Thus, like religious pilgrims, who design A short salute to their beloved shrine, 40 Most sad and humble votaries we come, To offer up our sighs upon thy tomb, And wet thy marble with our dropping eyes, Which, till the spring which feeds their current dries, Resolve each falling night and rising day, This mournful homage at thy grave to pay.
[_An Elegy._] The subject of this was Anne Percy, daughter of the Northumberland whose personal umbrage or lukewarm loyalty so grievously affected the Royal cause, and the wife of that Philip Lord Stanhope who afterwards, and after her death, seems to have flirted with Lady Elizabeth Howard before she married Dryden.]
[Line: 28 early] Lady Stanhope was not twenty-one when she died, and had been married little more than two years.]
Poems not included in the Edition of 1657 but added in reissue of 1664
[Countess of Leinster: died June 15, 1657.]
Should we our sorrows in this method range, Oft as misfortune doth their subjects change, And to the sev'ral losses which befall, Pay diff'rent rites at ev'ry funeral; Like narrow springs, drain'd by dispersed streams, We must want tears to wail such various themes, And prove defective in Death's mournful laws, Not having words proportion'd to each cause.
In your dear loss, my much afflicted sense Discerns this truth by sad experience, 10 Who never look'd my Verses should survive, As wet records, That you are not alive; And less desir'd to make that promise due, Which pass'd from me in jest, when urg'd by you.
How close and slily doth our frailty work! How undiscover'd in the body lurk! That those who this day did salute you well, Before the next were frighted by your knell. O wherefore since we must in order rise, Should we not fall in equal obsequies? 20 But bear th' assaults of an uneven fate, Like fevers which their hour anticipate; Had this rule constant been, my long wish'd end Might render you a mourner for your Friend: As he for you, whose most deplor'd surprise Imprints your death on all my faculties; That hardly my dark phant'sy or discourse This final duty from the pen enforce.
Such influence hath your eclipsed light, It doth my reason, like myself, benight. 30
Let me, with luckless gamesters, then think best (After I have set up and lost my rest), Grown desp'rate through mischance, to venture last My whole remaining stock upon a cast, And flinging from me my now loathed pen, Resolve for your sake ne'er to write again: For whilst successive days their light renew, I must no subject hope to equal you, In whose heroic breast, as in their Sphere, All graces of your sex concentred were. 40