Cap. For pity’s sake, you that have tears to shed,
Sigh a soft requiem, and let fall a bead,
For two unfortunate Nobles,[293] whose sad fate
Leaves them both dead and excommunicate.
No churchman’s pray’r to comfort their last groans
No sacred seed of earth to hide their bones;
But as their fury wrought them out of breath,
The Canon speaks them guilty of their own death.
Rom. Denied Christian burial! I pray, what does that?
Or the dead lazy march in the funeral?
Or the flattery in the epitaph?—which shows
More sluttish far than all the spiders’ webs,
Shall ever grow upon it: what do these
Add to our well-being after death?
Cap. Not a scruple.
Rom. Very well then—
I have a certain meditation,
(If I can think of,) somewhat to this purpose;—
I’ll say it to you, while my mother there
Numbers her beads.—
“You that dwell near these graves and vaults,
Which oft do hide physicians’ faults,
Note what a small room does suffice
To express men’s goods: their vanities
Would fill more volume in small hand,
Than all the evidence of Church Land.
Funerals hide men in civil wearing,
And are to the Drapers a good hearing;
Make th’ Heralds laugh in their black rayment;
And all die Worthies, die with payment
To th’ Altar offerings: tho’ their fame,
And all the charity of their name,
’Tween heav’n and this, yield no more light
Than rotten trees, which shine in th’ night.
O look the last Act be best in th’ Play,
And then rest gentle bones! yet pray,
That when by the Precise you’re view’d,
A supersedeas be not sued;
To remove you to a place more airy,
That in your stead they may keep chary
Stockfish, or seacoal; for the abuses
Of sacrilege have turn’d graves to vilder uses.
How then can any monument say,
Here rest these bones to the Last Day;
When Time, swift both of foot and feather,
May bear them the Sexton knows not whither?—
What care I then, tho’ my last sleep
Be in the desart, or in the deep;
No lamp, nor taper, day and night,
To give my charnel chargeable light?
I have there like quantity of ground;
And at the last day I shall be found.”[294]
Immature Death.
Contarino’s dead.
O that he should die so soon!
Why, I pray, tell me:
Is not the shortest fever best? and are not
Bad plays the worse for their length?
Guilty preferment.
I have a plot, shall breed,
Out of the death of these two noblemen;
Th’ advancement of our house—
Oh take heed
A grave is a rotten foundation.
Mischiefs