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Which by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast |
Behind hand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last. |
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An Elegie on the Lady Markham. |
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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.
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[CW: They] |