Thy pious hand, planting fraternal bayes,
Deserving is of most egregious praise;
Since 'tis the organ doth to us convey
From a descended sun so bright a ray.
Clear spirit! how much we are bound to thee
For this so great a liberalitie,
The truer worth of which by much exceeds
The western wealth, which such contention breeds!
Like the Infusing-God, from the well-head
Of poesie you have besprinkled
Our brows with holy drops, the very last,
Which from your Brother's happy pen were cast:
Yet as the last, the best; such matchlesse skill
From his divine alembick did distill.
Your honour'd Brother in the Elyzian shade
Will joy to know himself a laureat made
By your religious care, and that his urn
Doth him on earth immortal life return.
Your self you have a good physician shown
To his much grieved friends and to your own,
In giving this elixir'd medecine,
For greatest grief a soveraign anodine.
Sir, from your Brother y' have convey'd us bliss;
Now, since your genius so concurs with his,
Let your own quill our next enjoyments frame;
All must be rich, that's grac'd with Lovelace name.
Symon Ognell M.D.<112.1> Coningbrens.
<112.1> This person is not mentioned in Munk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, 1861.
ON THE TRULY HONOURABLE COLL. RICHARD LOVELACE, OCCASIONED BY THE PUBLICATION OF HIS POSTHUME-POEMS.
ELEGIE.
Great son of Mars, and of Minerva too!
With what oblations must we come to woo
Thy sacred soul to look down from above,
And see how much thy memory we love,
Whose happy pen so pleased amorous ears,
And, lifting bright LUCASTA to the sphears,
Her in the star-bespangled orb did set
Above fair Ariadnes coronet,
Leaving a pattern to succeeding wits,
By which to sing forth their Pythonick fits.
Shall we bring tears and sighs? no, no! then we
Should but bemone our selves for loosing thee,
Or else thy happiness seem to deny,
Or to repine at thy felicity.
Then, whilst we chant out thine immortal praise,
Our offerings shall be onely sprigs of bays;
And if our tears will needs their brinks out-fly,
We'l weep them forth into an elegy,
To tell the world, how deep fates wounded wit,
When Atropos the lovely Lovelace hit!
How th' active fire, which cloath'd thy gen'rous mind,
Consum'd the water, and the earth calcin'd
Untill a stronger heat by death was given,
Which sublimated thy poor soul to heaven.
Thou knew'st right well to guide the warlike steed,
And yet could'st court the Muses with full speed
And such success, that the inspiring Nine
Have fill'd their Thespian fountain so with brine.
Henceforth we can expect no lyrick lay,
But biting satyres through the world must stray.
Bellona joyns with fair Erato too,
And with the Destinies do keep adoe,
Whom thus she queries: could not you awhile
Reprieve his life, until another file
Of poems such as these had been drawn up?
The fates reply'd that thou wert taken up,
A sacrifice unto the deities;
Since things most perfect please their holy eyes,
And that no other victim could be found
With so much learning and true virtue crown'd.
Since it is so, in peace for ever rest;
Tis very just that God should have the best.
Sym. Ognell M.D. Coningbrens.
ON MY BROTHER.
Lovelace is dead! then let the world return
To its first chaos, mufled in its urn;
The stars and elements together lye,
Drench'd in perpetual obscurity,
And the whole machine in confusion be,
As immethodick as an anarchie.
May the great eye of day weep out his light,
Pale Cynthia leave the regiment of night,
The galaxia, all in sables dight,
Send forth no corruscations to our sight,
The Sister-Graces and the sacred Nine,
Statu'd with grief, attend upon his shrine,
Whose worth, whose loss, should we but truly rate,
'Twould puzzle our arithmetic to state
Th' accompt of vertu's so transcendent high,
Number and value reach infinity.
Did I pronounce him dead! no, no! he lives,
And from his aromatique cell he gives
Spice-breathed fumes, whose odoriferous scent
(In zephre-gales which never can be spent)
Doth spread it self abroad, and much out-vies
The eastern bird in her self-sacrifice;
Or Father Phoebus, who to th' world derives
Such various and such multiformed lives,
Took notice that brave Lovelace did inspire
The universe with his Promethean fire,
And snatcht him hence, before his thread was spun,
En'ving that here should be another Sun. T. L.<113.1>
<113.1> Thomas Lovelace, one of the poet's brothers.