Faithlesse and fond Mortality!
Who will ever credit thee?
Fond, and faithlesse thing! that thus,
In our best hopes beguilest us.
What a reckoning hast thou made,
Of the hopes in him we laid!
For life by volumes lengthened,
A line or two to speake him dead.
For the laurell in his verse,
The sullen cypresse o're his herse crape 10
For soe many hoped yeares
Of fruit, soe many fruitles teares:
For a silver-crowned head
A durty pillow in Death's bed.
For so deare, so deep a trust,
Sad requitall, thus much dust!
Now though the blow that snatch him hence,
Stopt the mouth of Eloquence:
Though shee be dumbe e're since his death,
Not us'd to speake but in his breath;
Leaving his death vngarnished
Therefore, because hee is dead
Yet if at least shee not denyes,
The sad language of our eyes,
Wee are contented: for then this
Language none more fluent is.
Nothing speakes our griefe so well
As to speak nothing. Come then tell
Thy mind in teares who e're thou be,
That ow'st a name to misery.
Eyes are vocall, teares have tongues,
And there be words not made with lungs;
Sententious showres: O let them fall,
Their cadence is rhetoricall.
Here's a theame will drinke th' expence,
Of all thy watry eloquence.
Weepe then! onely be exprest
Thus much, 'he's dead:' and weep the rest.