Here they lie had realms and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands,
Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust
They preach, "In greatness is no trust."
Here's an acre sown indeed

With the richest, royallest seed
That the earth did e'er suck in

Since the first man died for sin:

Here the bones of birth have cried

"Though gods they were, as men they died!" Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings:
Here's a world of pomp and state

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

1653.

Francis Beaumont.

EPITAPH ON THE COUNTESS

OF PEMBROKE

UNDERNEATH this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother;
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Learn'd and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

Marble piles let no man raise
To her name, for after days;

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Some kind woman, born as she,
Reading this, like Niobe,

Shall turn statue, and become

Both her mourner and her tomb.

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1641.

Ben. Jonson.

ON ELIZABETH L. H.

WOULDST 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:

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1616.

Fitter, where it died, to tell,

Than that it lived at all. Farewell!

Ben. Jonson.

UPON THE DEATH OF SIR ALBERT MORTON'S WIFE

He first deceased; she for a little tried

To live without him, liked it not, and died.

1627.

Sir Henry Wotton

1640.

EPITAPH

On the Lady Mary Villiers

THE Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.
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
May'st find thy Darling in an urn.

ΙΟ

Thom Carew.

A NAMELESS EPITAPH

Ask not my name, O friend!

That Being only, which hath known each man From the beginning, can

Remember each unto the end.

1867.

Matthew Arnold.

ON SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

SILENCE augmenteth grief, writing increaseth

rage,

Stal'd are my thoughts, which loved and lost, the wonder of our age,

Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now,

Enraged I write I know not what: dead quick, I know not how.

Hard-hearted minds relent, and Rigor's tears abound,

And Envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she found;

Knowledge his light hath lost, Valor hath slain her knight:

Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.

Place pensive wailes his fall, whose presence

was her pride,

Time crieth out, my ebb is come, his life was my spring-tide;

8

Fame mourns in that she lost, the ground of her reports,

Each living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry sorts.

He was woe worth that word-to each well

thinking mind,

A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined,

Declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he writ,

Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.

He only like himself, was second unto none, Where death-though life-we rue, and wrong, and all in vain do moan,

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16

Their loss, not him wail they, that fill the world with cries,

Death slew not him, but he made death his

ladder to the skies.

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Now sink of sorrow I, who live, the more the

wrong,

Who wishing Death, whom death denies, whose

thread is all too long,

Who tied to wretched life, who look for no relief, Must spend my ever-dying days in never-ending grief.

Heart's ease and only I, like parallels run on,
Whose equal length, keep equal breadth, and

never meet in one,

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