Poems, with a maske by Thomas Carew ... ; the songs were set in musick by Mr. Henry Lawes ...

An Elegie upon the death of Doctor Donne, Deane of Pauls.

CAn we not force from widowed Poetry Now thou art dead (Great Donne) one Elegie, To crown thy Hearse? Why yet did we not trust, Though with unkneaded dow-bak'd prose, thy dust, Such as th'uncizard Lect'rer from the flower Of fading Rhetorique, short liv'd as his houre, Dry as the sand that measures it, might lay Upon the ashes, on the Funerall day? Have we not tune, nor voyce? didst thou dispence 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 wholsome 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 darkeness bright, Committed holy rapes upon the will, Did through the eye the melting hearts distill, And the deep knowledge, of dark truths, so teach, As sense might judge, what fancy could not reach, Must be desir'd for ever. So the fire That fils with spirit and heat the Delphique Quire,

Which kindled first by thy Promethean breath Glow'd here a while, lyes quench'd now in thy death The Muses garden with Pedantique weeds. O'r-spread, was purg'd by thee, the lazie seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention planted; thou did'st pay The debts of our penurious banquerout Age: Licentious thefts, that make poetique rage. A mimique fury, when our soules must be Possest, or with Anacreon's extasie, Or Pindar's, not their own, the subtle cheat Of sly exchanges, and the jugling seat Of two-edg'd swords, or whatsoever wrong By ours was done the Greek or Latine tongue, Thou hast redeem'd, and opened us a Mine Of rich and pregnant fancie, 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 Gold? Thou hadst been their Exchequer, and no more, They each in others dung had search'd for Ore. Thou shalt yeeld no precedence, but of Time, And the blind fate of Langage, 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 troublesome language bends, made only fit With her tough thick-rib'd hoops, to gird about Thy Gyant fancy, which had prov'd to 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 was only thine, thy only hands (And that their smallest work) have gleaned more Than all those times, and Tongues, could reap before But thou art gone, and thy strickt lawes will be Too hard for Libertines in Poetry, They will recall the goodly exil'd train Of gods, and goddesses, which in thy just raign Was banisht nobler Poems; now, with these, The silenc'd tales i'th' Metamorphoses Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page, Till verse refin'd by thee, in this last Age Turn Ballad-rime, or those old Idols be Ador'd again with new Apostasie. Oh! pardon me that break with untun'd Verse The reverend silence, that attends thy Hearse; Whose solemn, awfull Murmurs, were to thee More than these rude lines, a loud Elegie,

That did proclame in a dumbe Eloquence The'death of all the Arts, whose influence Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lyes Gasping short-winded accents, and so dyes. So doth the swiftly-turning wheel, not stand In th'instant we withdraw the moving hand, But some short time retains a faint weak course, By vertue of the first impulsive force; And so, whilst I cast on thy funerall Pile Thy crown of Bayes, oh let it crack a while, And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes Suck all the moysture up, then turn to ashes. I will not draw the envy, to engross All thy perfections, or weep all the loss, Those are too numerous for one Elegie, And 'tis too great to be exprest by me: Let others carve the rest; it shall suffice, I on thy Grave this Epitaph incize. Here lyes a king, that rul'd as he thought fit The Vniversall Monarchy of wit; Here lyes two Flamens, and both those the best, Apollo's first, at last the true God's Priest.