A kind alone?) whatever order grow
Greater by him in heaven, we do not so;
One of your orders grows by his access;
But by his loss grow all our orders less;
The name of father, master, friend, the name
Of subject and of prince, in one are lame;
Fair mirth is damped, and conversation black,
The household widowed, and the garter slack;
The chapel wants an ear, council a tongue;
Story, a theme; and music lacks a song;
Blest order that hath him, the loss of him.
Gangred all orders here; all lost a limb.
Never made body such haste to confess
What a soul was; all former comeliness
Fled, in a minute, when the soul was gone,
And, having lost that beauty, would have none,
So fell our monasteries, in one instant grown
Not to less houses, but, to heaps of stone;
So sent this body that fair form it wore,
Unto the sphere of forms, and doth (before
His soul shall fill up his sepulchral stone,)
Anticipate a resurrection;

For, as in his fame, now, his soul is here,
So, in the form thereof his body's there;
And if, fair soul, not with first innocents
Thy station be, but with the penitents,
(And who shall dare to ask, then, when I am
Dyed scarlet in the blood of that pure Lamb,
Whether that colour, which is scarlet then,
Were black or white before in eyes of men?)
When thou rememb'rest what sins thou didst find
Amongst those many friends now left behind,
And seest such sinners as they are, with thee

Got thither by repentance, let it be

Thy wish to wish all there, to wish them clean;
Wish him a David, her a Magdalen.

* Thus in the edition of 1633. Anderson has "gangrened." Johnson does not notice this form.-ED.

X.

AN EPITAPH ON SHAKSPEAare.

RENOWNED Chaucer, lie a thought more nigh
To rare Beaumond; and learned Beaumond lie
A little nearer Spencer, to make room
For Shakspeare in your threefold fourfold tomb.
To lie all four in one bed make a shift,
For until doomsday hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that be slain,

For whom your curtains need be drawn again;
But, if precedency of death doth bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this curled marble of thine own

Sleep rare tragedian Shakspeare, sleep alone,
That unto us and others it may be

Honour, hereafter to be laid by thee.

534

SACRED PIECES.

I.

THE LITANY.

1. THE FAther.

FATHER of heaven, and him, by whom
It, and us for it, and all else, for us
Thou madest, and governest ever, come
And recreate me, now grown ruinous
My heart is by dejection, clay,
And by self-murder, red.

From this red earth, O Father purge away
All vicious tinctures, that new fashioned
I may rise up from death, before l'am dead.

2. THE SON.

O Son of God, who seeing two things,

Sin, and death crept in, which were never made, By bearing one, try'dst with what stings

The other could thine heritage invade;

O be thou nailed unto my heart,

And crucified again,

Part not from it, though it from thee would part,
But let it be, by applying so thy pain,
Drowned in thy blood, and in thy passion slain.

3. THE HOLY GHOST.

O Holy Ghost, whose temple I

Am, but of mud walls, and condensed dust,

And being sacrilegiously

Half-wasted with youth's fires, of pride and lust,

Must with new storms be weatherbeat;

Double in my heart thy flame,

Which let devout sad tears intend; and let

(Though this glass lanthorn, flesh, do suffer maim) Fire sacrifice, priest, altar be the same.

4. THE TRINITY.

O Blessed glorious Trinity,

Bones to philosophy, but milk to faith,
Which, as wise serpents, diversely

Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath,
As you distinguished undistinct

By power, love, knowledge be,

Give me a such self-different instinct,
Of these let all me elemented be,

Of power, to love, to know, you unnumb'red Three.

5. THE VIRGIN MARY.

For that fair blessed mother-maid,

Whose flesh redeemed us; that she-cherubin,

Which unlocked paradise, and made

One claim for innocence, and disseised sin,

Whose womb was a strange heaven, for there
God clothed himself, and grew,

Our zealous thanks we pour.

As her deeds were

Our helps, so are her prayers; nor can she sue

In vain, who hath such titles unto you.

6. THE ANGELS.

And since this life our nonage is,

And we in wardship to thine angels be,

Native in heaven's fair palaces

Where we shall be but denizened by thee,
As the earth conceiving by the sun,

Yields fair diversity,

Yet never knows which course that light doth run, So let me study, that mine actions be

Worthy their sight, though blind in how they see:

7. THE PATRIARCHS.

And let thy patriarchs' desire

(Those great-grandfathers of thy church, which saw More in the cloud, than we in fire,

Whom nature cleared more, than us grace and law, And now in heaven still pray, that we

May use our new helps right,)

Be sanctified, and fructify in me;

Let not my mind be blinder by more light,
Nor faith, by reason added, lose her sight,

8. THE PROPHETS.

Thy eagle-sighted prophets too,

Which were thy church's organs, and did sound

That harmony, which made of two.

One law, and did unite, but not confound;
Those heavenly poets which did see
Thy will, and it express

In rhythmic feet, in common pray for me,
That I by them excuse not my excess
In seeking secrets, or poeticness.

9. THE APOSTLES.

And thy illustrious zodiak

Of twelve apostles, which ingirt this all,

From whom whoso ever do not take

Their light, to dark deep pits throw down, and fall*,
As through their prayers, thou hast let me know
That their books are divine;

May they pray still, and be heard, that I go
The old broad way in applying; O decline

Me, when my comment would make thy word mine.

10. THE MARTYRS.

And since thou so desirously

Did'st long to die, that long before thou could'st,
And long since thou no more couldest die,

Thou in thy scattered mystic body would'st
In Abel die, and ever since

In thine, let their blood come

To beg for us, a discreet patience

Of death, or of worse life: for O! to some
Not to be martyrs, is a martyrdom.

11. THE CONFESSORS.

Therefore with thee triumpheth there

A virgin squadron of white confessors,
Whose bloods betrothed, not married were;

Tendered, not taken by those ravishers:

• "Thrown down do fall;"-Anderson's Poets; but the word throw is here used in a neuter sense.-ED.