Elegy on the Death of Henry Lord Hastings, 1650

Reader, preserve thy peace: those busy eyesWill weep at their own sad discoveries,When every line they add improves thy loss,Till, having view'd the whole, they seem a cross,Such as derides thy passions' best relief,And scorns the succours of thy easy grief;Yet lest thy ignorance betray thy nameOf man and pious, read and mourn; the shameOf an exemption from just sense doth showIrrational, beyond excess of woe.Since reason, then, can privilege a tear,Manhood, uncensured, pay that tribute hereUpon this noble urn. Here, here remainsDust far more precious than in India's veins;Within those cold embraces, ravish'd, liesThat which completes the age's tyrannies;Who weak to such another ill appear,For what destroys our hope secures our fear.What sin, unexpiated in this landOf groans, hath guided so severe a hand?The late great victim that your altars knew,Ye angry gods! might have excused this newOblation, and have spared one lofty lightOf virtue, to inform our steps aright;By whose example good, condemnèd, weMight have run on to kinder destiny.But as the leader of the herd fell firstA sacrifice, to quench the raging thirstOf inflamed vengeance for past crimes, so noneBut this white, fatted youngling could atone,By his untimely fate, that impious smoke,That sullied earth, and did Heaven's pity choke.Let it suffice for us that we have lostIn him more than the widow'd world can boastIn any lump of her remaining clay.Fair as the gray-eyed morn he was; the day,Youthful, and climbing upwards still, impartsNo haste like that of his increasing parts.Like the meridian beam, his virtue's lightWas seen as full of comfort, and as bright.Had his noon been as fixed, as clear--but he,That only wanted immortalityTo make him perfect, now submits to night,In the black bosom of whose sable spiteHe leaves a cloud of flesh behind, and flies,Refined, all ray and glory, to the skies.Great saint! shine there in an eternal sphere,And tell those powers to whom thou now draw'st near,That by our trembling sense, in Hastings dead,Their anger and our ugly faults are read,The short lines of whose life did to our eyesTheir love and majesty epitomise;Tell them, whose stern decrees impose our laws;The feasted grave may close her hollow jaws.Though Sin search Nature, to provide her hereA second entertainment half so dear,She'll never meet a plenty like this hearse,Till Time present her with the universe!