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Which by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast
Behind hand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last.
An Elegie on the Lady Markham.
Man is the World, and death th'Ocean,
To which God gives the lower parts of man.
This Sea invirons all, and though as yet
God hath set marks and bounds, 'twixt us and it,
Yet doth it roar, and gnaw, and still pretend
To break our bank, when ere it takes a friend:
Then our land waters (tears of passion) vent;
Our waters then above our firmament,
(Tears which our Soul doth for her sins let fal)
Take all a brackish taste, and Funeral.
And even those tears, which should wash sin, are sin.
We, after God, new drown our world again.
Nothing but man of all invenom'd things
Doth work upon it self with inborn stings.
Tears are false Spectacles, we cannot see
Through passions mist, what we are, or what she.
In her this Sea of death hath made no breach,
But as the tide doth wash the slimy beach,
And leaves embroider'd works upon the sand,
So is her flesh refin'd by deaths cold hand.
As men of China, 'after an ages stay
Do take up Porcelane, where they buried Clay:
So at this grave, her limbeck (which refines
The Diamonds, Rubies, Saphires, Pearls and Mines
Of which, this flesh was) her soul shall inspire
Flesh of such stuff, as God, when his last fire
Annuls this world, to recompence it shall,
Make and name them th' Elixar of this All.

[CW: They]