Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ELEGY FOR THE PRINCE, by EDWARD HERBERT Poet's Biography First Line: Must he be ever dead? Cannot we add Last Line: Which, being his, can therefore never die. Alternate Author Name(s): Cherbury, 1st Baron Herbert Of; Herbert Of Cherbury, Edward Herbert, 1st Baron; Herbert Of Cherbury, Lord Subject(s): Death; Dead, The | ||||||||
MUST he be ever dead? Cannot we add Another life unto that Prince that had Our souls laid up in him? Could not our love, Now when he left us, make that body move After his death one age? And keep unite That frame wherein our souls did so delight? For what are souls but love, since they do know Only for it, and can no further go? Sense is the soul of beasts, because none can Proceed so far as t' understand like man: And if souls be more where they love than where They animate, why did it not appear In keeping him alive? Or how is fate Equal to us, when one man's private hate May ruin kingdoms, when he will expose Himself to certain death, and yet all those Not keep alive this Prince who now is gone, Whose loves would give thousands of lives for one? Do we then die in him, only as we May in the world's harmonic body see An universally diffused soul Move in the parts which moves not in the whole? So though we rest with him, we do appear To live and stir a while, as if he were Still quick'ning us. Or do (perchance) we live And know it not? See we not Autumn give Back to the earth again what it receiv'd In th' early Spring? And may not we, deceiv'd, Think that those powers are dead, which do but sleep, And the world's soul doth reunited keep? And though this Autumn gave what never more Any Spring can unto the world restore, May we not be deceiv'd, and think we know Ourselves for dead? Because that we are so Unto each other, when as yet we live A life his love and memory doth give, Who was our world's soul, and to whom we are So reunite that in him we repair All other our affections ill-bestow'd: Since by this love we now have such abode With him in Heaven as we had here before He left us dead. Nor shall we question more, Whether the soul of man be memory, As Plato thought: we and posterity Shall celebrate his name, and virtuous grow, Only in memory that he was so; And on those terms we may seem yet to live, Because he lived once, though we shall strive To sigh away this seeming life so fast, As if with us 'twere not already past. We then are dead, for what doth now remain To please us more, or what can we call pain, Now we have lost him? And what else doth make Diff'rence in life and death, but to partake Nor joy nor pain? O death, couldst not fulfil Thy rage against us no way but to kill This Prince, in whom we liv'd, that so we all Might perish by thy hand at once, and fall Under his ruin? Thenceforth though we should Do all the actions that the living would, Yet we shall not remember that we live, No more than when our mothers' womb did give That life we felt not; or should we proceed To such a wonder that the dead should breed, It should be wrought to keep that memory, Which, being his, can therefore never die. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND AN ODE UPON A QUESTION WHETHER LOVE SHOULD CONTINUE FOREVER by EDWARD HERBERT DITTY IN IMITATION OF THE SPANISH: ENTRE TANTO QUE L'AVRIL by EDWARD HERBERT EPITAPH FOR SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, AT ST. PAUL'S WITHOUT A MONUMENT ... by EDWARD HERBERT |
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