| Seas are so deep that whales, being struck to-day, | |
| Perchance to-morrow scarce at middle way | 290 |
| Of their wish’d journey’s end, the bottom, die. | |
| And men, to sound depths, so much line untie | |
| As one might justly think that there would rise | |
| At end thereof one of th’ antipodes. | |
| If under all a vault infernal be | 295 |
| —Which sure is spacious, except that we | |
| Invent another torment, that there must | |
| Millions into a straight hot room be thrust— | |
| Then solidness and roundness have no place. | |
| Are these but warts and pockholes in the face | 300 |
| Of th’ earth? Think so; but yet confess, in this | |
| The world’s proportion disfigured is; | |
| That those two lees whereon it doth rely, 16 | |
| Reward and punishment, are bent awry. | |
| And, O, it can no more be questioned, | 305 |
| That beauty’s best proportion is dead, | |
| Since even grief itself, which now alone | |
| Is left us, is without proportion. | |
| She, by whose lines proportion should be | |
| Examined, measure of all symmetry, | 310 |
| Whom had that ancient seen, who thought souls made | |
| Of harmony, he would at next have said | |
| That harmony was she, and thence infer | |
| That souls were but resultances from her, | |
| And did from her into our bodies go, | 315 |
| As to our eyes the forms from objects flow; | |
| She, who if those great doctors truly said | |
| That th’ ark to man’s proportion was made, | |
| Had been a type for that, as that might be | |
| A type of her in this, that contrary | 320 |
| Both elements and passions lived at peace | |
| In her, who caused all civil war to cease. | |
| She, after whom what form soe’er we see | |
| Is discord and rude incongruity; | |
| She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, | 325 |
| Thou know’st how ugly a monster this world is; | |
| And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, | |
| That here is nothing to enamour thee; | |
| And that not only faults in inward parts, | |
| Corruptions in our brains, or in our hearts, | 330 |
| Poisoning the fountains whence our actions spring, | |
| Endanger us; but that if everything | |
| Be not done fitly and in proportion, | |
| To satisfy wise and good lookers-on | |
| —Since most men be such as most think they be— | 335 |
| They’re loathsome too, by this deformity. | |
| For good, and well, must in our actions meet; | |
| Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet. | |
| But beauty’s other second element, | |
| Colour and lustre, now is as near spent. | 340 |
| And had the world his just proportion, | |
| Were it a ring still, yet the stone is gone. | |
| As a compassionate turquoise, which doth tell, | |
| By looking pale, the wearer is not well; | |
| As gold falls sick being stung with mercury, | 345 |
| All the world’s parts of such complexion be. | |
| When nature was most busy, the first week, | |
| Swaddling the new-born earth, God seem’d to like | |
| That she should sport herself sometimes, and play, | |
| To mingle and vary colours every day; | 350 |
| And then, as though she could not make enow, | |
| Himself his various rainbow did allow. | |
| Sight is the noblest sense of any one; | |
| Yet sight hath only colour to feed on, | |
| And colour is decay’d; summer’s robe grows | 355 |
| Dusky, and like an oft dyed garment shows. | |
| Our blushing red, which used in cheeks to spread, | |
| Is inward sunk, and only our souls are red. | |
| Perchance the world might have recovered, | |
| If she whom we lament had not been dead. | 360 |
| But she, in whom all white, and red, and blue | |
| (Beauty’s ingredients) voluntary grew, | |
| As in an unvex’d paradise; from whom | |
| Did all things’ verdure, and their lustre come; | |
| Whose composition was miraculous, | 365 |
| Being all colour, all diaphanous, | |
| For air and fire but thick gross bodies were, | |
| And liveliest stones but drowsy and pale to her; | |
| She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this, | |
| Thou know’st how wan a ghost this our world is; | 370 |
| And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, | |
| That it should more affright than pleasure thee; | |
| And that, since all fair colour then did sink, | |
| ’Tis now but wicked vanity, to think | |
| To colour vicious deeds with good pretence, 17 | 375 |
| Or with bought colours to illude men’s sense. | |
| Nor in ought more this world’s decay appears, | |
| Than that her influence the heaven forbears, | |
| Or that the elements do not feel this. | |
| The father or the mother barren is; | 380 |
| The clouds conceive not rain, or do not pour, | |
| In the due birth-time, down the balmy shower; | |
