OBSEQUIES OF THE LORD HARRINGTON, BROTHER TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.1
FAIR Soul, which wast, not only as all souls be,
Then when thou wast infusèd, harmony,
But didst continue so; and now dost bear
A part in God's great organ, this whole sphere;
If looking up to God, or down to us,
Thou find that any way is pervious
'Twixt heaven and earth, and that men's actions do Come to your knowledge, and affections too,
See, and with joy, me to that good degree
Of goodness grown, that I can study thee,
And by these meditations refined,
Can unapparel and enlarge my mind,
And so can make, by this soft ecstasy,
This place a map of heaven, myself of thee.
Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest;
Times dead-low water, when all minds divest
To-morrow's business; when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last churchyard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now, when the client, whose last hearing is
1 So the Haslewood-Kingsborough MS.
1633. Obsequies to the Lord Harrington's brother. To the Countess of Bedford.
1669. Obsequies on the Lord Harrington, &c. Το the Countess of Bedford.
1. 7. So 1635; 1633, man's
To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then
Again by death, although sad watch he keep,
Doth practice dying by a little sleep;
Thou at this midnight seest me, and as soon
As that sun rises to me, midnight's noon,
All the world grows transparent, and I see
Through all, both church and state, in seeing thee
And I discern by favour of this light,
Myself, the hardest object of the sight.
God is the glass; as thou, when thou dost see
Him Who sees all, seest all concerning thee;
So, yet unglorified, I comprehend
All, in these mirrors of thy ways and end.
Though God be our true glass, through which we
All, since the being of all things is He,
Yet are the trunks which do to us derive
Things, in proportion, fit by perspective,
Deeds of good men; for by their being here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
But where can I affirm, or where arrest
My thoughts on his deeds? which shall I call best? For fluid virtue cannot be looked on,
Nor can endure a contemplation.
As bodies change, and as I do not wear
Those spirits, humours, blood I did last year,
And, as if on a stream I fix mine eye,
That drop, which I looked on, is presently
Push'd with more waters from my sight, and gone ; So in this sea of virtues, can no one
Be insisted on; virtues as rivers pass,
Yet still remains that virtuous man there was.
And as if man feed on man's flesh, and so
Part of his body to another owe,
Yet at the last two perfect bodies rise,
Because God knows where every atom lies;
So, if one knowledge were made of all those,
Who knew his minutes well, he might dispose
His virtues into names and ranks; but I
Should injure nature, virtue, and destiny,
Should I divide and discontinue so
Virtue, which did in one entireness grow.
For as he that should say spirits are framed
Of all the purest parts that can be named,
Honours not spirits half so much as he
Which says they have no parts, but simple be;
So is 't of virtue, for a point and one
Are much entirer than a million.
And had fate meant to have had his virtues told,
It would have let him live to have been old;
So then that virtue in season, and then this,
We might have seen, and said, that now he is
Witty, now wise, now temperate, now just.
In good short lives, virtues are fain to thrust,
And to be sure betimes to get a place,
When they would exercise, lack time and space.
So was it in this person, forced to be,
For lack of time, his own epitome;
1. 76. 1669, last time and space
So to exhibit in few years as much
As all the long-breathed chronicles can touch.
As when an angel down from heaven doth fly,
Our quick thought cannot keep him company;
We cannot think, 'Now he is at the sun,
Now through the moon, now he through th' air doth run';
Yet when he's come, we know he did repair
To all 'twixt heaven and earth, sun, moon, and air.
And as this angel in an instant knows,
And yet we know, this sudden knowledge grows
By quick amassing several forms of things,
Which he successively to order brings,
When they, whose slow-paced lame thoughts cannot go
Só fast as he, think that he doth not so.
Just as a perfect reader doth not dwell
On every syllable, nor stay to spell,
Yet without doubt he doth distinctly see,
And lay together every A and B ;
So, in short-lived good men, is not understood
Each several virtue, but the compound good;
For they all virtue's paths in that pace tread,
As angels go, and know, and as men read.
O, why should then these men, these lumps of balm,
Sent hither the world's tempest to becalm,
Before by deeds they are diffused and spread,
And so make us alive, themselves be dead?
O soul, O circle, why so quickly be
Thy ends, thy birth and death closed up in thee?
Since one foot of thy compass still was placed
In heaven, the other might securely have paced,
In the most large extent, through every path
Which the whole world or man th' abridgment
Thou know'st that though the tropic circles have
-Yea, and those small ones which the Poles engrave-
All the same roundness, evenness, and all
The endlessness of th' equinoctial;
Yet, when we come to measure distances,
How here, how there, the sun affected is,
When he doth faintly work, and when prevail,
Only great circles, then, can be our scale.
So though thy circle to thyself express
All, tending to thy endless happiness,
And we by our good use of it may try,
Both how to live well, young, and how to die;
Yet since we must be old, and age endures
His torrid zone at court, and calentures
Of hot ambitions, irreligion's ice,
Zeal's agues, and hydroptic avarice
-Infirmities, which need the scale of truth,
As well as lust and ignorance of youth-
Why didst thou not for these give medicines too,
And by thy doing set us what to do?
Though as small pocket-clocks, whose every wheel
Doth each mismotion and distemper feel,
Whose hands get shaking palsies, and whose string
(His sinews) slackens, and whose soul, the spring,
Expires, or languishes; whose pulse, the fly,
Either beats not, or beats unevenly;
1. 130. 1669, tell us VOL. II.
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