With pearly drops, that all may cleerely see,
Thou wast the jewell of Nobility:
We cannot hope that our distracted cryes
Will please, amongst their well-tun'd harmo∣nies
Our Elegies not weepe, but are to be
Wept at, and want themselves an Elegie.
Yet frowne not on our verse, and teares of jet:
(Ah never any sorrow truer let)
Who can but sluce his heart throughout his eyes,
When Youth, Nobility, Hope, Stafford dyes?
I summe not up thy beauty, comelinesse,
Nor thousand graces, which thy soule did blesse,
For, like to gamesters whom their lucks have crost
We feare to know the utmost we have lost.
Thou didst not by Example, States false glasse
Dresse thy behaviour, and thy life's face:
Nor wast sufficient ground, that thou shouldst do
This vice, because Lord such a one did so:
Thy eyes, when once had but a point let in
Of lust, the other spying the little sinne,
Would send a visive ray, as messenger,
To tell, that if it would not drop a teare,
And quench that sparke, he would not his mate dwell;
Then wept the sinfull eye, and all was well.
Thus each part, just as in Philosophie,
Would Rule, and Maxime to the other be.
O what disease, then shall we wish may meete
With that disease, which took away this sweete?
That envious disease, and which out-vies
Even the Pestilence in cruelties:
For that, mongst hundreds; true, its poyson thril'd
But they were troope, and so ill humour spil'd.