Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, UPON THE DEATH OF A GENTLEMAN, by RICHARD CRASHAW


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UPON THE DEATH OF A GENTLEMAN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Faithlesse and fond mortality!
Last Line: Thus much, hee's dead, and weepe the rest.
Subject(s): Chambers, Michael (d. 1634)


Faithlesse and fond Mortality,
Who will ever credit thee?
Fond and faithlesse thing! that thus,
In our best hopes beguilest us.
What a reckoning hast thou made,
Of the hopes in him we laid?
For Life by volumes lengthened,
A Line or two, to speake him dead.
For the Laurell in his verse,
The sullen Cypresse o're his Herse.
For so many hoped yeares
Of fruit, so many fruitlesse teares.
For a silver-crowned Head,
A durty pillow in Death's Bed.
For so deare, so deep a trust,
Sad requitall, thus much dust!
Now though the blow that snatcht him hence,
Stopt the Mouth of Eloquence,
Though shee be dumbe e're since his Death,
Not us'd to speake but in his Breath,
Leaving his death ungarnished
Therefore, because hee is dead,
Yet if at least shee not denyes,
The sad language of our eyes,
We are contented: for then this
Language none more fluent is.
Nothing speakes our Griefe so well
As to speake Nothing, Come then tell
Thy mind in Teares who e're Thou be,
That ow'st a Name to misery.
Eyes are vocall, Teares have Tongues,
And there be words not made with lungs;
Sententious showers, o let them fall,
Their cadence is Rhetoricall.
Here's a Theame will drinke th' expence,
Of all thy watry Eloquence,
Weepe then, onely be exprest
Thus much, Hee's Dead, and weepe the rest.





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