No verse, No epicedium bring, 10 Nor peaceful requiem sing, To charm the terrors of my hearse; No profane numbers must flow near The sacred silence that dwells here. Vast griefs are dumb; softly, oh! softly mourn, Lest you disturb the peace attends my urn.
Yet strew Upon my dismal grave Such offerings as you have, Forsaken cypress and sad yew; 20 For kinder flowers can take no birth, Or growth, from such unhappy earth. Weep only o'er my dust, and say, Here lies To Love and Fate an equal sacrifice.
[_The Exequies._] A very good stanza, the rhythm rising and swelling admirably. In the final couplet of the first, _1647_ reads--
do a victim hide, That, paid to Beauty, on Love's altar died. ]
This silkworm, to long sleep retir'd, The early year hath re-inspir'd, Who now to pay to thee prepares The tribute of her pleasing cares; And hastens with industrious toil To make thy ornament, her spoil: See with what pains she spins for thee The thread of her own destiny; Then growing proud in Death, to know That all her curious labours thou 10 Wilt, as in triumph, deign to wear, Retires to her soft sepulchre. Such, dearest, is that hapless state, To which I am design'd by Fate, Who by thee, willingly, o'ercome, Work mine own fetters and my tomb.
[Line: 6 Miss Guiney insists, in the teeth of all texts, upon changing over 'thy' and 'her', saying that 'facts and the context force' the reversal. I am afraid that the genius of seventeenth-century poetry did not care much for facts or context at any time. But here no violence is done to either. Nine men out of ten wishing to say 'to make out of the spoil of herself an ornament for thee' would have probably put it in the same way, especially if they wanted the rhyme 'spoil'.]
[Line: 10 'That _her rich work and_ labours' _1647_.]
As when some brook flies from itself away, The murmuring crystal loosely runs astray; And as about the verdant plain it winds, The meadows with a silver riband binds, Printing a kiss on every flower she meets, Losing herself to fill them with new sweets, To scatter frost upon the lily's head, And scarlet on the gilliflower to spread; So melting sorrow, in the fair disguise Of humid stars, flow'd from bright Cloris' eyes, 10 Which wat'ring every flower her cheek discloses, Melt into jasmines here, there into roses.