Classic Poem

Reader, preserve thy peace: those busie eyes
Will weep at their own sad Discoveries;
When every line they adde, improves thy loss,
Till, having view'd the whole, they sum a Cross,
Such as derides thy Passions best relief,
And scorns the succours of thy easie Grief.
Yet lest thy Ignorance betray thy name
Of Man, and Pious; read, and mourn: the shame
Of an exemption from just sense, doth show
Irrational, beyond excessive Wo.
Since Reason then can priviledge a Tear,
Manhood, uncensur'd, pay that Tribute here
Upon this Noble Urn. Here, here remains
Dust far more precious then in India's veins:
Within these cold embraces ravisht lies
That which compleats the Ages Tyrannies;
Who weak to such another Ill appear:
For, what destroys our Hope, secures our Fear.
What Sin unexpiated in this Land
Of Groans, hath guided so severe a hand?
The late Great Victim that your Altars knew,
You angry gods, might have excus'd this new
Oblation; and have spar'd one lofty Light
Of Vertue, to inform our steps aright:
By whose Example good, condemned we
Might have run on to kinder Destiny.
But as the Leader of the Herd fell first,
A Sacrifice to quench the raging thirst
Of inflam'd Vengeance for past Crimes: so none
But this white fatted Youngling could atone,
By his untimely Fate, that impious Smoke
That sullied Earth, and did Heaven's pity choke.
Let it suffice for us, that we have lost,
In Him, more then the widow'd World can boast
In any lump of her remaining Clay.
Fair as the gray ey'd Morn, He was: the Day,
Youthful, and climbing upwards still, imparts
No haste like that of his increasing Parts:
Like the Meridian-beam, his Vertues light
Was seen; as full of comfort, and as bright.
Ah that that Noon had been as fixt as clear! but He,
That onely wanted Immortality
To make him perfect, now submits to night;
In the black bosom of whose sable Spight,
He leaves a cloud of Flesh behinde, and flies,
Refind'd all Ray and Glory, to the Skies.
Great Saint shine there in an eternal Sphere,
And tell those Powers to whom thou now drawst neer,
That, by our trembling Sense, in HASTINGS dead,
Their Anger, and our ugly Faults, are read:
The short lines of whose Life did to our eyes,
Their Love and Majestie epitomize.
Tell them whose stern Decrees impose our Laws,
The feasted Grave may close her hollow Jaws.
Though Sin search Nature, to provide her here
A second Entertainment half so dear;
She'll never meet a Plenty like this Herse,
Till Time present her with the Universe.