An Elegy Upon The Death Of Dr Donne, Dean Of Paul's

Can we not force from widow'd poetry,

    Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy

    To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust,

    Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust,

    Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower

    Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour,

    Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay

    Upon thy ashes, on the funeral day?

    Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense

  Through all our language, both the words and sense?

  '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

  As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright,

  Committed holy rapes upon our will,

  Did through the eye the melting heart distil,

  And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach

  As sense might judge what fancy could not reach)

  Must be desir'd forever. So the fire

  That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire,

  Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath,

  Glow'd here a while, lies quench'd now in thy death.

  The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds

  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

  A mimic fury, when our souls must be

  Possess'd, 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

  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

  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 dust had rak'd for ore.

  Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time,

  And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime

  More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim

  From so great disadvantage greater fame,

  Since to the awe of thy imperious wit

  Our stubborn language bends, made only fit

  With her tough thick-ribb'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,

  And left the rifled fields, besides the fear

  To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands

  Of what is purely thine, thy only hands,

  (And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more

    Than all those times and tongues could reap before.

      But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be

  Too hard for libertines in poetry;

  They will repeal the goodly exil'd train

  Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign

  Were banish'd nobler poems; now with these,

  The silenc'd tales o' th' Metamorphoses

  Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page,

  Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age

  Turn ballad rhyme, or those old idols be

  Ador'd again, with new apostasy.

      Oh, pardon me, that break with untun'd verse

  The reverend silence that attends thy hearse,

  Whose awful solemn murmurs were to thee,

  More than these faint lines, a loud elegy,

  That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence

  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

  In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand,

  But some small time maintain 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 awhile,

  And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes

  Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes.

      I will not draw the envy to engross

  All thy perfections, or weep all our loss;

  Those are too numerous for an elegy,

  And this too great to be express'd by me.

  Though every pen should share a distinct part,

  Yet art thou theme enough to tire all art;

  Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice

  I on thy tomb this epitaph incise:

      Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit

      The universal monarchy of wit;

      Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best,

      Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.