| Th’ air doth not motherly sit on the earth, | |
| To hatch her seasons, and give all things birth. | |
| Spring-times were common cradles, but are tombs, | 385 |
| And false conceptions fill the general wombs. | |
| Th’ air shows such meteors, as none can see, | |
| Not only what they mean, but what they be; | |
| Earth such new worms, as would have troubled much | |
| Th’ Egyptian Mages to have made more such. | 390 |
| What artist now dares boast that he can bring | |
| Heaven hither, or constellate anything, | |
| So as the influence of those stars may be | |
| Imprison’d in an herb, or charm, or tree, | |
| And do by touch, all which those stars could do? | 395 |
| The art is lost, and correspondence too, | |
| For heaven gives little, and the earth takes less, | |
| And man least knows their trade and purposes. | |
| If this commerce ’twixt heaven and earth were not | |
| Embarr’d, and all this traffic quite forgot, | 400 |
| She, for whose loss we have lamented thus, | |
| Would work more fully, and powerfully on us. | |
| Since herbs and roots by dying lose not all, | |
| But they, yea ashes too, are medicinal; | |
| Death could not quench her virtue so, but that | 405 |
| It would be—if not follow’d—wonder’d at; | |
| And all the world would be one dying swan, | |
| To sing her funeral praise, and vanish then. | |
| But as some serpents’ poison hurteth not, | |
| Except it be from the live serpent shot, | 410 |
| So doth her virtue need her here, to fit | |
| That unto us, she working more than it. | |
| But she, in whom to such maturity | |
| Virtue was grown, past growth, that it must die; | |
| She, from whose influence all impression came, | 415 |
| But by receivers’ impotencies lame; | |
| Who, though she could not transubstantiate | |
| All states to gold, yet gilded every state, | |
| So that some princes have some temperance; | |
| Some counsellors, some purpose to advance | 420 |
| The common profit; and some people have | |
| Some stay, no more than kings should give, to crave; | |
| Some women have some taciturnity; | |
| Some nunneries some grains of chastity; | |
| She, that did thus much, and much more could do, | 425 |
| But that our age was iron, and rusty too, | |
| (She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this | |
| Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is; | |
| And learn’st thus much by our Anatomy, | |
| That ’tis in vain to dew, or mollify | 430 |
| It with thy tears, or sweat, or blood; nothing | |
| Is worth our travail, grief, or perishing, | |
| But those rich joys which did possess her heart, | |
| Of which she’s now partaker, and a part. | |
| But as in cutting up a man that’s dead, 18 | 435 |
| The body will not last out, to have read | |
| On every part, and therefore men direct | |
| Their speech to parts that are of most effect; | |
| So the world’s carcase would not last, if I | |
| Were punctual in this Anatomy; | 440 |
| Nor smells it well to hearers, if one tell | |
| Them their disease, who fain would think they’re well. | |
| Here therefore be the end; and blessed maid, | |
| Of whom is meant whatever has been said, 19 | |
| Or shall be spoken well by any tongue, | 445 |
| Whose name refines coarse lines, and makes prose song, | |
| Accept this tribute, and his first year’s rent; | |
| Who till his dark short taper’s end be spent, | |
| As oft as thy feast sees this widow’d earth, | |
| Will yearly celebrate thy second birth; | 450 |
| That is, thy death; for though the soul of man | |
| Be got when man is made, ’tis born but then | |
| When man doth die; our body ’s as the womb, | |
| And as a mid-wife death directs it home. | |
| And you, her creatures, whom she works upon, | 455 |
| And have your last and best concoction | |
| From her example and her virtue, if you | |
| In reverence to her do think it due, | |
| That no one should her praises thus rehearse, | |
| As matter fit for chronicle, not verse; | 460 |
| Vouchsafe to call to mind that God did make | |
| A last and lasting’st piece, a song. He spake | |
| To Moses to deliver unto all | |
| That song, because He knew they would let fall | |
| The law, the prophets, and the history, | 465 |
| But keep the song still in their memory. | |
| Such an opinion, in due measure, made | |
| Me this great office boldly to invade; | |
| Nor could incomprehensibleness deter | |
| Me from thus trying to imprison her; | 470 |
| Which when I saw that a strict grave could do, | |
| I saw not why verse might not do so too. | |
| Verse hath a middle nature; heaven keeps souls, | |
| The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrolls. | |
