201            The Noble Balm

       HIGH-SPIRITED friend,
I send nor balms nor cor’sives to your wound:
       Your fate hath found
A gentler and more agile hand to tend
The cure of that which is but corporal;
And doubtful days, which were named critical,
       Have made their fairest flight
       And now are out of sight.
Yet doth some wholesome physic for the mind
       Wrapp’d in this paper lie,
Which in the taking if you misapply,
       You are unkind.

       Your covetous hand,
Happy in that fair honour it hath gain’d,
       Must now be rein’d.
True valour doth her own renown command
In one full action; nor have you now more
To do, than be a husband of that store.
       Think but how dear you bought
       This fame which you have caught:
Such thoughts will make you more in love with truth.
       ’Tis wisdom, and that high,
For men to use their fortune reverently,
       Even in youth.

Epitaphs

202   (i)      On Elizabeth L. H.

WOULDST thou hear what Man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much Beauty as could die:
Which in life did harbour give
To more Virtue than doth live.
If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth,
The other, let it sleep with death:
Fitter, where it died, to tell
Than that it lived at all. Farewell.

203   (ii)      On Salathiel Pavy

A child of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel

WEEP with me, all you that read
    This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed
    Death’s self is sorry.
’Twas a child that so did thrive
    In grace and feature,
As Heaven and Nature seem’d to strive
    Which own’d the creature.
Years he number’d scarce thirteen
    When Fates turn’d cruel,
Yet three fill’d zodiacs had he been
    The Stage’s jewel;
And did act (what now we moan)
    Old men so duly,
As sooth the Parcae thought him one,
    He play’d so truly.
So, by error, to his fate
    They all consented;
But, viewing him since, alas, too late!
    They have repented;
And have sought, to give new birth,
    In baths to steep him;
But, being so much too good for earth,
    Heaven vows to keep him.

204   A Part of an Ode

To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that noble pair,
Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison

     IT is not growing like a tree
     In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
            A lily of a day
            Is fairer far in May,
     Although it fall and die that night;
     It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.

     Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,
     And let thy looks with gladness shine:
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,
And think—nay, know—thy Morison’s not dead.
            He leap’d the present age,
            Possest with holy rage
     To see that bright eternal Day
     Of which we Priests and Poets say
Such truths as we expect for happy men;
And there he lives with memory—and Ben

Jonson: who sung this of him, ere he went
                  Himself to rest,
Or tast a part of that full joy he meant
   To have exprest

   In this bright Asterism,
   Where it were friendship’s schism—
Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry—
            To separate these twy
            Lights, the Dioscuri,
And keep the one half from his Harry.
But fate doth so alternate the design,
Whilst that in Heav’n, this light on earth must shine

     And shine as you exalted are!
     Two names of friendship, but one star:
Of hearts the union: and those not by chance
Made, or indenture, or leased out to advance
            The profits for a time.
            No pleasures