Classic Poem

Me thinks, when kings, prophets, and poets dye,
We should not bid men weep, nor ask them why,
But the great loss should by instinct impair
The nations, like a pestilential ayr,
And in a moment men should feel the cramp
Of grief, like persons poyson'd with a damp.
All things in nature should their death deplore,
And the sun look less lovely than before;
The fixed stars should change their constant spaces,
And comets cast abroad their flagrant faces.
Yet still we see princes and poets fall
Without their proper pomp of funerall;
Men look about, as if they nere had known
The poets lawrell or the princes crown;
Lovelace hath long been dead, and he can be
Oblig'd to no man for an elegie.
Are you all turn'd to silence, or did he
Retain the only sap of poesie,
That kept all branches living? must his fall
Set an eternal period upon all?
So when a spring-tide doth begin to fly
From the green shoar, each neighbouring creek grows dry.
But why do I so pettishly detract
An age that is so perfect, so exact?
In all things excellent, it is a fame
Or glory to deceased Lovelace name:
For he is weak in wit, who doth deprave
Anothers worth to make his own seem brave;
And this was not his aim: nor is it mine.
I now conceive the scope of their designe,
Which is with one consent to bring and burn
Contributary incence on his urn,
Where each mans love and fancy shall be try'd,
As when great Johnson or brave Shakespear dyed.
Wits must unite: for ignorance, we see,
Hath got a great train of artillerie:
Yet neither shall nor can it blast the fame
And honour of deceased Lovelace name,
Whose own LUCASTA can support his credit
Amongst all such who knowingly have read it;
But who that praise can by desert discusse
Due to those poems that are posthumous?
And if the last conceptions are the best,
Those by degrees do much transcend the rest;
So full, so fluent, that they richly sute
With Orpheus lire, or with Anacreons lute,
And he shall melt his wing, that shall aspire
To reach a fancy or one accent higher.
Holland and France have known his nobler parts,
And found him excellent in arms and arts.
To sum up all, few men of fame but know,
He was TAM MARTI, QUAM MERCURIO.