They loved the holy body still too much,
And would regain some virtue from a touch.'
'Weep forth your tears, then; pour out all your tide;
All waters are pernicious since King died.'
The writers must all have sat at the feet and learned of John Donne, whose coldly ingenious conceits had for some time been passing for poetry.
Milton might well lament, in the person of his bereaved shepherd, the sad decline of poetry, since the Elizabethan days.
'Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,