To the Memory of My Worthy Friend Coll. Richard Lovelace

To pay my love to thee, and pay it so,As honest men should what they justly owe,Were to write better of thy life, then canThe assured'st pen of the most worthy man.Such was thy composition, such thy mind,Improv'd from vertue, and from vice refin'd;Thy youth an abstract of the world's best parts,Invr'd to arms and exercis'd to arts,Which, with the vigour of a man, becameThine and thy countries piramids of fame.Two glorious lights to guide our hopeful youthInto the paths of honour and of truth.These parts (so rarely met) made up in thee,What man should in his full perfection be:So sweet a temper into every senceAnd each affection breath'd an influence,As smooth'd them to a calme, which still withstoodThe ruffling passions of untamed blood,Without a wrinckle in thy face, to showThy stable breast could a disturbance know.In fortune humble, constant in mischance;Expert in both, and both serv'd to advanceThy name by various trialls of thy spirit,And give the testimony of thy merit.Valiant to envy of the bravest men,And learned to an undisputed pen;Good as the best in both and great, but yetNo dangerous courage nor offensive wit.These ever serv'd the one for to defend,The other, nobly to advance thy friend,Under which title I have found my nameFix'd in the living chronicle of fameTo times succeeding: yet I hence must go,Displeas'd I cannot celebrate thee so.But what respect, acknowledgement and love,What these together, when improv'd, improve:Call it by any name (so it expressOught like a tribute to thy worthyness,And may my bounden gratitude become)LOVELACE, I offer at thy honour'd tomb.And though thy vertues many friends have bredTo love thee liveing, and lament thee dead,In characters far better couch'd then these,Mine will not blott thy fame, nor theirs encrease.'Twas by thine own great merits rais'd so high,That, maugre time and fate, it shall not dye.Sic flevit.Charles Cotton.

The rose and other fragrant flowers smell best,When they are pluck'd and worn in hand or brest,So this fair flow'r of vertue, this rare budOf wit, smells now as fresh as when he stood;And in these Posthume-Poems lets us know,He on the banks of Helicon did grow.The beauty of his soul did correspondWith his sweet out-side: nay, it went beyond.Lovelace, the minion of the Thespian dames,Apollo's darling, born with Enthean flames,Which in his numbers wave and shine so clear,As sparks refracted from rich gemmes appear;Such flames that may inspire, and atoms cast,To make new poets not like him in hast.Jam. Howell.

Pardon (blest shade), that I thus crowd to be'Mong those that sin unto thy memory,And that I think unvalu'd reliques spread,And am the first that pillages the dead;Since who would be thy mourner as befits,But an officious sacriledge commits.How my tears strive to do thee fairer right,And from the characters divide my sight.Untill it (dimmer) a new torrent swells,And what obscur'd it, falls my spectaclesLet the luxurious floods impulsive rise,As they would not be wept, but weep the eyes,The while earth melts, and we above it lyeBut the weak bubbles of mortalitie;Until our griefs are drawn up by the Sun,And that (too) drop the exhalation.How in thy dust we humble now our pride,And bring thee a whole people mortifi'd!For who expects not death, now thou art gone,Shows his low folly, not religion.Can the poetick heaven still hold onThe golden dance, when the first mover's gon?And the snatch'd fires (which circularly hurl'd)In their strong rapture glimmer to the world,And not stupendiously rather riseThe tapers unto these solemnities?Can the chords move in tune, when thou dost dye,At once their universal harmony?But where Apollo's harp (with murmur) laid,Had to the stones a melody convey'd,They by some pebble summon'd would replyIn loud results to every battery;Thus do we come unto thy marble room,To eccho from the musick of thy tombe.May we dare speak thee dead, that wouldest beIn thy remove only not such as we?No wonder, the advance is from us hid;Earth could not lift thee higher then it did!And thou, that didst grow up so ever nigh,Art but now gone to immortality!So near to where thou art, thou here didst dwell,The change to thee is less perceptible.Thy but unably-comprehending clay,To what could not be circumscrib'd, gave way,And the more spacious tennant to return,Crack'd (in the two restrain'd estate) its urn.That is but left to a successive trust;The soul's first buried in his bodies dust.Thou more thy self, now thou art less confin'd,Art not concern'd in what is left behind;While we sustain the losse that thou art gone,Un-essenc'd in the separation;And he that weeps thy funerall, in oneIs pious to the widdow'd nation.And under what (now) covert must I sing,Secure as if beneath a cherub's wing;When thou hast tane thy flight hence, and art nighIn place to some related hierarchie,Where a bright wreath of glories doth but setUpon thy head an equal coronet;And thou, above our humble converse gon,Canst but be reach'd by contemplation.Our lutes (as thine was touch'd) were vocall by,And thence receiv'd the soul by sympathy,That did above the threds inspiring creep,And with soft whispers broke the am'rous sleep;Which now no more (mov'd with the sweet surprise)Awake into delicious rapsodies;But with their silent mistress do comply,And fast in undisturbed slumbers lye.How from thy first ascent thou didst disperseA blushing warmth throughout the universe,While near the morns Lucasta's fires did glow,And to the earth a purer dawn did throw.We ever saw thee in the roll of fameAdvancing thy already deathless name;And though it could but be above its fate,Thou would'st, however, super-errogate.Now as in Venice, when the wanton StateBefore a Spaniard spread their crowded plate,He made it the sage business of his eyeTo find the root of the wild treasury;So learn't from that exchequer but the moreTo rate his masters vegetable ore.Thus when the Greek and Latin muse we read,As but the cold inscriptions of the dead,We to advantage then admired thee,Who did'st live on still with thy poesie;And in our proud enjoyments never knewThe end of the unruly wealth that grew.But now we have the last dear ingots gain'd,And the free vein (however rich) is drein'd;Though what thou hast bequeathed us, no spaceOf this worlds span of time shall ere embrace.But as who sometimes knew not to concludeUpon the waters strange vicissitude,Did to the ocean himself commit,That it might comprehend what could not it,So we in our endeavours must out-doneBe swallowed up within thy Helicon.Thou, who art layd up in thy precious cave,And from the hollow spaces of thy grave,We still may mourn in tune, but must aloneHereafter hope to quaver out a grone;No more the chirping sonnets with shrill notesMust henceforth volley from our treble throtes;But each sad accent must be humour'd wellTo the deep solemn organ of thy cell.Why should some rude hand carve thy sacred stone,And there incise a cheap inscription?When we can shed the tribute of our tearsSo long, till the relenting marble wears;Which shall such order in their cadence keep,That they a native epitaph shall weep;Untill each letter spelt distinctly lyes,Cut by the mystick droppings of our eyes.El. Revett.