English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 161. On Salathiel Pavy |
| | | A Child of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel |
| | | Ben Jonson (1573–1637) |
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| WEEP with me, all you that read | |
| This little story; | |
| And know, for whom a tear you shed | |
| Death’s self is sorry. | |
| ’Twas a child that so did thrive | 5 |
| In grace and feature, | |
| As Heaven and Nature seem’d to strive | |
| Which own’d the creature. | |
| Years he number’d scarce thirteen | |
| When Fates turn’d cruel, | 10 |
| Yet three fill’d zodiacs had he been | |
| The stage’s jewel; | |
| And did act (what now we moan) | |
| Old men so duly, | |
| As sooth the Parcæ thought him one, | 15 |
| He play’d so truly. | |
| So, by error, to his fate | |
| They all consented; | |
| But, viewing him since, alas, too late! | |
| They have repented; | 20 |
| And have sought, to give new birth, | |
| In baths to steep him; | |
| But, being so much too good for earth, | |
| Heaven vows to keep him. | |
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