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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=391870" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An Elegy on the Death of the Virtuous Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I may forget to drink, to eat, to sleep,<br>Remembering thee: but when I do, to weep<br>In well-weighed lines, that men shall at thy hearse<br>Envy the sorrow which brought forth my verse;<br>May my dull understanding have the might<br>Only to know her last was yesternight!<br>Rutland, the fair, is dead! and if to hear<br>The name of Sidney will more force a tear,<br>'Tis she that is so dead! and yet there be<br>Some more alive profess not poetry;<br>The statesmen and the lawyers of our time<br>Have business still, yet do it not in rhyme.<br>Can she be dead, and can there be of those<br>That are so dull to say their prayers in prose?<br>It is three days since she did feel Death's hand;<br>And yet this isle not feel the poet's land?<br>Hath this no new ones made? and are the old<br>At such a needful time as this grown cold?<br>They all say they would fain; but yet they plead<br>They cannot write, because their muse is dead.<br>Hear me then speak, which will take no excuse;<br>Sorrow can make a verse without a muse.<br>Why didst thou die so soon? O, pardon me,<br>I know it was the longest life to thee,<br>That e'er with modesty was called a span,<br>Since the Almighty left to strive with man;<br>Mankind is sent to sorrow; and thou hast<br>More of the business which thou cam'st for past,<br>Than all those aged women, which, yet quick,<br>Have quite outlived their own arithmetic.<br>As soon as thou couldst apprehend a grief,<br>There were enough to meet thee; and the chief<br>Blessing of women, marriage, was to thee<br>Nought but a sacrament of misery;<br>For whom thou hadst, if we may trust to fame,<br>Could nothing change about thee but thy name:<br>A name which who (that were again to do't)<br>Would change without a thousand joys to boot?<br>In all things else thou rather led'st a life<br>Like a betrothed virgin than a wife.<br>But yet I would have called thy fortune kind,<br>If it had only tried the settled mind<br>With present crosses: not the loathed thought<br>Of worse to come, or past, then might have wrough<br>Thy best remembrance to have cast an eye<br>Back with delight upon thine infancy.<br>But thou hadst, ere thou knew'st the use of tears,<br>Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years;<br>Ere thou wert able who thou wert to tell,<br>By a sad war thy noble father fell,<br>In a dull clime, which did not understand<br>What 'twas to venture him to save a land.<br>He left two children, who for virtue, wit,<br>Beauty, were loved of all; thee and his wit:<br>Two was too few; yet death hath from us took<br>Thee, a more faultless issue than his book,<br>Which now the only living thing we have<br>From him, we'll see, shall never find a grave<br>As thou hast done. Alas! 'would it might be<br>That books their sexes had, as well as we,<br>That we might see this married to the worth,<br>And many poems like itself bring forth!<br>But this vain wish divinity controuls;<br>For neither to the angels, nor to souls,<br>Nor anything he meant should ever live,<br>Did the wise God of nature sexes give.<br> Then with his everlasting work alone<br>We must content ourselves, since she is gone;<br>Gone, like the day thou diedst upon; and we<br>May call that back again as soon as thee.<br>Who should have looked to this? Where were you all,<br>That do yourselves the help of nature call,<br>Physicians? I acknowledce you were there<br>To sell such words as one in health would hear:<br>So died she. Curst be he who shall defend<br>Your art of hastening nature to its end!<br>In this you shewed that physic can but be<br>At best an art to cure your poverty.<br>Ye're many of you impostors, and do give<br>To sick men potions that yourselves may live.<br>He that hath surfeited, and cannot eat,<br>Must have a medicine to procure you meat;<br>And that's the deepest ground of all your skill,<br>Unless it be some knowledge how to kill.<br>Sorrow and madness make my verses flow<br>Cross to my understanding; for I know<br>You can do wonders: Every day I meet<br>The looser sort of people in the street<br>From desperate diseases freed; and why<br>Restore you them, and suffer her to die?<br>Why should the state allow you colleges,<br>Pensions for lectures, and anatomies,<br>If all your potions, vomits, letting blood,<br>Can only cure the bad, and not the good,<br>Which only they can do? and I will show<br>The hidden reason, why you did not know<br>The way to cure her: You believed her blood<br>Ran on such courses as you understood;<br>By lectures you believed her arteries<br>Grew as they do in your anatomies:<br>Forgetting that the state allows you none<br>But only whores and thieves to practise on<br>And every passage 'bout them I am sure<br>You understood, and only them can cure;<br>Which is the cause that both —<br>Are noted for enjoying so long lives.<br>But noble blood treads in too strange a path<br>For your ill-got experience, and hath<br>Another way of cure. If you had seen<br>Penelope dissected, or the Queen<br>Of Sheba; then you might have found a way<br>To have preserved her from that fatal day.<br>As 'tis, you have but made her sooner blest,<br>By sending her to Heaven, where let her rest.<br>I will not hurt the peace which she would have,<br>By longer looking in her quiet grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Francis+Beaumont">Francis Beaumont</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=391870" data-title="An Elegy on the Death of the Virtuous Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland de Francis Beaumont" data-description="I may forget to drink, to eat, to sleep,
Remembering thee: but when I do, to weep
In well-weighed lines, that men shall at thy hearse
Envy the sorrow which brought forth my verse;
May my dull understanding have the might
Only to know her last was ..."></div>
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