Classic Poem

'Tis true that he is dead: but yet to choose,
Methinks thou, Fame, should not have brought the news;
Thou canst discourse at will and speak at large:
But wast not in the fight nor durst thou charge;
While he transported all with valiant rage
His name eternized, but cut short his age;
On the safe battlements of Richmond's bowers
Thou wast espied, and from the gilded towers
Thy silver trumpets sounded a retreat
Far from the dust and battle's sulph'ry heat.
Yet what couldst thou have done? 'Tis always late
To struggle with inevitable fate.
Much rather thou, I know, expect'st to tell
How heavy Cromwell gnashed the earth and fell.
Or how slow death far from the sight of day
The long-deceived Fairfax bore away.
But until then, let us young Francis praise:
And plant upon his hearse the bloody bays,
Which we will water with our welling eyes.
Tears spring not still from spungy cowardice.
The purer fountains from the rocks more steep
Distill and stony valour best doth weep.
Besides revenge, if often quenched in tears,
Hardens like steel and daily keener wears.
Great Buckingham, whose death doth freshly strike
Our memories, because to this so like.
Ere that in the eternal court he shone,
And here a favourite, there found a throne,
The fatal night before he hence did bleed,
Left to his princess this immortal seed,
As the wise Chinese in the fertile womb
Of earth doth a more precious clay entomb,
Which dying, by his will he leaves consigned:
Till by mature delay of time refined
The crystal metal fit to be released
Is taken forth to crown each royal feast:
Such was the fate by which this posthume breathed,
Who scarcely seems begotten but bequeathed.
Never was any human plant that grew
More fair than this and acceptably new.
'Tis truth that beauty doth most men dispraise:
Prudence and valour their esteem do raise.
But he that hath already these in store,
Can not be poorer sure for having more.
And his unimitable handsomeness
Made him indeed be more than man, not less.
We do but faintly God's resemblance bear
And like rough coins of careless mints appear:
But he of purpose made, did represent
In a rich medal every lineament.
Lovely and admirable as he was,
Yet was his sword or armour all his glass.
Nor in his mistress' eyes that joy he took,
As in an enemy's himself to look.
I know how well he did, with what delight
Those serious imitations of fight.
Still in the trials of strong exercise
His was the first, and his the second prize.
Bright Lady, thou that rulest from above
The last and greatest monarchy of love:
Fair Richmond, hold thy brother or he goes.
Try if the jasmine of thy hand or rose
Of thy red lip can keep him always here.
For he loves danger and doth never fear.
Or may thy tears prevail with him to stay?
But he, resolved, breaks carelessly away.
Only one argument could now prolong
His stay and that most fair and so most strong:
The matchless Clora whose pure fires did warm
His soul and only could his passions charm.
You might with much more reason go reprove
The amorous magnet which the North doth love.
Or preach divorce, and say it is amiss
That with tall elms the twining vines should kiss,
Than chide two such so fit, so equal fair
That in the world they have no other pair,
Whom it might seem that heaven did create
To restore man unto his first estate.
Yet she for honour's tyrannous respect
Her own desires did, and his neglect.
And like the modest plant at every touch
Shrunk in her leaves and feared it was too much.
But who can paint the torments and that pain
Which he professed and now she could not feign?
He like the sun but overcast and pale:
She like a rainbow, that ere long must fail,
Whose roseal cheek where heaven itself did view
Begins to separate and dissolve to dew.
At last he leave obtains though sad and slow,
First of her and then of himself to go.
How comely and how terrible he sits
At once, and war as well as love befits!
Ride where thou wilt and bold adventures find:
But all the ladies are got up behind.
Guard them, though not thyself: for in thy death
Th' eleven thousand virgins lose their breath.
So Hector issuing from the Trojan wall
The sad Iliads to the gods did call,
With hands displayed and with dishevelled hair,
That they the empire in his life would spare,
While he secure through all the field doth spy
Achilles, for Achilles only cry.
Ah, ignorant that yet ere night he must
Be drawn by him inglorious through the dust.
Such fell young Villiers in the cheerful heat
Of youth: his locks entangled all with sweat
And those eyes which the sentinel did keep
Of love, closed up in an eternal sleep.
While Venus of Adonis thinks no more
Slain by the harsh tusk of the savage boar,
Hither she runs and hath him hurried far
Out of the noise and blood, and killing war:
Where in her gardens of sweet myrtle laid
She kisses him in the immortal shade.
Yet died he not revengeless: much he did
Ere he could suffer. A whole pyramid
Of vulgar bodies he erected high:
Scorning without a sepulchre to die.
And with his steel which did whole troops divide
He cut his epitaph on either side.
Till finding nothing to his courage fit
He rid up last to death and conquered it.
Such are the obsequies to Francis own:
He best the pomp of his own death hath shown.
And we hereafter to his honour will
Not write so many, but so many kill.
Till the whole army by just venegance come
To be at once his trophy and his tomb.